Delhi

Delhi is a modern city - fast and big.

In Delhi, people are big and their life is fast. They don't have time for small things.

Delhiites talk, they talk fast, and they talk big. They are smart, and they have mastered the art of outsmarting others. It is hard not to be awed by their look, as long as they keep their mouths shut. The problem with them is, that they can not.

It doesn't take long to identify a pattern in their thought and their talk. And as soon as it is identified, they lose their luster.

Delhiites talk only in terms of nouns - names and numbers; to be precise - big names and big numbers - this big company and this big package. If you meet someone who unashamedly shows off, you know where he is from. Their mouth perpetually stench with big rotten nouns that they chew like cud. They go on spitting big drops of nouns at your face without realizing how repulsive they and their ridiculous nouns are.

But they are helpless, and hopelessly limited in their range. They can not talk anything else, anything beyond big names and big numbers, even to save their honor. This is what they have done all through their life - show off. They eat branded food in branded joints, wear branded undies (and they somehow show it off), watch branded soaps, work with branded firms, draw branded salaries, and fuck branded sluts. This is how life is to be lived - on a grand scale! Since 99 out of 100 Delhiites lack resources to live a grand life, they just brag to glory. When they open their mouth, they brag. They can really teach you how to put up with unabashed bragging.

If something doesn't have a display value, it's useless. Everything is a showpiece - girlfriend is a showpiece, body is a showpiece, love is a showpiece, education is a showpiece, the whole life is a showpiece. Things are good if they are branded, and better if exotic. No wonder Salsa is 'in'. Even Jesus Christ is 'in'.

But don't ever call a Delhiite wannabe. It is his exquisite aesthetic sense and not his petty bourgeois aspiration that draws him to the 'in' things. He claims to have a taste too. And why not? When he has money, he must be having taste as well. Who dare argue with Money?

Ask a typical Delhiite to speak for 2 minutes on anything that he runs after - whether it is Salsa, or Jesus Christ, and observe him. Most likely he will disgrace himself. Any sentence that starts with how or why exposes the inherent shallowness in them and makes them run for a cover. Sometimes even a what or a who is enough to trip them.

I often wonder what makes a Delhiite swagger? I absolutely fail to understand their characteristic arrogance, which looks quite awkward when paired with their characteristic mediocrity in each and every sphere of life (except, of course, dropping names and showing off branded undies). Tell me how many people Delhi has produced in last 100 years of its history who were worth the undies they wore? And it has guts to put itself in the league of Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Mumbai!

Name-dropping is easy, and this is something that marks a jerk in a group. Every jerk drops names. But going further takes character, and only exceptional people have guts to go further. Delhi systematically discourages anything of that sort.

Delhi teaches you just two things - how to earn money, and how to burn it. Everything else is irrelevant. Deep down in his heart, every Delhiite is convinced that it's alright to be a jerk as long as he is able to sponsor his weekend shopping.

He enrolls in branded courses in branded institutes and prepare himself for a branded life. Even his teachers keep things simple now, and they don't worry much about things like values of life. They leave these things in the custody of the invisible hand and busy themselves in issuing notices to parents that their daughters can not wear skirts below their knees.

But the size of skirt is not an issue, neither for girls nor for their parents. They might as well send their girls without skirts for all they care, as long as the school is branded.

A Delhiite takes things easy, unless he is in traffic. He is cool, he is a jerk, and he goes on to pretend that it is cool to be a jerk. It's cool to be oblivious of what's happening around, and it's cool to misspell words. Also, he expects you to understand this. If you refuse to take part in this game, you are uncool.

Delhi is basically a market, and only two words are important there - shopping and money. In Delhi, every road ends at shoppers' stop. When a Delhiite doesn't shop, he prepares for shopping. He prepares in school, in college, in his company, in his solitude, and even in his dreams. Every occasion is seen from a shopping point of view - puja shopping, wedding shopping, honeymoon shopping, even hospital shopping. It's shopping that makes an occasion an occasion. His mind is an endless list of shopping items, and his home is a gallery. His consumeristic needs urge him to see any junk that is broadcasted, listen to any junk that is aired, and buy any junk that is sold. His shopping logic mocks at taste and discrimination. He thinks only in terms of points he earns in shoppers' stop.

And while most of his needs are imaginary, the costs he pays to fulfill these imaginary needs are real. Is this not insanity - paying real cost to fulfill imaginary needs? Is it sane to waste entire life sponsoring insanity?

