“You’re really not like a South Delhi girl. Or a Delhi girl for that matter”.
I can feel annoyance simmering, but I push it down and smile. “What makes you say that ?”
The trope continues in 2025. All South Delhi girls are vain, high maintenance, uppity beautiful airheads. My anxious brain will fixate on the thing I like the least about the trope: so you don’t think I’m pretty? I am finally at a point in my life where I have no real doubts about my intelligence. But contemporary TV show tropes about Delhi piss me off. Women and Men with real character and personality always reside outside Delhi NCR. The need for constantly boxing people annoys me. If this is a function of too much cognitive load. I have two suggestions
Stop talking to so many people
Categorise silently: don’t give me cliff notes about how I’m not fitting into your lazily defined box
There are a lot of reasons to hate Delhi. The air. The testosterone. I can feel myself taking on my aggressive avatar every time I visit. Seat of political power. The constant name changes of roads to obliterate our history. The Business families where everything is loud, shiny and in your face. I read the Godfather as a 12-year-old. I have spent most of my teenage years imagining every business family casually murdering people. People at summits at the Taj about changing the world, celebrating that they’ve created a successful program which increases incomes by Rs 1000 a month while drinking a glass of wine or a peg of whiskey at the end of this benevolence conference which costs double. The development circle fighting turf wars, never sharing information when it matters (except when in a drinking spiral) and then turning around completely unironically to advise governments on how departments should coordinate better. Will the academic circles ever take on a language or manner that makes them accessible to regular people ? or will they continue to use words from the time of Shakespeare to obfuscate ? Hobnobbing Delhi is a different kind of obnoxious. The parties, the Punjabi music, the garrulous drunks and the sheer noise on the street. The ogling. People caring way more about how they look and what politicians in America are doing instead of the ones on 7 Racecourse (the name of that one would have also changed by now). Doesn’t help that in 2024, Delhi still got the highest sexual assault cases registered in the country. But you know what – it’s still my childhood home and the city I spent the first 25 years of my life in. I get to shit on it, because I have earned the right to.
No, but where are you really from?
I firmly repeat myself. Delhi. I’m done apologising for it. But it’s taken a decade of not living there to be able to say it without looking down and feeling responsible for all the crap that goes on there. You know who never asks a follow up question about where you are from and accepts your first response?
It’s people from Delhi. We recognise our country as one where migration is constant. A churn where the city constantly chews and spits people out. Call it ignorance but I had friends for 14 years who have spent countless hours in my house, who discovered my ancestors came from the south only when they left the city. Even though my home was different from theirs in its makeup, food and style. It’s the acceptance of the melange by ordinary people, that makes Delhi endearing.
Delhi is not an easy city to live in, but if one stays there long enough to infiltrate the walls it puts up; there’s beauty, intelligence, and generosity at the end of the tunnel. The parks are green and full of birds. Culture can be accessed at minimal cost. Diversity is celebrated whole heartedly even now in the pockets that have not been overrun by propaganda and hate. There is an abundance of monuments across the board that show us how different religious communities lived in such close quarters in the past. Cultures of different religions, races, regions and languages amalgamated here. Where you know attribution of what came from where is not going to be straightforward. There is no plagiarism software one can run and beyond curiosity why should we care who started something instead of just appreciating that it exists for all of us to enjoy?
No one does Khatirdhaari the way a Dilliwala does. You go to a home and you’re immediately plied with drinks and snacks. People will insist you stay for the closest meal. No one ever asks you to leave. To a point, where it gives me anxiety to just sit around and not get to my next task. Of late, I’ve begun to appreciate how rare this is as a state of being. The exchange of food is constant. Mithai is sent over on Diwali, and sevaiyan is sent back on Eid. The gurudwara volunteers hand you langar food without once looking up to try and place you. For Navroze, there’s berry pulao. Christmas rum cakes for December and prasad ka khaana aka aloo puri halwa which is singularly the most comforting meal in the world.
Delhi is a city that baffles me. There is enough political pressure and power to begin to make real progress on air pollution. But it hasn’t happened. My family and dearest friends continue to live there through the months of god awful pollution. There’s an underlying belief that despite the crumbling infrastructure, apocalyptic air somehow this city will pull through. That for every Indri whiskey business owner there are ten benevolent businessmen who religiously donate and rebuild crumbing infrastructure and give scholarships to people in need. Everytime I go home, I am battling two opposing emotions of leaving almost immediately because the city overwhelms me but also provides me a safe haven. My brother makes fun of the fact that I am always in tears when it's time to leave, even though no one is forcing me to do so. I have over the 25 years lived in the city, maintained the most eclectic group of friends: lawyers who care more about wildlife and nature than corporate tax, Designers who want to honour the craftsmen who work with them, advertising professionals who would rather be teaching buddhishm, psychologists who watch trash tv to unwind, business owners who enjoy a dingy night out, researchers and development sector professionals who love high fashion and corporates who would like to get more involved in citizen action. Each of them differs from the other by so much; I wouldn’t even dream of assigning them a generalisation except that they continue to choose to be friends with me.
25 million plus people come from Delhi. How are we even hoping to stereotype them in a way that makes sense?
Ah the love-hate relationship we share with Delhi. I did not grow up here and I have lived in Gurgaon for 20 yrs now, but it is still my city because this is where I adulted, and simply because it made me mine. That is all. Dilli dilwaalon ki!
Loved the writing Smriti!
Such a gorgeous ode to Dilli, Smriti. I too feel conflicted about this city that claims to be my home. Thank you for articulating this push and pull so well.