Half naked tourists and the heritage of frozen facades

As the sun dissolved into the evening hues that enveloped the city, Aryan, a descendant of the city's oldest inhabitants and an urban tribal, leapt out of the window to feel the cool crosswind. His old house, nestled inconspicuously among the winding lanes, appeared like a hidden gem, seldom capturing anyone's attention. Aryan regarded it as a fortunate advantage in a city so deeply rooted in its heritage, a blessing in disguise bestowed upon him by his ancestors. He often expressed his gratitude to them for preserving the house's unassuming nature, safeguarding it from becoming a mere relic of social nostalgia.

During the daytime, when heritage enthusiasts strolled by, capturing photographs of inhabitants trapped in this heritage business, Aryan's house never enticed their affected gaze. He never had to feel like a caged gorilla or a chimpanzee, paraded before half-naked tourists. Throughout his thirty years in this lane, he could never comprehend those visitors' curious stares, the zooming lenses, or the feigned expressions.

Perhaps foreigners sought their version of ghetto tourism, something they might have only witnessed in third-world films. But what about Indians? What made this place different from the squalor of their own neighbourhoods in their cities?

"Aarya... come down, I'm heading to Derasaar," his mother's frail voice grew increasingly shrill each passing day, he pondered.

The dilapidated staircase was broken in multiple places, requiring careful steps. Aryan couldn't remember the last time his mother ascended those stairs. She had already left the house through an equally weathered door, a door that had witnessed around three or maybe even four centuries of history.

As the old woman, who had spent her entire life amidst these heritage curiosities, entered the frozen past through a four-hundred-year-old door, Aryan knew that Ramu Kaka, in his eighties, would be waiting at the next corner, longing for a glimpse of his unattainable old flame. Their daily exchange of twinkling eyes and pained smiles, Daya Kaki's habitual complaints about her joint pains, eighty-year-old Kalu Kaka's perpetual squabbles with his wife as he suspected her of having extramarital affairs at seventy, Suren Bhai's arguments with the neighbourhood kids over their cricket ball that inadvertently hit his bike, the bustling crowd at Biru Mausi's Chai Kitlee, engrossed in their animated conversations, Neeti Ben's constant worries about running out of water supply, Meenu Mausi's playful teasing of an eligible bachelor from the opposite house with a spontaneous strip tease whenever Aryan went to the terrace in the evening, Kirit Bhai's ceaseless coughing due to his terminal tuberculosis, and his wife Henal Ben's thunderous curses...

As Aryan closed the four-hundred-year-old door of his house, heritage stood frozen on the facade, resembling a failed marriage. Another group of half-naked Indian tourists passed that very door, searching for heritage in the darkness of his neighborhood.