8 January 2009

What's he building in there

Next door to my house is a construction site - work continues from dawn till midnight. Behind the blue plastic tarpaulins and bamboo scaffolding they are building something - all the bangs, sparks and yelling of industry are there. It sounds like a foundry, or a nineteenth century coal mine. In three months my taxi driver tells me, the shroud will be removed to reveal a house just like mine - and all the other houses in my street. Until then men will haul bricks from trucks in the pre-dawn haze, and other men will wrestle within the concrete skeleton all day and night. Other sites nearby are merely pits, with armies of men scraping out the clay for a basement or a car park. Delhi is being rebuilt, one oversized mansion at a time.

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