A walk inside IKV
“When we started out, I had to leave my five-day old baby sleeping at home, walk to the pipe, fill up water way after midnight (when the supply came), wash and iron nearly 12 kilograms of clothes a day using a heavy charcoal-iron press.”
A walk inside Indira Kalyan Vihar (IKV) engages all senses instantaneously. Claustrophobic maze of lanes with tiny residential (hovels) tightly packed on either side, walls painted in bright colours mixed with cheap (lime) mark out some sense of territory, (fritters) sizzle in hot oil on big flat (woks), tea in large saucepans is boiled several times over, television and radio sets behind gaudy synthetic curtains blare out different Bollywood songs, children at play kick around a toy made of discarded tyre tubes, imperceptible minty toothpaste wafts mixed with the stench of the adjoining canal as residents go about their daily routine,
