This one’s for Natasha

This, after all, is my adopted city — out of choice. Why must I suddenly be forced to regret my choice? I did not know Natasha Singh or any of her friends or family. The only image that comes back to my head today is one of the many pictures of the rather known face in the city’s newspapers that I saw from time to time. Yet, as I heard the story about the fatal plunge, things about this city and the comfort levels that it offered changed within me.

Funny as it may sound, I feel a little scarred and am fighting the feeling. My adopted city makes me rethink my decision and there is little that it offers in terms of reassurance. There is little it did perhaps to change things for Natasha Singh. And there is little it may do in the future for any of us.

But then there is us. The people who make it the city it is now, or the one it will be in times to come. Good or bad. For two days or maybe three, the city halted. Its people lay numb. Paralysed in the head and even the heart, thinking which way to swing. Others talked and debated. Theories floated in the air for takers, if there were any. And takers there were. For all those three days, my office buzzed. Not that it doesn’t otherwise. It is the business of newspaper offices to buzz, but Sunday morning onwards it buzzed with the sound of death.

Ever since, I have been hearing the many debates and discussions of very senior journalists in my office. Amidst the welter of information and opinions, I found myself choosing to believe what I wanted. So did Natasha Singh. Only this city — perhaps this is its biggest strength — refuses any beliefs. So even though a late night plunge from some hotel roof top leaves many of us thinking that it could be us, given the state of affairs, there is little we can do to make lives around us happier.

Why do we in a city like Delhi — largely adopted by ‘migrant labourers like me’ — fail to build a buffer? Deaths happen anywhere. Everywhere for that matter. But isn’t it a little too often, too soon and too much to meet such violent ends, whether it is a Jessica Lal, a Nitish Katara or one of those on the roadside mowed down by a passing car?

For those who have been here long enough and for those who intend being here for some time at least, this should be the clincher. It is fortunate I guess, for us to be able to learn from other people’s ends. We must for the sake of self-preservation change the rules of this cosmo.

We have to change the city. There has to be a sense of belonging, of affection, of familiarity, of realising hopes and dreams that we in general and society as a whole must give its citizens. It is after all for these simple human emotions that one cherishes the mofussil towns one visits every now and then or has left behind. The equations must change.

There is only so much extraction that one can take. We must as people learn to give more. What goes round, comes round, they say. And rightly so. For if there is anything in this city that needs a change, a vigorous shaking-up… it is us. Before another acquaintance, a friend, or one of us, takes another fatal plunge.