Our administrative apparatus is hardwired for suspicion — scowling at couples, harassing street vendors, banning dance-bars, deeming cheerleaders at a cricket match inappropriate entertainment for the great unwashed — even as expensive versions of the same pleasures rollick on, unpoliced. Freighted terms like “loitering” imply the impossibility of confidently and rightfully inhabiting an open urban arena. Contrast this to the Parisian flaneur, the purposeless stroller and archetype of urbanity, beloved of writers like Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin — a man who simply (and it is most certainly a man, because the relationship of women and public spaces is a whole other grim story) observes the fragments of his metropolis. The flaneur is a man without a plan, someone who is open to the surprises of a city, who resolutely eschews intention. But don’t try this at home — Delhi, doubtless, gives a hard time to anyone who tries leaving his senses open to a similar experience. It’s no wonder we never learnt to just hang out — compared to cities where public spaces are lavished with attention and artwork, in India it is slightly suspect to seek out the company of crowds, even if there were places to do so.

And predictably, the only semblance of collective life and sensation of ease in a crowd is at a shopping mall. But malls are pretend public spaces. Even as they seemingly invite the world in, they retain the right to evict those who they consider undesirable. The poor and the derelict know they don’t belong, if they are not brutally told so. A shiny happy corporate plaza is not where you find singing and speechifying and socialising, political leaflets or chance conversations — they are consecrated to consumption, and their use is a privilege, not a right.

... contd.