Gurugraam sey Gudgaon Tak!

I awoke startled, to shrill haryaanvi music blaring out from a shanty nearby. It was my first morning at Gurgaon. I rushed bleary-eyed outside to find out the auto-tuned source of my irritation, even as I got ready to undertake my daily ablutions. With a practiced demeanour I put on my raiments of professionalism and left on my foot for office as it is within a walking distance. The road to office cuts across the NH-8; the industrial arterial for Gurgaon, with all accessories for corporate life along its way. There is an airport after Mahipalpur, and further down towards Gurgaon, the chocolatey brick facade of Leela Kempinski marvels you. Then you will meet the Cyber City, The Software Parks, and even a Royal Bank of Scotland. Even further down comes the sector-32, the new corporate hub of Gurgaon, which is undergoing through the "labour pains" of construction. Sector-32 is where my office building is nestled between several other imposing corporate farm-houses of Gurgaon that are churning out the moolah, the money, the investments, the plans, the honey, the sweetness, the gur of this Gurgaon.

I cut across this NH-8 every morning as I transport myself over to sector-32 from sector 15. I look at the road-sign nearby at the cross-roads which positions itself as the flag-bearer of “Jharsa Road. ” As I turn towards the Sector-32 offices, I see an ordinary white-washed arc on the road, displaying in hindi, that I am about to enter the Jharsa Gaon.

These are very strange names. Jharsa literally means scrub-like. A village that is a scrub land, where nothing is expected to grow, yet which is the upcoming corporate heart of Gurgaon. That is the modern marvel of the knowledge industry. It does not need nature’s benevolence for man to succeed. Man has disconnected himself from nature after mastering it. The transformation, aah!, the concretisation of sand. Gurgaon was originally the place of Gurus, the Gurugram, the village of elders. Gurugram had to be converted to Gurgaon once the knowledge of the gurus gave way to the money of the (management) gurus.

I asked my cabbie on the day I arrived at Gurgaon if all this development is appreciated by him? He just smilingly nodded and expressed his bewilderment at his unawareness of how quickly this development came about. “Kuch nahi tha, pata nahi kab khadi hogayi yay saari buildings.” It was as if all of it was done surreptitiously, like a dog that comes at night and pees on a pole to mark his territory in the comfort of the dark, perhaps?

I walk over to my office building, but I take the shorter route, which is across an undeveloped area, but which is in the midst of daily constructive activity. I see the building’s lattice-work in aluminium and copper wires with a lift full of labourers going up and down in the building like a restless zipper. There are workers who have taken in temporary shelters near the construction site and built for themselves roofs made out of aluminium sheets pasted over bricks placed randomly. There is abject filth, mounds of cement, metal rods, kids, and even pigs that scamper around. Soon these hands will go over to constructing another dream of India and this place will be dressed up for its inauguration for the well-coated.

Before turning over on the bend of the road which leads to my office, I stopped to take in the wonderful contrast that India always is. It is the land of the scientific and the faithful, the fundamentalist and the sufis, the poor and the rich, of the beautiful and the damned!. To my left, was wet mud in which pigs played wildly often squealing out to their friends to come and join in the cool reverie under the hot sun. And, to my right, were the clean avenues of corporate freedom, the abode of air-conditioned boardrooms under the hot sun.

I felt glad in a moment of animalism, that I had to turn right that day.

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