“Malaviya Nagar?’ I asked the cabbie.
After years I had returned to the city. This city that has seen so much, centuries of conflict, has hardened the faces of its men and the voices of its women.
‘The women of Delhi are easy to figure out’, a man of Delhi had told me once, blowing smoke into the chilly December night. ‘All you need to tell her is that she is not just her body; she is also her thoughts, her desires, her opinions, her voices, her spaces and, of course, her clothes.’
I remember my mother in faded baggy jeans on the scooter. She used to take me everywhere, strapped to her chest.
My grandmother lazing around in the summer heat, her hand fan’s quiet breeze grazing my hair.
I don’t remember much of my father. My sister was born here. She cried a lot. Maybe because it was hard to hear her in the din of India Gate in the evening. We lived right across, of course.
‘500’, the cabbie replied with a grin, ‘and on the way I’ll show you the place where the big rape happened.’
After centuries I had returned to the city. So much was new. So much the same.