Delhi's climate, in every sense of the word, is notoriously hostile. If you want to save yourself, if you want to live a meaningful life, leave Delhi at once. Otherwise nothing will ever catch your imagination except those silly ads that you see in TV.

What else do you expect to get in market anyway - Truth, Beauty, or God? Well, even they are sold in market - but all synthetic - synthetic truth, synthetic beauty, and synthetic God - and all dead! Can you see how dangerous this place is? This place is an arid desert, where man is running amok with thirst and all he gets is false promise; all he gets is a shadow, a mirage. Man dies, but not his cravings. What else is Hell?

What are you waiting for? Leave this God forsaken place or you will end up doing what thousand others do - collecting branded undies* and showing them off to all and sundry.

'Delhi' is a corruption of thought, a mental disease, and Delhiites are walking insane infected with this disease. 'Delhi' is a virus that eats the very spirit of man and makes him a raving show-off. In 'The Matrix', they pull out this malicious device from Neo's body by a hi-fi machine. Do we have any machine like that?

But cure comes later. Despite numerous symptoms, the sick keeps on denying the diagnosis. He is blind to facts. He is blind to truth. He can not see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of Delhi. It's maddening - a doctor kills his daughter**, a chartered accountant kills his wife (thankfully he didn't put her in tandoor), someone rapes kids, eats them and bury their bones, someone shoots a woman in a bar because she refuses to serve liquor after closing hour, someone rapes a medical student in broad daylight, someone rapes an embassy official barely 5 kms away from the Parliament, some teenager shoots his own classmate... oh I feel tired now. The newspapers burn with such headlines but nothing seems to scandalize, sensationalize, sensitize or even surprise us anymore. Is this state of mind normal?

Delhi might offer its explanations but who's interested in explanations! The fact remains that these offenders are not professional criminals. They are not outsiders. They are like us, they live in our colonies, and they hold our kids in their arms. Many of them are educated and sophisticated people, who work with MNCs, watch 'HBO' and read 'Time' in leisure. And this fact suggests that something is terribly wrong with the value system of Delhi, if they have any. Delhi doesn't need explanations, it needs an introspection. It needs a cure.

Let's have a look at one of the most BIMARU states - Bihar, vis-a-vis Delhi.

What's ailing Delhi is not what's ailing Bihar. The malady of Bihar is Indian, but the malady of Delhi is American. The malady of Bihar is caused by politics of caste and scarcity, but the malady of Delhi is, apart from patriarchy, driven by excess and relentless pursuit of excess. It's a bit comic but I can't even laugh at it.

There is a hope for Bihar. Bihar needs some political will to put the economic machinery at place. And sooner or later, with effective governance, it'll come out of its misery. But what hope we can have for Delhi? How much education and how much wealth it would take to restore sanity in Delhi?

It is outrageous that the whole nation is made to bleed in order to make Delhi look photogenic. But Delhi's ugliness can not be hidden by any make-up. Every now and then the make-up melts, and something hideous shows up, embarrassing the whole nation. In fact, with all that cosmetics smudged over its dirty face, Delhi looks positively grotesque. The bitter truth is that no matter how much it develops, Delhi will always remain undeveloped. Because it is a civilization that stands out only for lack of civilization.

No. Cosmetics is no substitute for health and hygiene. Delhi should go wash its face before doing the make-up. Delhi must realize that it doesn't suffer from deficiency, it suffers from excess. And the irony of excess is a tastelessness followed by an acidity. It's high time Delhi decided the upper limit of its greed and profligacy, which is the reason for all its malady and sufferings. It's time Delhi learned to say a resounding 'No' to salesmen like Sachin and SRK. Delhi should learn to stop sometimes, sit out in the open for a while and look at the moon in the sky. If they do it, they will be cured.

The only problem with Delhi is Delhiite himself. And the problem with Delhi is, alas, that Delhiite doesn't understand this. He doesn't even listen, he just talks smart and shows off his branded undies. After some time, when he doesn't feel entertained anymore, he turns on some third class music at some unforgivable volume and zooms off in his swanky car. You just wish he reaches home safe. After all, it's Delhi.

* undies:- metaphor for anything private, which is irrelevant in public domain - it could mean anything from undies (literally) to electronic gadgets.

** Shame media, shame. Shame on you.