Subir Roy: An alternative space chokes

"The moral brigade, the sort that is out policing on Valentine's Day, must be a regular here," I tell our daughter as we stroll down the main street of Delhi's Hauz Khas Village. She is as surprised by my question as I am by her reply. "No, senas of that kind leave this place alone."

The main street is really a narrow lane which can barely be negotiated by two rows of residents' cars. (Those of visitors are parked outside the barrier marking the entrance to the village.) Plus, should there be a delivery van headed for one of the innumerable restaurants the village abounds in, there is barely space for people to walk by.

If a moral brigade had landed at the village, it would have had several sins to go after. One is the gluttony for gourmet food, clearly overpriced. Two is the thirst for the stronger stuff - happy hour or not. But these pale into insignificance compared to what hits the eye foremost.

It is the people - hordes of them. The main street or lane and the alleyways that branch out of it are filled with walkers, either going in or tottering out, during lunch or dinner time. And even more than the people per se, it is the kind of people that predominates.

Mostly young, often walking hand in hand, and almost as often trendily and daringly dressed, they seem to have sought out this oasis of freedom to let down their hair and sometimes the dress over a bare shoulder. And in standing out, the first prize must go to one youngster, who looked barely 18, self-consciously puffing at a cigarette as she strolled down against the sun in a semi-see through dress.

The place is a moral continent apart from the lane in north Delhi which our daughter had deserted, despite her flat there being incredibly spacious and well-appointed, because she could not bear the looks of the neighbours every time she had a male visitor who left later than 9 pm.

Hauz Khas Village, with its large number of foreign residents, is a live and let live place where landlords do not ask prospective tenant couples if they are married. That apart, what really clinched the issue for our daughter is that the place is so safe for a single working girl, both to stay and get in and out, at any time of day or night.

Unfortunately, the village is a victim of its own success. Time was when there were less than a dozen eateries offering distinctive food at affordable prices, along with a few shops hawking selected books, curios, antiques (authentic or not) and jewellery loaded with style but not precious substance.

As Hauz Khas Village has become trendy, property prices have soared. Today, many of its old residents have more money than what they know what to do with. Over time, the inroads of business in the way of restaurants and tenants who can pay have led to the collapse of old disciples like not letting outsiders' cars in.

Today the village lives in a kind of limbo. Cheek by jowl, houses have gone crazily up, floor upon precarious floor, with what kind of planning sanction is anybody's guess. This had greatly raised the risk of devastation should there be an earthquake or fire. It also has a sizeable Muslim population. My day is punctuated by a very pleasant azaan being broadcast several times a day.

By Delhi's standards Hauz Khas Village is distinctly Bohemian but that is not saying much. It is also not marked by great creativity or acknowledged as the home of a new social trend as New York's Greenwich village is, considered the springboard of the modern LGBT movement. But in its own way Hauz Khas Village creates a sense of space in the mind, despite its cramped physical surroundings.

It had great potential but for the fact that any name worth its salt in the chic restaurant business wants to plant its flag there. (Yes, Smoke House Deli too.) Greenwich village has also seen skyrocketing property prices but that is where the parallel seems to end. Hauz Khas Village is today suffocating, under the pressure of its eateries and their clientele and the resultant pollution. An active NGO via the green national tribunal has tried to ameliorate but what still prevails is unacceptable.

Older people like me would have liked to have lived there alongside the young but for the pollution and the fact that affordable accommodation is only available after negotiating endless flights of precarious stairs.

The greatest assent of the village is of course the sense of history you get with the adjoining ruins of what Allaudin Khilji and Feroze Shah had built, from the incredibly beautiful lake to the madrassa to the tomb of Feroze Shah. Anyone would give an arm and a leg to live near it, along with little bits of local forest thrown in.

But what is perhaps the most daunting is the filth in its alleyways. If you are a restaurateur minting money then the least that you can do is organise fellow restaurateurs to keep the place clean. If Europe can beautifully preserve its old urban areas with narrow cobbled streets, tucking away bistros and distinctive shops in corners then why can't Delhi, so loaded with history in little cities of old within itself?

subirkroy@gmail.com