Without pride you can't have a great capital and Delhi just clings on to its callous, heartless city tag who has no time for those with no money or power and judges you by where you live and what car you drive. Good Samaritans do exist in minority but at large it still is a very crude, insensitive and prideless city, where one can see literally thousands bearing the agony, highlighting the absence of its cultural history.
It’s not talent that counts and it is a fashion in Delhi to attend art and other exhibitions, with attendance in functions directly proportional to the connections the performer has. Maybe because of this lack of diversity and plurality, there's a lot less tolerance in Delhi and that extends to social and cultural tolerance. Delhi audiences always have this attitude of been there, seen that and done that. Audiences in other cities for that matter are much more receptive. The cultural czars and czarinas living in Delhi do not look beyond their city.
Delhi is all about power. There's an underlying sense of power play there, about who's in and who's at the top. Power wielded by individuals at will and for their own exclusive benefit. Power flows from where you live and who you work for. Such is the spectrum of the power network that it tends to be used for the smallest of things, in a most irresponsible manner.
There is a void at the moral core of Dehi that is frightening. Scratch a Delhiwallah and god only knows what one would find, from MDs to their loudmouthed underlings, boorish mannerisms seems to be the order of the day and, perhaps, works too. It is not just the dodgy politicians but also that psychotic army of thin-faced, broad-belted, terylene-attired, bell-bottomed bad actors all over Central Delhi and visibly up to no good.
These day-time migrants prefer anonymous larceny in the big city perhaps because they do not have the clout or the nerve to play the game at home. From here to the very top, there is collective reinforcement of a nihilist spirit, of moral bankruptcy. Even more than its fearful aspect, its brutalising effect is all-pervasive. In office buildings, before people can come out of the lift, you see a group pushing to get in symbolic of the Delhi ethos. Their abysmal ignorance of the rest of the country confounds the situation.
It has a very inhuman and arrogant look to it where you feel very insecure when you walk on the deserted streets of Delhi where your roadside enquiries on the streets result in scratching of the balls and being shown the wrong way. Civility is sadly missing, rudeness, the armour and aggression the primary form of engagement. The indifference of the place rubs on you where nothing registers. It is a strange place that does not create a visual memory in mind.
Today, Delhi is engaged in an obsessive and 'un-self-critical' quest for power and it’s not just political power, with the most disturbing thing being the so-called liberal and secular class there is deeply hierarchical and non-egalitarian. The liberal, thinking elite of Delhi is embedded in a self-perpetuating culture that does not encourage either debate or introspection.
It has two distinct classes of people, a cultured and refined minority and the vast, vocal majority which is brash, crass and vulgar with the latter class made up almost entirely of migrants that are not really known for their high cultural, social or academic standards. An auto driver or bus conductor will refer to a passenger as 'tu' instead of 'aap'. It'll take Delhi another 50 years to become a Mumbai or Kolkata.
Maybe history also has something to do with the fact that the people of Delhi are so loud, superficial and flashy. Even the city's young people are imbibing this unfortunate culture. They’re brash, money-minded, materialistic and vulgar while swearing in “phat behenc**d” religiously.
