Dear Gurgaon,
The auto-waala didn’t ask where I was going. He asked where I was from.
“Chennai,” I said, climbing in, and he laughed like I’d told him a joke. “Then you’ve seen a real city. Let’s see if I can change your mind about this one.”
He had assumed I wasn’t quite fitting in yet. I did look confused when I got into the auto. I thought to myself, “Rude. Also, kind of fair, actually.”
His name was Ramesh, and he’d been driving these roads for 22 years. He came here from a village near Rewari with one bag and a cousin’s phone number. He said the cousin’s number was wrong, but he found his way anyway. I got in with the usual plan of saying a destination and looking at Instagram. But he asked how long I’d been in the city, and somehow that was the end of the phone.
I always thought of you as a young city, all glass and office lights and people who say “let’s go to viral spots.” Ramesh didn’t see you that way. He remembered when the stretch where the malls stand now was nothing but mustard fields, and said it vanished so slowly that one day he simply looked up and the fields were gone. Listening to him, I realised you have a past most of us never ask about. He said it quietly, the way you’d talk about a relative’s old house. He wasn’t complaining, just remembering what once was.
I went and looked the city up properly after the ride, because I can’t leave a good story alone. Your name is said to come from Guru Dronacharya, the teacher of the Pandavas and Kauravas, who according to legend was gifted this land in return for his teaching. You were officially renamed Gurugram in 2016, but every driver I’ve met still says Gurgaon. Ramesh said the new name is “for the papers” and the old one is “for the people.”
What got me was how he talked about Gurgaon. Proud, a little confused, and still so fond. Like the city had grown up too fast and he was still catching up. When I asked what he’d miss if he ever left, he thought for a full minute and said, “the evenings.”
The ride was short. As I got off, he told me to keep my bag in front of me and to eat something proper before sunset, “because the city looks nicer on a full stomach.” I paid, said thank you, and stood there for a bit while the sky did its evening thing over the towers.
He was right. It did look nicer.
I came in thinking you were a place to get through, a place to work in. I’m leaving thinking you’re a place with people who have been carrying you around long before the rest of us showed up.
So thanks, Gurgaon. And thanks, Ramesh.
Love,
Natasha
Heartwarming
ReplyDelete