Gurgaon is a land of dust. There is dust everywhere, a thick layer of it on the leaves, on the buildings, on the stairs of the metro stations. The landscape appears brownish and hazy because of the curtains of dust which hang perpetually in the air. The city looks like it will fall and crumble into its very own dust at any time. Everything there is as unstable as the lives of the people who have burrowed into its hills with their greedy little dreams of turning their fortunes into something majestic. At six in the evening, construction workers huddle out of their construction sites and construction machines and construction heaps of gravel and cement and head back into the villages which surround the urban colonies. Around the same time a mass of corporate workers both corporal and non-corporal march out of the big glass buildings; DLF's castles, DLF's KPI factories; into cars, cabs, metros, shared e-rickshaws into their urban colonies which surround the small villages like cemented weed and the dust looms over them all.
Today I had a long walk in the park seated in the heart of DLF Phase three's one of the richest colonies. Colony, funny word, like the rich came with their bags full of rectangular strips of paper to claim the land they felt that was theirs and colonized it. With their green paper they tore down the green trees and the green bushes and whatever they thought looked wild and not tame enough for their rich houses.
But a park is like an oasis in the middle of the city. Under the dull, lifeless eyes of the rich identical houses looming over the low boundary of the park, I felt like J. D. Salinger watching all the children play. There is something absurdly uplifting watching children play. Their innocence blends in with the innocence of the shrubs, the trees, the birds on them, curled up dogs napping in their mud beds and a cat skittering in the bushes. It's raw, harmless and oozing with life.