I live in a big city now but I belong to a small unheard town, a town sitting on the lap of the mighty Vindhyas. Though small, the town had its own fair share of swanky places, but this is not what I am going to talk about. And how could possibly I? I did not belong to no upmarket addresses, I belonged to my much older, much dilapitated, saturated, slowly bleeding to death mohalla. The ‘mohalla’ as opposed to the posh colonies was old, though much younger than the mountains it was definitely older than the trees. The mohalla had its own ecosystem, yes, the neighborhood was much self-suffecient. We had all that one needed to survive excluding steady employment. Employment was anyway looked down upon. The hard life was justified as the only other alternative was a hard-working life.
The people of the mohalla were loving and lived in harmony until they did not. The friend-foe-friend arc was ever-existing. Unbothered by the ever-changing equations amongst the residents, it was a high-trust society. People did not commit crime amongst themselves as it would have forced the perpetrator to abscond and life outside it was expensive. Whatever crime happened, happened within the family and as they say the family always forgives.
One of the biggest advantages attached to living in the mohalla was the required freedom one had to make or break her dwelling at will. Thanks to the incompetence of the municipality, the official map of the mohalla was lost. The mohalla existed in government documents , so did people’s plots but any inch that government owned was disputed. Actually not, any inch that government owned was encroached. Now please do not get me wrong, even when I stayed there, the mohalla was quiet aesthetic. My moving out must have increased the overall beauty quotient of the place. But alas! Instagram was yet to find the appeal of anything that did not burn a hole into ones pocket. The mohalla was not a slum and hence could not contribute much towards one of the most appreciated porn category – The Poverty Porn. As the ancients said, the mohalla used to be fancy as it was situated inside the erstwhile citadel of the erstwhile royalty. With the fall of the court, the haves moved out, the have-nots stayed. A few somewhat haves who stayed were not able to maintain their former stature, yeah a tale as old as time. The Royals still lived there but the palace could not be converted into a heritage hotel. Some said it was because the titular King unlike his father was a ne’er-do-well. Yes, the former titular King was widely loved, the current not.
Few of us moved out because we wanted more from life, were we able to snatch it from her, is another matter, in short the many of those few of us could not. But we left the mohalla for a better or atleast a more uber life. The mohalla is still standing, unchanged. It might not for long as the surroundings are developing. Who knows what will happen next? And to what extent it will happen, if it ever happens at all.
The article is ending but the tale of the mohalla is not. I mean how can something so dynamic yet so static be even described in few hundred words?