As I go to office every day, I wonder what the world is coming to, and the world we are leaving behind for those who will come after us. These are big words. On the way from Gazipur to Noida, I pass a huge field of burning garbage that stretches off NH 24, alongside a residential area at the Sai Baba temple vicinity in Indirapuram. Families live right alongside this, children breathe this air. Cows stand around and sit in this unbelievable smoking field of garbage, and you wonder whether they aren’t dying a little faster because of it. I have passed this area five days a week for the past 2 years in shared autos, which lurch through semi-paved streets, seven people to each vehicle, four in the back seat where you struggle to hold your position if you are the last person to get in. Now, I traverse the same stretch in the luxury of a reserved auto, because Noida Sector --, where I work now, does not have a route where these vehicles ply, and I don’t want to change 4 modes of transport to get to office. It is quite expensive, but I have decided to allow myself this luxury, because I won’t get to office with my back hurting from walking long stretches with the laptop bag, my legs hurting from standing too long in a metro compartment where there isn’t space enough to draw breath.
This field of garbage in Indirapuram now has a road that cuts through it which leads to Khora, a lower middle class area, which is also a shortcut into Noida. The air here swirls with dust. The dust is gritty, hard like steel. As it laps my face, I wonder about the poisons I am breathing in, and look at the people who live here, the dogs that sit relaxedly, legs splayed out in the winter sun, amid the endless eddies of dust, and wonder what will happen to us all.
This road through Khora is new. Earlier it was an undulating, stony patch of road through which autowallahs would take their vehicles only when all other roads were jammed. There were small hills from where the ground would slope down sharply and you would wonder what kind of animal the driver was to take his gari through this monster of a stretch and what a miracle it was that the tyres survived. Now, this stretch has been smoothed out. Very soon, it will be paved. I wonder if this is the beginning of the gentrification of Khora.
I write from a rather privileged position, where I can afford to not live beside a smoking field of garbage. It is less privileged than those of many friends and colleagues, who travel in their own vehicles with windows rolled up. I am incredibly grateful when one of them kindly offers me a lift home, or part of the way. On a hot day, it means not walking in the sun while your skin feels like it's burning. It means not breathing in the smell of rotting garbage, or the smell of chickens cooped up in wire cages: the smell of old genjees that have never been washed.
This road through Khora is new. Earlier it was an undulating, stony patch of road through which autowallahs would take their vehicles only when all other roads were jammed. There were small hills from where the ground would slope down sharply and you would wonder what kind of animal the driver was to take his gari through this monster of a stretch and what a miracle it was that the tyres survived. Now, this stretch has been smoothed out. Very soon, it will be paved. I wonder if this is the beginning of the gentrification of Khora.
I write from a rather privileged position, where I can afford to not live beside a smoking field of garbage. It is less privileged than those of many friends and colleagues, who travel in their own vehicles with windows rolled up. I am incredibly grateful when one of them kindly offers me a lift home, or part of the way. On a hot day, it means not walking in the sun while your skin feels like it's burning. It means not breathing in the smell of rotting garbage, or the smell of chickens cooped up in wire cages: the smell of old genjees that have never been washed.
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