Delhiwale: A road divider

As winter arrives, Delhi's homeless shift from sleeping on the road divider to a temporary night shelter, seeking warmth from the cold.

The acclimated conditions for the area’s homeless citizens to spend nights on the long road divider have ended, here at Asaf Ali Road. For most of the year, this open air stretch in central Delhi serves as their preferred place for nocturnal rest. One reason being that the road’s late-hour vehicular traffic successfully wards off the mosquitoes, as attested by a few of the citizens who sleep on the divider. Plus, something must also be said about the divider’s many trees, which make the summertime heat somewhat less unbearable, according to the same citizens.

The road divider on Asaf Ali Road. (HT Photo)

But now the disruptive December cold is making the nights chilly. Most of the men who would sleep on the raised concrete are starting to opt for the roadside colonnade instead, which bustles during the day with the hectic business of its offices, showrooms, bookstores, eateries, and ATMs.

Indeed, the arrival of the winter annually prompts a temporary shift of this nighttime resting site from the road divider to the adjacent colonnade, says the observant Gopal. The friendly man spends the night wide awake in the colonnade, guarding a thing that we imagined had long gone out of use—the typewriter. Packed this night in their customary knotted cloth bundles, these dozens of typewriters belong to notary clerks who operate along a narrow stretch of the colonnade. (Late morning onwards, the vicinity resounds with the clack-clack of the typewriters, as the clerks prepare legal documents for clients. The notaries leave by seven in the evening, leaving Gopal to look after the typewriters.)

Stationed by the typewriters, the vigilant guard waves his arm towards a pavement camp on the facing side of the road divider. That’s a night shelter for the homeless. It comes up every winter on the same site. By next week, he says, some among the many men who are obliged to spend the night in the colonnade/divider would be able to find refuge within the camp’s relative warmth. Each bed there is furnished with a mattress, a sheet and a blanket.

Next, the guard dismissively refers to the road divider. “It will soon be too cold for anyone to sleep under the khula asman (open sky).”

However, tonight, and it is only eight, a citizen is lying sidewards on the divider, probably asleep.