Walking Delhi Streets, During the Pandemic
By Anandi Mishra
A Delhi street, before the pandemic kept people at home.
On that Wednesday afternoon, home was only minutes away as I clutched the grocery bags close to my chest and trudged onward. I felt that I was being followed, but I kept walking. I thought about Ivan Ayar's 2018 crime film, Soni, when an off-duty police officer is chased down an empty road while she’s cycling back home at night. Though she took down the man chasing her and beat him to a pulp, I had no such plans. Instead, I mustered pace and breath, with a straight spine, and walked faster.
Soon, a man traveling in an autorickshaw stopped beside me and asked if I wanted to give him all my groceries for 50 rupees (less than 1 US dollar). As bizarre as his words were, I looked straight into his eyes, then averted my gaze without replying. I continued walking, even as my breathing grew tight.
This was two months after the Indian government announced one of the world's hardest lockdowns—and my flatmate and I struggled to keep the pantry running. I am, it seems, one of the last few people in Delhi who has, so far, staved off the urge to purchase a car. Before the lockdown, this was something that made me proud, but during these oppressive, limiting weeks, I felt trapped.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” French philosopher Blaise Pascal once remarked. The coronavirus-induced lockdown highlighted the truth of this.
“If before I found solace in the silence of my footsteps, now it felt dangerous.”
I knew this Delhi neighborhood since I was 8 years old, but I never felt so detached. There was no public transport, I did not own a bicycle and the lack of sidewalks disconnected me further. I had no option except to walk, putting me at risk on the empty Delhi roads. The streets, roads and alleyways that were usually teeming with people on cycles, motorbikes, cars and on foot were now nearly always deserted.
Neighborhoods in Delhi are usually dotted with chai stalls or tiny, makeshift candy/tobacco roadside set-ups every 100 meters or so. These are typically populated by small groups of men chatting, reading newspapers and killing time. With the stalls now gone, the men were replaced by bands of pigeons fluttering around looking for specks of food. Stray dogs were losing their bearings too. Hungry, starved for love and attention, they were springing at walkers like me.
Before the pandemic, it was not unusual for me and all of my women friends to be disrupted by unruly men, be it in shops or in a queue or while walking. Assaults against women are far too commonplace. Now, in this eerie, disconcerting silence, I honestly feel more afraid. The crowds, that could provide protection in their numbers, were gone.
So each time I prepared to step out, I needed to carefully consider my options—how important the groceries were, what time of the day it was, how much cash I was carrying on me, what day of the week it was. I wanted to avoid confrontations to and from the store.
Honestly, shaken by the uneasy quiet, I avoided leaving my flat, fearing the worst, always the worst.
My own neighborhood is a quiet one with small but beautiful middle-class homes interspersed with upcoming buildings. More and more people here, as in a lot of other places, have opted to sell off their old houses, uproot themselves and move into apartments. There is plenty of greenery and alluring canopies of amaltas trees.
The buildings are like fortresses in this lockdown, no faces appearing on the balconies, private vehicles whizzing past. If walking was an act of faith, as Garnette Cadogan had written in his seminal essay, Walking While Black, then I was steadily losing mine.
In many ways, growing up as a girl in the deeply patriarchal north Indian city of Kanpur had prepared me for quarantine. I knew how to sustain long periods of indoor isolation and survive on minimal human contact. But over the last decade in Delhi and other cities across India where I lived while studying and working, I had cultivated a strong personal routine of walking and interacting with the world. It was my way of discovering cities, understanding them better and creating a connection with unknown places.
But now I was discovering a different city. If before I found solace in the silence of my footsteps, now it felt dangerous.
This experience has changed me. When this crisis ends, I’ve decided to buy a car. In time, I may also move to a more women-friendly city, somewhere in the south of India.
But I’m also determined not to be held back before then. I hope these months have equipped me to better handle my fears—and to walk happily again, bargaining and navigating my way through the city I call home.
Anandi Mishra, a Delhi-based writer and communications professional, has worked as a reporter for The Times Of India and The Hindu. Her writing also has been published by or is forthcoming in Mint, Lounge, 3AM Magazine, Berfrois, Idler Blog and RejectionLit, and has been anthologized in the book “Garden Among Fires.”