Unmapped (12.951°N, 77.642°E)

Devina

They painted over the sign again. Two municipal workers in faded khaki shirts, sweat darkening the collars, sleeves rolled past their elbows. The rollers rasped against the wall, leaving scrubby streaks of sky blue that bled into the old cracks. The air was thick with turpentine and dust; damp plaster carried the smell of last month’s rain. 

Chips of the earlier coat clung on, curling at the edges, so the new words looked tired even before they dried: all-caps, SMART CITY - WARD 129. No one here asked to be called smart. No one asked for a ward either. But the paint keeps coming. 

A councillor came that morning, broke a coconut on the base, and left garlands that wilted by evening. Men with cameras clicked photos of families holding shiny steel buckets, papers signed with thumbprints no one could read. The photo went to the newspaper; the water stayed here.

The lane I live in doesn’t exist on Google Maps. Not really. Try to drop a pin and the screen stutters. The app shows the main road, then a shadow where the path should be. You can’t tell how far it runs, or where it leads. As if it were unfinished, or imagined. But the lane is very much here. 

It begins somewhere near the bakery with the collapsing signboard and ends in a dead-end where school vans reverse slowly each morning, honking like they always have, and somehow, the lane knows when to move and make space. 

In between, there are twenty-seven houses, eight shops, two watch repair stalls, a barber with a plastic mirror, and me, a water pump with rusted bolts and a handle that tilts to the left. I’ve been here for decades. Long enough to notice the difference between being missing and being unseen. 

This lane is not the poorest in the city. It is not the richest. It is not picturesque. It is not destitute. It is not gentrified. It is what they call “non-notified.” That word that hangs between categories, where services might come, might not. Where streets get swept only when a councillor’s niece gets married nearby. Where nothing urgent happens, unless it happens slowly.

It is the kind of lane where people still remember what came before their house. “This plot was a jamun tree. Fruit would fall on the other side.” “There used to be a wall here with those three foot lizards which would hiss in the night.” “That pipe never worked.” Memory here doesn’t live in documents. It lives in sentences passed over chayya, in finger points, in arguments about where something used to be. Memory here is a kind of map. Passed down, spoken, unrecorded, rarely wrong. 

I was installed here as part of a scheme. People signed papers they couldn’t read and posed for photos holding steel buckets. I remember my first day; a queue before sunrise, a transistor playing music low enough not to wake the baby. That baby is now a driver who parks his auto halfway into the turn. He still drinks from me when his flask runs out. Still curses the city. But he doesn't move. 

In those days, people stayed. Families stacked across generations, three rooms and one roof. Now most people leave; for call centres, for abroad, for gated colonies with security and parks. But the houses remain. New locks, old doors. Kids raised by grandparents. Gas cylinders booked on apps. Dust settled in the corners of every convenience. 

Once this lane buzzed with landline rings and the shuffle of ration cards. Now it hums with delivery alerts, gas booked on apps, and school fees paid on phones. Old paper registers lie tucked away in trunks, replaced by glowing Excel sheets no one bothers to print.

They come back, though. When the newness wears thin. When the bills pile up. When the leak doesn’t fix itself and the plumber stops answering. That’s when they remember me. Some return without looking me in the eye, as if ashamed. Others greet me like an old cousin; a little irritating, still familiar. And then there are the ones I’ve watched so long that their lives are stitched into mine.

There is one family I’ve watched for years, three generations and counting. The grandmother still comes to fill her copper lota at dawn. Her hands are shaking now; she spills water with every lift, but she refuses help. She wipes the spill with the end of her sari as if no one saw.

I remember her differently once; sari tucked high, stride brisk, balancing two full pots before sunrise while the rest of the lane still slept. She could carry both home before the milk arrived, scolding anyone who cut the queue. Now she pauses to rest after a single lota, the walk back slower, the weight heavier. But still, she comes.

Her son once played cricket beside me, chalking wickets on the wall, running to gulp a palmful of water between overs. Now he arrives late in the morning, car keys jangling, phone pressed to his ear. He doesn’t queue anymore, he cuts in, nodding like it’s owed to him. When the handle jammed once, he kicked me hard enough to dent the base. Yet I’ve also seen him kneel here, splashing his face before rushing his mother to the hospital, his shirt wet, his voice breaking.

His wife has never lifted my handle. She says the water is dirty, that bottled is safer. The caps end up scattered near my feet, mixing with betel stains and biscuit wrappers. By the next morning they’ve shifted places, crushed flat or stuck in the gutter. When they first moved in, she laughed with neighbours at weddings and lent sugar across the wall. Now she sends the maid with plastic pots, head bent low, avoiding small talk. The comments float between houses like smoke from a chulha, sharp for a moment, then gone.

Their daughter used to crouch on the broken tile near my base, drawing chalk houses that always included a dog. She left for Dubai years ago. Each time she returns, she circles the pump like it’s still part of her game, dragging a hand across the handle before she leaves. I’ve heard her quarrel with her father; sell the house, move to a tower block, leave all this behind. But when she leaves again, her grandmother still comes at dawn, sari gathered, lota in hand.

They quarrel, they avoid, they dream elsewhere. Yet the water ties them back, if only for a few minutes at a time. And they are not the only ones.

