From Aravalli to Ambience
From Aravalli to Ambience
“Pappa KFC janahai. Let’s go to KFC.”
“No. No. Let’s go home and eat there. This is summer. We should not eat outside. Chicken heats up our body.”
“No papa, veg. burger will do. No Chicken. Please papa.”
Ravi is not surprised that his nine-year-old son would cry and do anything to get a chicken burger from KFC or McDonald.
“Fellow is not leaving my hands. Holds it like an iron rod welded to another. Like a leech” Ravi grumbled.
“Do anything. We are not going to eat here today. I have already cooked nice mixed sabji for you both. It will go waste. Ok. What is this KFC? All junks.” His wife Sheela.
“Mummy KFC, You don’t know KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken, an American company.” Said the little one in his own witty way.
Sheela’s rage went up as she shouted at her son, “You shut up’”
A silent moment for a couple of minutes.
“Pappa. Does the chicken here come from America?”
Ravi thought that everyone was thinking about their problem for he knew it is not that eating out or not that bothers him now. In fact he loves to eat out as much as his son does. Then what bothers him? He knows it and he cannot even make Sheela believe it and he is damn sure that she will sympathise with him, but will be practical as every young, even old person is made to believe today.
The thing, which started haunting him the moment he got down from the auto, is the Asia’s biggest mall built on the other side of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Ambience mall. This is what used to be the foot of the Aravalli hills. In the early 2000s, he along with his hostel and course mates used to walk around and was enthralled to find tiny stone implements believed to have been belonging to the time at least a six hundred years old. They were not History or Archaeology students, but the discourses and debates in the university sensitised them to the extent that they understood the value of the Aravalli hills. One another thing, he was also one of those boys and girls from the University who volunteered to teach the children of slum located on the Aravalli hills, starting from the opposite of the university stretching to the place where he stands now i.e. the mall, all air conditioned and sophisticated things and people. As they entered the Big Bazaar inside the Ambience mall, his son said, “Pappa this is the biggest in Asia, bigger than the ones in Hong Kong and Singapore!” The beautiful smiling faces greeted them and everywhere the breast showing female dolls clad with new new chudidhars, sarees, the designer ones. There are also half naked male dolls, just to show the newly arrived jeans. Ravi lost himself as he was seeing the big boulders and stones where the smiling sales girls and dolls were standing. They are slowy changing into boulders and transforming into dolls, male, female dolls.
His reminiscing was disrupted by his son’s tightening of his hand and the idiosyncratic cry, “ayo papa. Here is the KFC.” And he was dragged into KFC. Sheela gave him a contemptuous look and said, “He only will eat. We will have it at home.” Ravi was not even expected to say “yes”. It was a tall order bound to be carried out. Ravi could not notice what was said to him as he entered the KFC, his thoughts slid down to the time when the they used to stroll over the rough stones and the big boulders which one would feel like lifting and in the midst of the low hills were those workers, contract workers mostly from Salem district of Tamil Nadu and their shabby tents. The roofs were the denotation of the India’s other side of development of the liberalised economy with Narashima Rao at the helm of affairs. Also on other side of the site were the sky touching cranes and crushers to dig the hills.
Pappa, his son asked, “Does the KFC chicken come from America?”
Having found no reply from Ravi, he said, “Pappa. Burgers. Don’t you want one!?” with an enormous smile on his face.
Till now the boy was looking at the burger. He lifted his head and took a look at his father’s face and noticed the tears in the father’s eyes.
“Mummy, papa is crying (papa rohrahenhai).” Words came out the instantly.
At once she became serious and took a glance of his face. “Kya huwa? What happened?”
“Nothing. Some dust has gone into the eyes.”
His son sensed something serous on the face of his father. But started eating the burgers.
The students’ union and teachers went on demonstrations, took processions to stop the building of the five star hotel and the malls. Ravi was in the front shouting slogans.
“This is good you know prices are also reasonable and no cheating. In Sarojini Nagar or any other market we have to bargain for half-an-hour for every piece of cloth. Here everything is tagged and a good discount. And everybody is smiling”
Ravi thought how he could tell her that great natural mountain, which is distinct, has been destroyed and the market has taken over the Aravalli hills. Not only that the roadside thelawalas, (cycle cart vegetable sellers) are gone, nowhere to be seen in the mall area. “Vegetables are available neat and cut in pockets. Even idly dough and ready made coconut chutney, everything is available.”
He only said, “Hmm. Hmm.”
As they sat in the auto, the driver said “70 rupees sir for Adchini”. He did not even ask him go by metre (which is the practice in Delhi). His wife who generally bargains too did not say anything. As the auto moved Ravi saw a big rough stone (too small for the big cranes) being lifted and broken to be used for the construction of another mall next to Ambience. And after five minutes he saw the workers’ tent, only two or three. There was a TV inside one of the tents. He could notice the dust of the Aravalli granites on the tents.
“Pappa, I know you were crying when we were in KFC. Why were you crying?”
Ravi was woken up by his son statement. He said, “No. No. I told you know it was dust.” He was trying to come to normalcy as he got down from the auto. How could he tell his son why he was crying?
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