Truth behind the glamour

India has forever been divided into ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’, the former always representative of the developed, posh, rich and shiny while the latter being dirty, crowded and real.

A perfect example of these two parts of the country lies in South Delhi where the elite South Extension market hides behind it the narrow lanes and little houses of Kotla Mubarakpur.

The outer area which runs perpendicular to Mahatma Gandhi Road, also the Bhishma Pitamah Marg, is lined with plywood shops, hardware shops and home furnishing shops. However, inside, the place is divided into a lot of lanes and clusters of houses. Kotla, as the place is popularly called, can be entered from South Extension Part I or from the side lanes of the upscale market on Bhishma Pitamah Marg. 

The inner most market on the Gurudwara Road is pretty much a local market. Kotla is famous for its electronic items in Gurudwara Road market, vegetables and wooden furniture in Sewa Nagar, Jewellery in Punjabi Bazar and auto repair shops in Sukhdev Market. The locals have homes built on top of their shops. Mushtaq Khan has been living here for the past 20 years and has been running a fruit juice shop ever since.

“There’s the usual power problem but fortunately there are no water issues,” he says.
While most of the homes have the owners residing there, a few like Saroj Arora, a housewife who has been here for past 25 years pay nominal rent. 

This placed was named Kotla by the British and originally was made up of five villages. 

All these places were na­m­ed after the sons of Narayan Saini who first came here after Partition. Kotla is actually very huge, even the Sanwal Nagar Basti near Andrews Ganj is named after one of his sons. Then there is the Nanakchand Basti which was taken by Nanakchand. 

Nobody knows whether the land originally belonged to Narayan Saini or not but later on, when these people came, he divided the land among his tenants and sold it off legally. 

Encroachment, however, has taken place. Where there once used to be a garden, the sons of Narayan Saini have, apparently, built more houses for rent. Sheetal Chaddha, who works in a boutique, has been living here with her parents. She doesn’t have any complaints about the locality nor does Chameli Devi, who’d bought her house from Narayan Saini. 

“The only issue is that of ration cards. We’re supposed to go to Nanakchand Basti to collect our ration but they say no to us so we have to buy everything in black,” she says.

Asked if she goes to the MLA of the place, whose office is just two steps away, she says, “He doesn’t listen to us.” 

But life is easy for them it seems. Saroj Khandelwal, a housewife, has been living here for the past 25 years and is content with the system there. “There’s a sweeper to clean up the mess and take the trash. I don’t have any problems with anything here,” she says.