I’ve spent the last four months living in Gurgaon, a ‘satellite city’ about 30km outside of Delhi. Although Gurgaon as a village has existed for centuries, if not millennia, modern-day Gurgaon is still in it’s toddler stage, with few buildings here dating back more than a couple of years. In Gurgaon we have corporate towers, blocks of flats known as ‘societies’, and so many shopping malls that I have stopped counting. Besides that we have a few cows wandering aimlessly on the roads, a few more wild pig boar things, and a lot of very, very poor people living at construction sites in huts made of scrap metal, building India’s future from dawn to sunset while their children (mostly boys, as female infanticide is still a huge problem in this state) play haphazardly in the dirt, oblivious to the hepatitis, dengue, TB and other communicable diseases that they are constantly exposed to. The majority of Gurgaon natives were traditionally agricultural workers, but given that most of the fields they used to work have been sold out developers at exorbitant rates, these people now have no option but to keep up with the demand, many remaining on their old fields to construct luxury apartments that they will never be allowed to set foot in.

Former land-owners who have sold off their plots to developers for millions of US dollars are an even weirder bunch. I have heard stories of illiterate farmers who made became rich from land sales go to tea stalls and try to use a credit card to buy a cup of tea (which costs around 4 cents). Many of these people have big hearts and give and give to others and, unfortunately, get taken advantage of by profit-minded new ‘friends’ who leave them with nothing. With their family’s land in the hands of developers and no money or education to fall back on, these people are at risk of ending up in a worse position than they were in originally when all this nonsense started.

Most of the people who work in the companies here are commuters from affluent South Delhi or transplants from other parts of India who have come to the capital region for better experience and opportunities than they would be able to get back home. One would think that the mix of people here would make it easier to be a foreigner in this little city, but I must say that this place lacks the hospitality, warmth, etc. of everywhere else I have ever visited in India. In some ways I think that the no man’s land that is Gurgaon is a micro-version of what’s happening all over the world, where migration is causing blurring in the traditional geographically-based identity of many.