Reading the walls.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Are you among one of those who like snooping around a neighbourhood’s intimate life? Wanting to sniff out the pursuits and concerns of the locality, its hopes and aspirations, and secrets.

All you have to do is to read the neighbourhood’s walls. Particularly the flyers that lie stuck on the grimy peeling concrete of those walls. The very flyers that are replenished with fresher flyers in predictable regularity. New flyers stuck on old flyers.

This strategy works well for the gateway guarding the entrance to south Delhi’s historic Chirag Dilli village. The gateway has no name. The locals refer to it as khandahar, ruin. Whatever, sample the flyers pasted on the rugged walls.

Tuition centre looking for spoken English teachers (male/female).
Home classes for English-speaking in “angrezi vatavaran” for “interview preparation” and “jobs.”
Coaching centre guaranteeing fluency in spoken English, in American accent.

Chirag Delhi village is like a hyperlocal ‘hood where everybody seems to know everybody. Unhurried passersby stop to chat with each other—and also with the friendly grocers and veggie sellers. These grocers and vendors seem to know everyone by their name. Such a languid ambiance is only one part of a bigger more complicated reality. The place is simultaneously cosmopolitan. It is home to scores of young ambitious professionals who have come from across the country, choosing to live in the village’s relatively low-rent accommodations.

To be sure, not all the flyers on the gateway walls are about English-speaking lessons. One poster bears the logo of Amazon dot com—it “urgently requires boys and girls” from “illiterate to BA Pass,” with the monthly salary ranging from Rs 15.500 (in “packing”) , to Rs 22,500 as “supervisor.”

While Amazon was founded in 1994, the gateway is centuries-old. It was among the four gateways of a long wall built around the village by a Mughal emperor in the 18th century. (You discover this too on reading a display board standing beside the same walls!)

Then there’s a flyer on the gateway wall seeking “maids” and “helpers” for assignments in “homes” and “bungalows.” It specifies separate arrangements for those willing to work for 6 hours daily, and 12 hours daily.

And check out this love message scrawled on the gateway wall—first part of the line is in English, the rest is in Hindi, in Devnagri: “I luv u lekin tumhare ghar walo ko shak ho gaya hain.”

Other flyers, other perspectives. A sacred yagna, to be performed in a dharamshala, is “being hosted for Bhagwan Shyam and being hosted by Bhagwan Shyam.” Everyone is invited, declares the flyer.