Delhiwale: A park most unlike fast, furious Gurgaon

Everything is right here: Loners are by themselves, lovers together, no one is in a rush, and the fountain doesn’t work.

The fabled HR-26, aka Gurgaon, is a world of dreams. Just across Delhi’s southern borders stand Gurgaon’s sky-kissing towers clustered together in a way that the place becomes New York to those of us who are doomed to haplessly fumble through life without a US visa.

he modestly named Leisure Valley public park is in sector 29, Gurgaon. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

One smoggy afternoon, we discover a most unusual place in Gurgaon. The modestly named Leisure Valley public park is nothing like this fast, furious, business town. Here, the world seems to be on a long sabbatical. The scenes are serene: a middle-aged man and woman hold hands silently while sitting on a bench; a young man’s head is on the lap of another young man; a woman with long black hair is sitting alone under a tree; two lovers are ensconced inside a pavilion; and a group of teenage boys is playing football.

The most beautiful sight is of a man in torn blue jeans lying on the grass, reading a hand-written journal. He does not once raise his eyes to look at the gloomy sky.

Try to come here in the evening, the scheduled hour for display of the ‘Ultra-Fast Musical Fountain’.

Since there is barely any water in the artificial pond, the system doesn’t work and you are simply relieved to witness that in this gleaming ultra-modern area, home to the confident and the successful, there continues to survive a little dysfunctional corner that’s more like Delhi than Manhattan.