‘DELHI, YOU ARE NOT JUST THE CAPITAL, YOU ARE THE INCOMPLETE STORY OF ALL OF US

 ‘DELHI, YOU ARE NOT JUST THE CAPITAL, YOU ARE THE INCOMPLETE STORY OF ALL OF US

3-AUG-ENG 1

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

DELHI-------------------------This time you got wet again. The rain came and quietly took away the dust from your face - like a tired mother, wiping her child's face and saying, "Now go to sleep, you have fought a lot with the world today."

But Delhi, where do you sleep? There is the Red Fort on your forehead, the heroic tale of India Gate in your eyes, and the hot breath of the Parliament on your chest.

The slogans of the movement are still echoing in your veins - sometimes of the students, sometimes of the farmers, sometimes of the unemployed, sometimes of hope. You are the witness of an entire civilization.

You are the one who went as bread in the torn bags of the workers, and then oozed out as blood from their feet when they returned barefoot - towards their village, at that time when someone wanted to run away from you. And you cried, remember?

You are where a Bipin from Bihar, Meenu from Jharkhand, Nusrat from Bengal, and Rahul from Uttar Pradesh, rent a room and open UPSC, SSC, NET, GATE books on their respective beds every evening, and drown their frustration in tea every morning.

In one corner of you are hostel girls, who hide their anger behind lipstick in the desire for a 'safe' Delhi. And in another corner are leaders, for whom there is no stage bigger than you.

Inside you is a gym where a teenager opens the lock early in the morning and closes it last at night - building more dreams than muscles.

Hunger is found in your night shelters and burnout in your corporate offices. You are a capital divided into two cities - one that shines with the glass of South Delhi, and the other that seeps like tears from the damp houses of East Delhi.

Delhi, you belong to everyone, but to no one. Your officers are not worried about the people, but about the files. Your leaders do not love Delhi, but lust for power. Your industrialists have made their own mini-Delhi in Noida, far away from you. Your poets now recite poems in literature festivals, not near your garbage heaps. Delhi, you were the princess of history - and now you have become the system's co-wife. Still, you get washed in the rain every year, as if you are washing away the sins of the previous year - but every time you become dirtier. When everyone was getting drenched in this monsoon, I saw that there is still a poem left in you somewhere. That little child sitting on the side of the road getting drenched in the rain, who has never seen a school, but recognizes every vehicle - he is perhaps your soul.

Delhi, I have complained to you, I have loved you too. I have even sworn to leave you, and then I got connected with you again after talking to one of your tea sellers. People are tired of running after you Delhi, now you should run after someone - some hope, some humanity, some real dream. On this rainy road, I am leaving a letter for you. Maybe it will fall from some boy's pocket and you will read it. Then you will know, you. are not just the capital - you are the incomplete story of all of us.