While the world is getting worked up over Cairos Tahrir Square and its clones in the rest of the Middle East, permit me to talk about a square in Delhi, which too is witnessing some action, but of a less revolutionary kind. In a city as big as this, this is a very small, possibly insignificant phenomenon, but it must be noticed and written about before it vanishes. A smoggy traffic square that was once dreaded by commuters for its long jams has become an unlikely urban haven. Check the scene. On one grassy slope, a group of women is playing kabaddi. On another, a cricket match is on. A few furlongs away, a badminton game is nearing its end. Across the road, the electric signboard of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) is blinking red and green. Meanwhile, cars are speeding in all four directions – Dhaula Kuan, Ashram, INA Market and Green Park. It is just another late night in Rajiv Gandhi Setu.
Popularly known as the AIIMS flyover, the nine-lane signal-free traffic interchange on the busy Ring Road is now also a place for Delhiites to unwind. Im talking of the little grassy enclosures divided by traffic lanes of the intersection. Its so green, says Yogesh Verma, a college student whom I met lying down on the grass. He comes here daily from the nearby Kidwai Nagar West. Verma was looking up at the slightly hazy sky in which the moon looked as close as the top floor of across-the-road Safdarjung Hospital.
Opened in 2003, Rajiv Gandhi Setu, named after the former Prime Minister, was a hideout for sex workers and drug addicts. Completely sanitised of the low life, the place now pulls in family crowd from cousins and aunties to grannies and pet dogs – making it an open-sky social beach in nighttime Delhi.
In a city where nightlife mostly means dining out in expensive restaurants, dancing in pricey pubs or watching a movie in a multiplex, this is a rare sight: Lazy boys are lying down on the grass, the children are laughing. A large joint family is bursting into a cheer as its frail patriarch manages to stand up on his own. A couple is continuing their seemingly serious discussion as if they are in the privacy of their bedroom. Elsewhere a girl is smiling while cutting a melon. Is she thinking of her boyfriend?
There are hardly such spaces in Delhi. The scenic garden outside Red Fort was the only getaway for the residents of the claustrophobic Walled City but it has been sealed off due to security reasons. The Central Park in Connaught Place does come to mind but like other gardens, it closes its gates by 9 pm.
Precious as it is, the Setu cannot be compared to the sprawling grounds of India Gate, which too remains alive till late hours. Free and democratic, India Gate maidan is the Delhi equivalent of say, Bombays Chowpatty Beach. A large expanse of green grass, people from all over this class-driven city come here with friends, lovers and families and forgets their class differences for a while. Amid the rich, poor, powerful and powerless, they play cricket, buy balloons, have ice creams, finished off three-course homemade meals or just lie down on the grass. If you Google, you will find pictures of a young Rajiv Gandhi enjoying a softy with wife Sonia in India Gate.
The AIIMS flyover, however, is no substitute for India Gate. It will never attract people from all over Delhi. The gardens here are not large and being at the centre of the traffic intersection, there is no parking facility. You have to cross the busy roads to reach the park, a risky undertaking for children and the old. In the evening, the traffic is maddening and the air crushed by the noise of shrieking horns. Under such adverse circumstances, the Setus popularity indicates the lack of open gardens in the citys neighborhoods and the desperation of people to lay claim to anything even remotely park-like. Almost all the late-night regulars live in the vicinity and they come here rather casually – as part of their after-dinner evening walk.
Once I met a lonely labourer whose reason for being a regular almost broke my heart. When I come to this park and sit among the families here, I think of my people back home, said Mohammad Ramzan.
Amid a network of flyovers, loops and slip roads crisscrossing the area, the enclosures in the traffic intersection have been landscaped with grass, flowers and plants. You dont feel the smog. By 9 pm, the evening rush hour thins to a trickle and the temperature drops. The water sprinklers keep the grass wet and the air fragrant with the scent of damp earth.
As part of the landscape, the gardens also have a couple of steel sprouts installations that have been criticised on grounds of aesthetics. Delhis artsy intellectuals love cribbing about it. But they forget that after a splurge of Mughal tombs, Soviet-style building blocks and statues of dead politicians, this city has seen virtually no art installation in a public place. The regulars, for sure, dont mind the sprouts. Children love climbing the long stalks of these sprouts. But we have some demands, says housewife Saroj Kumari. We want at least one security guard and four dustbins. Also a few ice-cream wallas, please.
Mayank Austen Soofi lives in a library. He has one website (The Delhi Walla) and four blogs. The website address: thedelhiwalla.com. The blogs: Pakistan Paindabad, Ruined By Reading, Reading Arundhati Roy and Mayank Austen Soofi Photos.
