A worker cleans the exterior of a building in Gurugram. | Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
Gurgaon is apparently a city of black and white with grey spaces missing. By grey, I do not mean dark or bad spaces, but spaces where black and white meet in multiple ways to create interesting mosaics. In other words, the city has exclusive and protected spaces within enclaves and the no-man’s-land outside the enclaves.
It lacks different types of public places where these two worlds mix to form in-between spaces. The differences in the physical appearances of buildings between these two types of places are very much visible. The economic stratification of urban society is, therefore, obvious and imminent where spatial proximity of realities is often in-your-face, and hence, uncomfortable. The social divide, however, exists beneath the surface.