Whatever the reason, Delhi is my city, even though I often loathe it. It has a crappy record with women, it is puffed up with laughable self-importance, it has pathological levels of aggression and a depressing lack of civic sense, it has hopelessly entropic tendencies, and old boys' clubs run its institutions. But this is where I live, and I take it personally.
When someone tosses a plastic bottle or a paper plate or a dirty napkin out of a car, I take it personally. When a car hits another vehicle or a person and keeps going, I take it personally. I take it personally when someone vandalises public property, and when roads are allowed to disintegrate, and when the streetlights are on in the middle of the day, which they often are. I take it personally when women are raped and stalked and bothered. I take it personally when I see a strapping young man in rags with one leg, sitting on the road divider with his head in his hands, sobbing as if his heart is broken.
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Which it probably is, since in many ways this is a heartbreaking city. To be poor, unwhole, and sitting on burning asphalt in May's 45-degree weather as car after air-conditioned car zooms by, filled with the unseeing rich, is to - at some point, even for the strongest spirit - despair.
And yet, the poor retain a sense of etiquette. If you have a conversation with a beggar rather than hand out change, that person will ever after knock on your window not to ask for money, but to say hello. Furthermore, they will restrain their cohorts from "bothering" you. (The cohorts may or may not actually be bothering you.) And you, for your part, will ever after pick them out of the wretched crowds that gather at crossings.
It's the rich who have a hard time being friendly, on account of feeling so threatened all the time. There's something about having a lot that fools people into believing that everyone wants to rob you of it all the time. And maybe they do. When you think about the vast gulfs between people's circumstances, you can't really blame them. When there's an accident, and a body lies in the middle of the road flung there by a car that did not stop, it's the man on the street who will stop to help, not the fancy people. It's so rare to elicit a friendly human response from a rich (read: anyone reading this) stranger that it feels very special when it happens.
If you don't develop an emotional hide, living here is like living with a large open wound. I'd argue that you should keep that wound open, because there is nothing as dehumanising as losing the ability to empathise. But here's my antibiotic of choice: smile at people. I know it sounds syrupy and stupid and naïve and really not very serious, but just give it a go if you don't already. Maybe even exchange a word or two - about the weather, if nothing else.
Now you're going to say it's positively unsafe to do this if you're a woman, and I'm going to say it's as safe or unsafe to smile at a man in your social circle as it is to smile at a total stranger. I have smiled at innumerable dodgy packs of men while passing them, instead of crossing the road, and been smiled at in return, and that's it. It's worth it just for the relief in their eyes that you didn't assume them to be uncouth beasts.
Make a connect - be it with the beggar or the policeman or the mechanic or the reporter or the lawyer or the official or the other rich guy - and neither of you is game any longer. It's much harder to screw someone over if you've humanised them. The best thing about smiling is that it reinforces the better parts of living in a place: a sense of community with the people you live with. That's how you get to feel that the place you live in is a little more your place. Even if you loathe it.