The Real India — Things you don’t see in everyday life.

I went to the local park for a jog today. It was going to be just another jog, but it ended up being so much more.

I’ve been struggling to come to terms with the class divide in Indian society for some time now. I’m flabbergasted by how different the lives of the majority in the country are from my own. Today’s jog only further intensified this feeling in my mind.

When I got there, I saw people scattered all across the park; “working class” people. The kind of people we see travelling on the metro, on the bus and in the sleeper compartments of trains. The kind of people who come and fix our TVs and ACs; who wash our clothes and utensils. The people who drive us around in our cars. The people who guard our homes at night. The people we never interact with in daily life. The kind of people I’ve personally never had a conversation with. The kind of people who are the ‘Real India’.

I call them the ‘Real India’ because it is these people, the working class of our country that embody the idea of India. One of the greatest promises that came with Independence was the promise of Equality. It is these people whom the Constituent Assembly promised Equality; not just political, but also socio-economical equality. Article 14 strives for the equality of these people — such pervasive equality which would erode their identification as the “working class”. It is these people who form the numeric majority of our country. It is these people who are supposed to have the “real power” in our “democratic” nation. They have political equality; but social or economic equality is a distant dream. It is these people who are can never grow out of their identities as the “working class”.

Two minutes into my jog, I noticed people staring at me. Every person I passed would stare at me. It felt weird.

I soon realised that they weren’t staring at me, but at my clothes, at my phone and earphones. I realised that was the only one actually jogging in the park. I realised that everyone else was there to pass time, and not with a fixed purpose like me. I realised that I was alone; that I was an intruder in their space.

This got me thinking about the park. Why was the park built? Who uses the park? Is it used for the purpose it was made for? The answers to these questions gave me a lot of clarity on the class divide.

The park was in a residential sector in a sub-urban city. It was built as the “local park” for the residents nearby; people who lived in bungalows and who had chauffer driven cars. Calorie-conscious people, for whom the park’s utility ended at being an alternative to a treadmill. People for whom recreation meant things like a trip to the mall to catch the latest movie or celebrating a friend’s birthday at a club. People who were born with access to resources which most of the working class cannot amass in a lifetime. People like me.

There was no one like me in the park.

The park, which for me served the sole purpose of being a place to jog, had turned into an area where the “Real India” wiled away its time in leisure. It was perhaps the only place they could enjoy leisurely. I saw people playing cards. I saw people talking in groups. I saw couples walking around. I saw kids playing catch; and I realised that their idea of having fun was so different from mine. It made me wonder whether their leisure activities were a matter of choice, or a matter of the lack of one.

I realised that for the “working class”, things we take for granted are a luxury. The local mall is inaccessible, movies are a luxury, and things like constant internet access are a dream. For them, the park is all they have. It is all that they can access with the resources they have. This makes me believe that their choice of being in the park, wasn’t a choice at all.

It saddens me that this is the state of the majority of the country’s population. What makes it worse is the fact that we, as a nation, are fine with concentrating wealth and resources in the hands of so few, while so many lead such a drastically different life.

The depth of this class divide was even clearer to me, when I realised that this class divide was so deeply entrenched in society that it seems perfectly normal to people and they accept it, as it is. In my 20 years in this country, I hadn’t realised that so many things I took for granted were not even close to being achievable for so many others. In 20 years, it never seemed odd to me that certain people lead a completely different life, just because of the family they were born into; that I had so much more than so many others, and that it had nothing to do with my own capabilities.

What is worse, is that this class divide meant that there was no scope for interaction across the divide. I realised that that I had never had a meaningful conversation with anyone from the “working class”. I didn’t know what their lives were like, I didn’t know how different they were, I didn’t know what they enjoyed and what troubled them in life. Like so many others, I had been indifferent to their existence my whole life. I feel that such indifference has furthered this divide and ostracized the “working class” even more.

I decided to change that. I saw a couple of kids throwing a ball around and decided to go talk to them. They seemed hesitant at first, but then they got talking. Their names were Govind and Muthu. I knew they’d seen me jogging around, so I asked them for a race. I could see apprehension etched on their face. “Why does this guy want to race me?” is probably what they thought to themselves. But it felt like what actually threw them off was the fact that someone had overlooked the class divide and had interacted with them. I doubt they’d ever experienced that before.

We had a race, we played catch for a while. A few minutes in, other people started joining us. I was ecstatic to see people come together and enjoy, forgetting all social boundaries. I took a picture of Govind and Muthu to remember the day. When they saw the photo, they were smiling ear to ear. I can never forget the look on their face, but their incredulous joy at only having seen a photo of themselves reminded me of the class divide again.

I asked them if they went to school. There was a third older boy, who said he didn’t. I asked him why, and he evaded my question. The look on his face was the look of someone whom circumstances have forced to give up what he’d like to have done. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he told me that he quit school so that he could work and earn enough to make ends meet.

I want an end to people having to make such sacrifices.

Walking back home, I decided to write this. I decided that I wanted people to realise the same thing I realised today. I want people to recognise the part they play in furthering this divide. I want interaction across the divide. I want a truly egalitarian society, where you are defined by what you do and not who you are born as. I want an India where Govinds and Muthus can sit next to me in a theatre and enjoy a movie, with no worries in life.