7 min readJun 3, 2026 04:51 PM IST First published on: Jun 3, 2026 at 04:51 PM ISTThere is a fire in my neighbourhood. But is it really my neighbourhood?The Hauz Rani gali, where at least 21 people have already died, is across the road from Saket, from Press Enclave, where I was born and live. The hotel that caught fire is next to where our general store was, where Babli bhaiya would give us an extra chocolate, or candied cigarettes on credit, which, as kids, we knew were actually gifts. About 20 metres down the street is Adam’s Hair Saloon, where Rashid bhai takes a razor to my throat once a week, as we discuss politics, culture, and just our life and times in general. It is where, after a game of cricket, we would get either bread-omlette or pastries. And where, as teenagers, we took furtive drags from our first clandestine cigarettes (not made of candy, but in their own way, just as sweet).AdvertisementBut, for all the intimacies that remain, the road that divides Saket and Hauz Rani, the upper-middle class and their civic experience from the working people that make it possible, has hardened into a border. And in that hard, imaginary line is the tale of what is broken in our cities.The dichotomy in the “development” of the Hauz Rani-Khirki belt in Malviya Nagar frames both the potential of Delhi — and India — as a cosmopolitan, global space and the tragic failure of governments and people towards that end.More than the glitzy malls a kilometre away in Saket, the unaffordable eateries at the Eldeco complex, or the rarified spaces like Khan Market and Lodhi colony restaurants where diplomats and cultural figures rub shoulders, it is in the semi-legal, overcrowded, and unpretentious areas of Malviya Nagar that Delhi is at its most international and diverse. Medical tourists (the gigantic Max Hospital complex across the road services them) and some refugees from all over West Asia and beyond occupy many of the small apartments. African students and workers, many of them Muslim, have told me in the past that it is one of the few areas where they are given accommodation, and feel a sense of community in numbers. Scores of people who work in the homes of their neighbours across the road in Saket also rent rooms here.AdvertisementAlso Read | Malviya Nagar fire: Hotel ran 25 rooms against permit for 6, probe orderedThe market — or at least the marketplace — has responded to this diversity. Restaurants serving Afghan, Yemeni, Iraqi, and a host of other cuisines rise and fall. Search Instagram, and you’ll see yuppie influencers telling you about “food walks”. Just as there are at least two “mallu dhabas” that serve pretty good Kerala food to both nurses and other working-class Malayalis (they usually eat at the premises) and upper-class patrons in South Delhi’s gated colonies (they order food online — authentic taste without the inconvenience of rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses). Small tailors and clothes shops carry the fashions favoured by the diverse clientele. Chemists offer discounts to medical tourists. And there are artists’ collectives and studios at the cutting edge of creativity.But if the streets show you diversity, they are also proof of apathy. In the last two decades and more, a metro station has emerged on this street, as has a world-class hospital. But the galis themselves have become more congested. The lane that is ablaze today often floods, sometimes with rainwater but most times with a sourceless puddle that smells suspiciously like sewage. Open wires form the canopy between buildings, and on a sunny day, there is an oddly beautiful dapple on shop fronts that are now charred and stained with smoke. The sheer lack of space and light between rooms and in them, the growing traffic on a shrinking road, tell you the story of a government that has not paid attention for a long time. Just as the building collapse 1.5 km away in Saidulajab, which killed six people last weekend, did.Now, as the death toll climbs, there will be the predictable conversation around “accountability”. The hotel owner(s), if they have indeed flouted rules, will have the rulebook thrown at them, and punitive action will likely follow. Perhaps the small shops will all be taken to task for not being up to code by the civic authorities, trying to show they are competent, after the fact. Many will bay for blood, for someone to be punished, in the aftermath of the tragedy. But few of us will look at ourselves.The road that divides Press Enclave-Max Hospital, the malls, and Hauz Rani-Khirki-Malviya Nagar was once much more porous than it is now, physically and metaphorically. The fence on the divider had several gaps, and we could just walk across. We bought our vegetables, meat, and groceries from there. Now, most people on the right side of the tracks order in, with quick commerce replacing human interaction. The gaps have been blocked, the divider raised so that it is difficult for anyone over the age of 40 (unless they are fitness freaks) to cross. Most of my friends no longer go to our Hauz Rani barber for a Rs 100 haircut-and-shave. There’s a Looks salon, and others like it, in the mall and Anupam Saket complex that give you the same service for 10 times the price, and better air conditioning. The people who have to go back and forth every day — domestic workers, mostly — have no voice or power to change this. And the MLAs and corporators and councillors and politicians and journalists are more likely to listen to a debate about stray dogs and cats in a colony than a broken civic architecture.you may likeImagine, for a moment, if our neighbourhoods were more organic, more connected as they once were. Where Hauz Rani and Khirki were not merely places we visit as tourists to try out an exotic cuisine, but as people with stakes in a place. If the privileged spoke for their cities, not just their gated colonies, it is perhaps more likely that governments would take public housing and cheaper, planned markets and hotels seriously. And maybe we would elect leaders who don’t demonise either the people who live there, or the “foreigners” here to learn and work.Of course, that’s just a dream, a fantasy of a childhood that looks better than it was. Reality will see performative outrage, as it always does. Sometimes, that’s easier than crossing a road.The writer is deputy associate editor, The Indian Express. aakash.joshi@expressindia.com