City Hangout – Central Park, Defence Colony
Public garden anthropology.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
Cool breeze and chirpy birds. Two morose seeming lovers. A man lying flat on the grass. Such are the scenes of an ordinary afternoon in Central Park. Built upon what used to be a stinky drain, this public garden in South Delhi’s upscale Defence Colony (DefCol) is a long stretch of lawn flanked on both sides with beautiful houses that only a few of us can afford.
Right now the place isn’t really teeming with many people, perhaps the crowd will come a little later when the temperature drops to more tolerable levels. But there are two foreigners taking a stroll, followed by young Ravi, accompanied with Google, his “sahib’s” dog who has to be taken for a walk daily at this hour.
Two uniformed security guards, meantime, are pedalling along the perimeter, no doubt employed by a DefCol residence or two. Some paces away housemaid Shabnam is quietly sitting on a bench, relishing her brief break from work in a “kothi” (bungalow).
And now security guard Sadanand steps into the park. He is looking solemn. He says he just quit his job following a tiff. Having worked in the area for two years, he says that “the park gets big people as well as small people, and monkeys too!”
Sooner or later you’re sure to bump into a board that’s not usually seen in such neighbourhood parks but which nevertheless subtly reveals the nuances of social structures in our city. It says: “Guards and drivers are requested not to urinate on the roads and walls in the colony. Use toilet facility provided by your employers.”
The Central Park life
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The social structures/prejudices of our beloved city cannot be described as ‘subtle’ or ‘nuanced’. The discrimination against workers is pretty blatant in the ‘posh’ neighborhoods of Delhi & Gurgaon. Boards that read “drivers and maids not allowed in the park” are not uncommon here. The ghastly Madams and Sahibs who live in those kothis expect their workers to act like automatons ( i.e. no shitting/pissing while at work, no breaks and definitely no sitting on the sofa). Workers are subjected to hundreds of other indignities every day ( like separate utensils and elevators).
These pockets of affluence epitomize the blissfully gated, neo-liberal, ‘meritocratic’ UC Utopia that the bourgeoisie strives to establish. In other words, they are a bottomless abyss of privilege , smugness and iniquity.
Hazaar Laanat on them!