The commonly uncommon

On Monday evening, the road leading from the office to the metro station was barricaded. Policemen in riot gear stood on one side. A dozen or so supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) huddled in a group by the side of the road, drinking tea out of paper cups and blowing at their hands to keep warm. On this side of the barrier, helplessly, stood the real aam aadmis, the common men. Police officers weren’t letting anyone pass. The chief minister and founder of AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, was sitting in a dharna further down the road. “I’ve been working all day, I just want to go home,” a man pleaded, shoving a tattered identity card under the police officer’s nose.

“All gates are closed. The metro station is closed,” he replied.

After waiting around for a couple of minutes or so, trying to figure out a plan to get home, on a lark, I pulled out my press card and showed it to the officer.

“This way,” he pointed.

And right there, in front of the people who were waiting far longer than us, my colleague and I slipped under the rope and skipped to the station. It was only 10 feet away. And it was open. Whether the CM’s dharna ended in a compromise or climb down is irrelevant. What is significant is that Kejriwal and his AAP have managed to refashion a critical aspect of the Delhi psyche. Be it a press card or a red beacon atop your car, Delhi is a city where the primary aspiration is to be anything but aam (ordinary). To call oneself common and to align with other commoners is an idea so abhorrent to Delhi, it makes the success of AAP an even greater phenomenon.

Anti-aam Delhiites spend an awful lot of time and a whole heap of money in convincing others that they are, just that bit, more important. And even though the city and its residents have been long caricatured for this one aspect of their mental make-up, it is so integral to Delhi culture, it is hard to let go.

Six years ago, when I was moving here from Mumbai, a friend told me of the time she spent in the Capital. It was the early 1990s and she had just moved to the city and started living with her new husband in a central Delhi colony. The neighbourhood was wholesome and middleclass. And walking home from work, in her first scorching summer here, she much envied her neighbours their air-conditioners. All the homes had the metal cage sticking out of their windows. “All summer I grumbled about my new husband and his low-paying job in an advertising agency. The neighbours were a curious bunch — some were shopkeepers, trading in automobile parts and industrial goods, and others were government employees. But they all had fancy cool rooms,” she said. In August, the first rains arrived. And my friend was standing just outside the building waiting for the rain to recede when she looked up. All those metal cages were empty. None of them held actual air-conditioners. “While I can see how smart the first person who thought this idea up was, what made it hilarious was that everyone followed suit. So not only did people know that their fake air-conditioners were fake, they also knew their neighbours’ fakes were fake. But to them it was important that strangers who walked past the building shouldn’t think they couldn’t afford an air-conditioner,” she said.

Today, the air-conditioners are real. But the awe about acquiring something new and shiny remains. Most visits to friends’ homes involve some amount of time gaping at a fancy new purchase, usually something electronic or electrical. After a respectable silence for a couple of minutes, marking admiration and respect, someone, often a man, will ask something with the words ‘horse power’ or ‘amplification’ in it. “This is top of the line, boss, the best in the category…” is usually how the answer begins.

In his search of the top of the line, an acquaintance sold his house to buy a BMW. Sure, the house was an inheritance and in another city. Still, even to the financially disinclined, it seemed like a bit of a wild move. Another friend showed videos of her cousin’s wedding celebrations, where “imported” Russian girls were dancing inside six-feet tall bottles. The previous family wedding featured blonde girls, so the bottles were a necessary step-up.

In his new book, Capital, a tome about modern-day Delhi, Rana Dasgupta writes about why the city finds it difficult to spring out of its desire for preferential treatment as well as queue-jumping privileges. “One might think that a place of inequalities as entrenched as Delhi’s would breed democratic yearnings, but it is not the case: Delhi’s fantasies are feudal. Even those who have rather little social power respect the privileges of those who have a lot — perhaps hoping that one day they will enjoy for themselves the same exemption from law and custom,” he writes.

The success of AAP might be the first step in the democratic yearning of Delhi. But its desire to possess the best remains. On Tuesday evening, the station remained shut. Colleague and I found ourselves sharing an electric rickshaw with two gentlemen. They were returning from the protest. In the conversation that ensued, the younger of the two men defended his party but conceded that a few aspects about Kejriwal and AAP needed a re-look. As we alighted, the older gentleman, a Sardarji with Santa-like white beard made his only pronouncement. “You can say what you want, but our man is the best.” End of argument. Delhi-style.

(Veena Venugopal is Editor-BLink and author of Would You Like Some Bread With That Book)

Follow Veena Venugopal on Twitter @veenavenugopal

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