Here’s a photo I clicked a moment ago as I sat in an idling car with the air conditioner on 22°C, waiting for my family to return from Sunday shopping.
The background has an old Namdev Shimpi Ram mandir by the Shimpi community (a backward caste —in the OBC category— of hereditary tailors) established in 1915 and named after a saint who has influenced the bhakti movement as well as Sikhism, the Atlantic Stores, established by a refugee in 1948, Dhanshri Ladies Undergarments selling intimate wear for women, and some sort of a knick-knack (paan? jewellery? newspaper?) vend with a poster of the ‘Bhavya‘ (magnificent) Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, built at the cost of ₹2,150 Crore and inaugurated by none other than the PM in 2024, a scene on a road named after the Mahatma himself, located in the supposedly cultured and prosperous city known (at one time at least) as the Oxford of the East, situated in the salubrious Western Ghats in the highly advanced, industrialised, and progressive state of Maharashtra.
The foreground has a 15-year-old from the Dombari caste performing a tightrope walk while balancing a flowerpot on her head, as her father plays the dhol and mother begs for money underneath, just so she can eat tonight, because quite likely her family isn’t counted in the 800 million Indians who are dependent on government handouts just so they don’t starve. Those are a different 800 million. The lucky ones.
Playing loudly on my car speakers, routed through Bluetooth from my high-end phone via a paid Spotify subscription, is Pink Floyd in their prime.
“… Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”
India is not for beginners.
In the interest of full disclosure: I paid the lady to allow me to photograph her daughter, and then paid her some more to get her to bring the child down to rest. No, I ain’t bragging. I am simply doing the minimum. I am not brave. I am not a changemaker. I am chicken shit. I am just a diarist. A chronicler of the world around me. And a displayer of mirrors. Don’t pin your hopes on me. I am the jester. Not the King.
