India’s Broken Tryst

Seventy years after Nehru’s beautiful midnight speech — ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny…’ — in Indian cities and villages millions survive on less than the bare minimum. Children are not in classrooms, women have nowhere safe to relieve themselves, and jobless men lie around in a daze. In cities, where initiative should flourish, a merciless state looms large over every common endeavour. The civilization that was India, that grand culture, has not found utterance again. Long years after freedom from the British, why do we remain suppressed?In India’s Broken Tryst, bestselling author and popular political columnist Tavleen Singh chronicles the damage done. Here is the story of Surekha, who lives on the pavements of Mumbai’s landmark Marine Drive with memories of crushing hunger. Of Ali, the idli seller who is forced out of his honest livelihood by cops and corporators. Of Sahib and Sardar, little boys torn from their mother on the criminal charge of begging. Of those nameless servants who do not have access to toilets even as they service the luxury apartments where Singh lives. From the very poor to the very rich, Tavleen Singh catalogues in bold, eviscerating detail the systematic unmaking of our sense of destiny. Can an Indian dream stretch beyond food and water, literacy, toilets, and in some cases just a document of identification? If not, what destiny?