Spring has sprung

The luminous greens dotting most of Delhi are washed clean. Winter seems to be retreating gracefully and birds are breaking the silences with their joyous chirping.

It is in such times that this city ‘adopted by migrant labourers’, each one a dreamer in their own right, comes to life. The city rises from the ashes of scams, politicking, bickering and the humdrum business of basic survival. It is also in such times when the city rises from the ashes of climbing other people’s shoulders for personal and material gain and the plotting and scheming that this seat of power so infamously adores.

Delhi is coming alive one more time. Nature itself is celebrating this rebirth, and so in some way are we. Not one face in the crowd is without a smile these days. Conversations trickling from street corners and crowded rooms echoes with ‘Isn’t the city beautiful?’ There is suddenly a ‘sense-of-belonging’ that individuals in the city are talking of. In a city so devoid of that emotion and so full of ‘‘I-don’t-belong-here. I merely shifted base. Home is elsewhere,’’ this is a welcome break.

The only reason why this emotion is important, is because the lack of a basic sense of belonging amongst people residing here kills the city bit by bit. This city may have given people here their livelihood, family, friends, fame and even foes but from old Dilliwallahs to new arrivals — not one says, ‘‘I belong here.’’ Everybody seems to belong elsewhere.

What suffers in the bargain is Delhi itself. And its soul that is anyway butchered at every possible opportunity by cynicism and despair. One never gets to hear such a refrain from people who have shifted to Mumbai, Bangalore or even Pune. For them their roots could be wherever, but their adopted cities is where they belong. It is that strength of passion, that love, which people collectively put into the city’s soul that makes it come alive with warmth.

We may complain about wrong-men-in-right-posts, politics and bad administration, a-system-that-forever-stinks, lack of discipline and callousness of civic bodies but finally it is

‘we’ who will and can make a difference to the city.

For any city is dead without its people. It is characterless without the proud declaration that ‘‘we-belong-here.’’ That would be enough of a beginning. For now, carry on Delhi. You have never looked so beautiful before.