The City Below

Jigisha Sonii

The nation progresses, but not all of it moves forward. Developers replace homes with glass towers. Engineers cut new roads through old neighborhoods. Cities sprawl outward, swallowing fields and forgotten streets in their pursuit of a modern dream  gleaming with steel and concrete. Skylines transform, roads stretch wider, and life accelerates.

Flyovers unfurl like concrete ribbons, their towering pillars rising from the ground like giant legs, holding up a world too busy to look down. Buses lurch under the weight of weary passengers, rickshaws zig-zag with reckless urgency, and cars blare their horns. Above, as the city surges forward unapologetically, a different story unfolds in its shadow. One of stillness, resilience and stifled struggle of lives rendered invisible by modern society.

Life in the underbelly of a flyover follows a rhythm distinct from the hurried chaos above. It beats with a pulse dictated by necessity and survival. 

The ground is a patchwork of flattened cardboard boxes and old tarpaulins. Walls are not made of brick and mortar but of stretched cloth, its colours long surrendered to dust and time. Scavenged bamboo poles hold up trembling sheets of tarpaulin, makeshift roofs sigh and shudder with every restless gust of wind.

A fragile line of laundry flutters in the polluted breeze, shirts with missing buttons, faded sarees, trousers too small for the bodies they once fit. These are quiet witnesses to a life that moves but never quite changes. Children create a playground dodging potholes, chasing deflated tires and navigating piles of discarded debris.

Mornings do not begin with the pleasant chirping of birds. Dawn for them breaks with the clatter of hawkers setting up their stalls, the distant blare of horns, and the first wave of traffic sending tremors through the ground.

In the murky morning light, a woman sits cross-legged on a fraying mat, her wrinkled fingers deftly weaving jasmine garlands. The scent of crushed flowers mingles with the musty dampness of the underpass, filling the air with a sweetness weighed down by the city’s stench.

"Ma, can I go to school today?" her daughter asks, crouching beside her. The woman ties off a garland and places it in a growing pile.

 "Tomorrow," she says, avoiding her daughter's eyes. "We need to sell a little more first."

 The girl nods, her finger tracing alphabets in the settled dust, letters she once glimpsed in a tattered book abandoned near the dumpster. Her mother reaches for another handful of jasmine, threading together flowers that will find their way to temple steps and wedding altars, yet her own dreams of sending her daughter to school are bound to a generational cycle. Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimes, and for a fleeting moment, she imagines a different future, one where her daughter's hands hold books instead of flowers.

A few feet ahead, a chaiwala, perched on a wooden stool, pours steaming tea into small glasses, his hands moving with practiced ease. The autorickshaw drivers crowd around, exchanging tired banter as they pause for a brief respite. 

"Extra sugar today, bhaiya," one of them says, rubbing his temples. The chaiwala chuckles, adding a heaping spoonful before handing over the glass. 

Beside him, his wife rolls dough into chapatis on a battered iron griddle, her fingers pressing and flipping with rhythmic precision. She scans the street, eyes flicking over familiar faces and searching for new ones. 

A boy lingers at the edge of the stall, shifting on his feet. She notices the hesitation. 

"Hungry?" she asks, already tearing a chapati in half. He nods, barely meeting her gaze. She hands him the bread, her voice gentle but firm. "Eat." 

She knows which child arrived yesterday and which one hasn’t eaten today. She knows the ones who cry in their sleep and the ones who have stopped crying altogether. Years ago, she lost her own children, but in this strange, makeshift world, she has found a different kind of family, one that grows with every cup of tea and every chapati she gives away. 

A young boy squats between the flyover’s pillars, chalk in hand, drawing on the pavement. His fingers move in swift, crooked yet confident strokes, bringing bursts of color to the dull gray. Animals leap, rivers flow, faces emerge as glimpses of a world that exists only in his mind. The wind or an unknowing step will soon erase his work, yet he draws anyway. For in those fleeting moments, he is more than a boy living under a flyover. He is an artist.

The day wears on. Heat intensifies, shimmering off the concrete like a mirage.  A teenager wipes his brow and huddles through the waiting cars at the intersection, a dirty rag in hand. With swift practiced motions, he cleans windshields hoping for a few rupees tossed his way. The signal turns green, the cars vanish, leaving only him behind, watching their tail lights disappear. 

Further down, a couple shares a quiet moment as one kneads dough for their evening meal. Their home is small but stable, a rare anchor in a life without certainties. The other tinkers with an old radio, coaxing broken circuits back to life. When the static fades into music, a small victory hums through the air. They have seen worse days. They will see better ones. Together, they have built a sanctuary, however fragile.

In the shadows, a young woman watches. She is always watching. She listens to the stories, the laughter, the sighs of exhaustion, storing them away. Unlike others, she has no trade, no tea stall, no flowers to sell. She has her memories, and someday, she consoles herself, “I will find a way to make them matter.”

At night, a different stillness takes hold. As the city above fades to a hum, the world below sinks into an uneasy silence. Stray dogs curl into patches of warmth on discarded cloth, their bodies pressed against the cold. Families, if fortunate, huddle beneath thin blankets, searching for comfort. In the dark, whispers thread through the quiet. Fragmented dreams, plans for tomorrow, and the quiet resignation of life linger in the air. 

Above, the city forgets. Below, it endures, a refuge to the unseen, the invisible, the forgotten. Life carves out its space, refusing to be erased.

