Delhiwale | Making a new city your home

An incredible a lot of our fellow residents, who got here to this metropolis years in the past to make a residing, at the moment are speeding again to their impoverished villages, usually by way of determined means. This reverse migration was triggered by the sudden closure of all work (and therefore employment) inherent to the extended lockdown attributable to the coronavirus pandemic.

But this younger man with a trendy haircut is a contemporary arrival from his village to our metropolis.

“I came to Delhi a few months ago…. just before the lockdown began,” says Sunny Kumar. A safety guard, he’s manning the gates of a south Delhi neighbourhood. At 18, that is Mr Kumar’s first ever job in life. On this uncomfortably scorching afternoon, he’s standing out fairly starkly from a few different guards on responsibility with him. There’s one thing about his brooding manner— a form of magnetic stage presence onerous to overlook. And then there’s the matter of his haircut, so attention-grabbing. Running his fingers by way of his hair as if all of the sudden acutely aware of them, Mr Kumar blushes, confessing that “It’s a new style… I got it after arriving in Delhi.”

The younger man, who completed faculty final 12 months, reveals he by no means aspired to develop into a guard. “I left my village (in Nalanda, Bihar) for a job, any job, due to the conditions at home”—he makes use of the Hindi phrase ‘paristhiti’. His father is paralytic, he says matter-of-factly. The eldest amongst 4 siblings, “I felt it was my responsibility to look after the family and to lessen the burden my mother was experiencing in running the household.”

He knew fairly a number of folks of his village working in Delhi, and so he simply landed up with the present job by way of this valuable community of acquaintances. “I decided to start this life in Delhi after giving it a lot of thought,” he mutters.

Mr Kumar is now sufficiently established to have the ability to ship cash regularly to dwelling. He lives in Tughlakabad and is stuffed with plans for his future.

“After some months I will try to enrol in a college for graduation,” he says, as one other guard, his colleague in masks, listens to him intently. “Ultimately, I want to join the army.”

And now he reveals one other dream of his. Raising his eyes in the direction of the interlocutor, he declares a tad hesitantly, “I also intend to get modelling assignments.” Having stated this, he appears to be like virtually relieved and helps himself to a bottle of water saved contained in the guard’s cabin.