Ahmedabad

We first arrived in the city at night, picking our way between sleeping bodies on the station platform, women and men with bundles of luggage moving past under the strip lighting and auto drivers quietly hassling us to ride with them. We didn’t accept any such entreaties until clear of the station and its surrounding road, also ringed with prostrate bodies wrapped head to toe with blankets to keep out the relative chill at 7:00 in the morning. Heaving our bags into the narrow space behind the back seat of our chosen auto, we clambered onto the padded bench and the vehicle eased into the road, the driver hunched forward to peer out under the swinging mirror emblazoned with red Gujarati lettering that hung from the top of the windscreen…

Ahmedabad is really two cities, separated by the wide Sabarmati River flowing North East to South West, the banks of which form grubby beaches largely devoid of human activity. On the Eastern side, the old city seems ragged and dilapidated despite the existence of modern hotels nestling in amongst the crumbling, stained apartment blocks and tenement-like residences. The side streets are narrow, with tall and unevenly built terraces leaning out over the bustling traffic below. Here and there remnants of Mughal monuments and the old city walls stand out from their surroundings, looking forlorn and out of place. The appearance of Navi Ahmedabad, on Sabarmati’s Western bank, is very different. Here there are high rise flats, flyovers and big brash shopping malls that reflect the sun during the day and shout ‘progress’ at night in neon lettering. There are modern, detached villas behind high walls or fences, whose owners display their social standing with expensive looking plaques that give details like ‘A.G. Patel, Civil Engineer’ or V.P. Rao, Advocate’. In the same way the ‘Mayor’s Bungalow’ makes no bones about its role in society. But it’s not that the new city is necessarily wealthier than the old. There is plenty of poverty to be found here. But the roads are wider and straighter, the infrastructure newer and showing less wear, and the buildings more modern. Some of the tower blocks appear to get bigger and bolder in design the higher they are; fortress-like cladding adorning what look to be penthouse apartments on the top two or three floors. The tallest towers almost touch the outer limits of the smog layer that lies upon the horizon, dimming the sky below 45 degrees. To appreciate the beauty of a sunny day you have to look right up and see the sky un-shrouded and seemingly pollution free.