The boy from the petrol pump comes by with his hands blackened to the wrists. He pumps with one elbow, scrubs with the other, grease trailing down his forearm like ink. One afternoon, he brought his tin, packed by his mother but untouched by him, and rinsed each dabba so slowly, like he was washing off a secret. Held them up to the light, checked for smudges. You’d think he was cleaning something sacred. 

And then there is the old tailor with cataracts. Every Thursday he asks someone to help him fill his plastic pot. You’ll hear the slow tap of his stick on the uneven ground, the pause at the temple at the corner. The RO filter gives him gas, he says.

It doesn’t matter that this lane is not marked on any of their phones. Their bodies remember how to walk it, even in the dark. They step over the loose tile near the drain without looking down. They know where the wires hang low. You can’t map that. This street is skipped because it doesn’t meet the needed parameters. It’s too narrow. Too inconsistent. The buildings aren’t aligned. The addresses aren’t legible. Deliveries get redirected. Lorries refuse to come in. As do ambulances. 

Officials say the lane is “non-notified”, a word that costs money. A missing file here, a bribe unpaid there, and suddenly whole houses vanish from records. Services appear only before elections, like processions that sweep through with drums and garlands, leaving plastic chairs and banners behind but no repairs.

And yet, everything is here. 

There is a woman who teaches online coding classes from her balcony, using a Jio hotspot and a second-hand laptop with a white sticker that says “Believe.” 

There is a house with three generations under one roof. The grandfather reads the paper, the father counts stock on an Excel sheet, the son makes reels with his hair brushed to one side, a neat line buzzed clean at the temple like the cool boys in ads. Each believes in a different kind of future.

One house has a washing machine that drains into the street - foam and habit. Next door, a washing stone has served four families over time, its surface worn smooth by years of soap and water. They share a wall, but not words.

Above these walls, dish TV antennas tilt at the sky, while pirated cable wires run low enough to trip on. At the kirana, you’ll find protein bars stacked beside glucose biscuits; in the homes, TDS deductions sit alongside money folded under mattresses. Everything lives here at once.

That’s what this lane holds; the both-and of South Asia. Things rising and things rotting. The desire to be seen, the fear of being noticed. The push of speed, the drag of survival. Everyone is moving, potentially forward, but not always in the same direction.

The lane carries its own smells. The sharp tang of soaked gunny bags left out overnight. The heat-singed scent of a dhobi’s iron when he stops for water. By afternoon they hang low, mixed with dust and drain water, clinging to your clothes before you even notice.

Sometimes the newer people complain. “No signal.” “Too much noise.” “The app can’t find it.” They say it like the lane is broken. But some stay because of that. Here, nights are mostly dogs, the thud of a newspaper at dawn, the odd van horn drifting in.

There’s something about being off the map that gives people room. You can sit outside in a vest, shout across the lane, vanish for a day. Nobody asks. I see it up close too. People stop to splash their face before work, scrub grease off their hands, or just wait a minute before moving on. Sometimes they cry here, quick, wiping their eyes with a kerchief.

I sometimes think about what it would mean if the lane got mapped proper; numbers painted neat on the doors, cleaner streets, wires pulled straight. Maybe it would look neater? But something would go missing too. Not just the trees, or the scribbles on the wall, or even me. It’s in the small ways people are here: men sitting in banians on the steps, milk cans clanging at dawn, wedding chairs stacked and rusting in a corner long after the music stops, an old radio crackling film songs into the night. That’s what would disappear.

Maybe it’s a foolish thought. Maybe change will come slowly. The bakery will shutter, its sweet smell gone from the mornings. The tailoring board will sag until the letters can’t be read. The children will grow up calling this a “chawl,” saving to leave for apartments with lifts and guards. The coconut broken on my first day is long gone, but I still remember the crack against the stone, the splash of milk-white water on the ground. The garlands from election rallies crumble into the gutter, mixing with betel stains, bottle caps, and biscuit wrappers. One day, someone will look at me, dented, rusted, tilting, and ask, “Is this still needed?”

But until then, I stay. For the grandmother’s trembling lota, the spill of copper water on her feet at dawn. For the driver’s dented flask, set down with a clang before he wipes the grease off his wrists. For the daughter who presses her palm against my handle, quick as a secret, before she boards another flight. For the son whose voice rises in quarrel but cracks when his mother falters. For the neighbours who mutter under their breath, words floating like smoke that fades by evening.

Records go missing, maps unclear. But feet remember. In the dark they know where to land, which stone to avoid, where the drain water gathers. People return carrying copper, plastic, steel, sometimes only their breath.

I stay with them. Rust eating at my bolts, rain soaking the ground, the smell of iron heavy in the air.

***

About the Author

Devina is curious about how people live, connect, disappear, and find their way back, across streets, screens, and the systems that shape them. Her work lingers at the edges of power, care, and memory, noticing what is often missed: the side notes, the hesitations, the shifts that take years. She writes and researches as a way of holding stories and asking what it means to belong. She trusts in slowness, in rest, in listening, in stillness, and in the way things unfold. She believes time stretches better in the sun, with sea breeze and at least one furry friend nearby.