A roof under the blue sky is a dream for all but for them even survival is a constant negotiation. Not just for food, shelter or money, but for maneuvering through a system that refuses to see them.

At the government office, a clerk shuts the window before they can make any appeal. On the streets, glances slide over them. Yet, in the quiet corners of their world, resilience takes root. A shared meal, a joke exchanged in the thick of exhaustion, the quiet determination to carve out a place in a city that insists they don’t belong. Hope, fragile yet persistent, drags them forward.

Everyday routines begin with silent calculations. A full bladder, an upset stomach, the simple act of needing a toilet, each comes with consequences. In this cramped world, access to sanitation is also uncertain.

Toilets, when they exist, are overused and poorly maintained. Tin walls lean on each other for support. Dozens share a single cubicle, and when it overflows, the waste finds its way into the very spaces people sleep and eat. When the drains clog, the lanes flood with water no one wants to step into. The filth creeps in, soaking mats and staining clothes hung low. There is no privacy here, and for many, no choice but to relieve themselves in the open.

Children fall sick often. Their bodies are too small to fight. Women wait. They hold it in through the day, choosing discomfort over risk. After sunset, walking to a public toilet becomes a journey through shadows. Every rustle, every footstep behind them, raises the hair on their necks. Some return shaken. Some choose not to go at all.

So they eat less. Drink less. Anything to avoid that walk. These choices, made pressingly each day, begin to wear down the body and chip away at the will.

When the idea of safety is fragile and constantly negotiated, life unfolds on a thin line. Without formal policing or dependable infrastructure, residents rely on each other. Small networks of trust form in alleyways and courtyards, where neighbours watch over children and strangers are noticed quickly.

These quiet systems of care hold the place together, but only just. When something goes wrong, there is often no one to call, no official to turn to. In the absence of structured protection, crime seeps in. Exploitation hides in plain sight. Violence arrives unannounced, and often, unanswered.

The weight falls heaviest on women and children. Behind closed doors and within narrow lanes, stories unfold that rarely find their way to a police report. Domestic abuse becomes part of the background noise. Cases of trafficking and abuse are passed off as something ordinary. Justice feels distant. So the harm continues, endured in silence, repeating itself with devastating familiarity.

For workers, vulnerability extends beyond physical safety. Exploitation thrives in the shadows, where unscrupulous employers take advantage. Labour rights are easily ignored, wages go unpaid, and the lack of a safety net means job insecurity becomes yet another daily struggle

Education glimmers on the horizon holding the promise of a way out of poverty. Yet it remains an unattainable dream. Schools exist, but crumbling classrooms, untrained teachers, and a lack of resources turn learning into a struggle rather than an opportunity.

Discrimination and exclusion push many children further to the margins. Language barriers, missing documentation, and deep-seated social prejudices make mainstream education inaccessible. Girls face even greater hurdles, often forced to leave school early as societal norms place marriage above learning.

When education slips away, so does the fragile hope of breaking free. Those who leave school are quickly absorbed into the rhythms of informal work, sorting scrap, stitching clothes, lifting loads too heavy for their years. Childhood becomes a memory too soon, and the possibility of a different life fades before it ever has the chance to begin.

Illness doesn’t announce itself with urgency here. It creeps in slowly, met with hesitation and delay. A fever is watched for days before a decision is made. A cough lingers until it becomes something more. Hospitals remain unfamiliar places, visited only in emergencies. The journey to treatment often begins only when it is almost too late. Behind closed doors, families weigh symptoms against daily wages, choosing between medicine and a meal. It is a quiet crisis, ongoing, exhausting, and mostly unseen.

The weight of daily survival leaves marks that don’t always show. In homes patched together with cloth and tin, it isn’t just hunger or illness that takes a toll. It’s the quiet erosion of spirit. Days stretch long with uncertainty. Nights close in without a sense of safety. The mind, like the body, tires from being on guard

Children learn to read the world differently. They know when to stay silent, when to run, when to lie low. Adaptability becomes a survival skill, finely tuned and quietly practiced. But beneath the cleverness and resilience lie small, invisible fractures. Exposure to shouting, sudden moves, the fear that something might go wrong at any moment, these things settle deep inside.

Outbursts are often brushed off as mischief. Withdrawal is mistaken for shyness. The signs are there, but rarely understood. Without support, these wounds begin to shape how they see themselves and the world around them. 

Even here, where the odds are steep and the struggles unending, resilience finds a way to rise. It appears in the quiet determination of a girl who walks an extra mile to reach her school. In the steady voice of a woman. In neighbours who form a watch group, taking turns to ensure the children get home safe. These are not grand gestures, but they matter. They push back against a world that so often turns away.

Each clean toilet built with pooled savings. Each child who finishes the school year. Each woman who walks through her neighbourhood at dusk without fear. These are small victories, stitched into the everyday, and they carry weight. They speak of strength that isn’t always visible, of a will to not just survive, but to shape something better.

Their stories often slip through the cracks of official reports and city plans. They are here, unfolding every day and they deserve to be witnessed. In these quiet acts of defiance lies the first thread of change.

Cities are cemented on contradictions. On the surface, there is growth, opportunity and promise but behind the shine, in the overlooked shadows, live the people who make it all possible.

They sweep the streets before dawn, stitch garments in dim workshops, and carry bricks up scaffoldings floor by floor. Their homes are pieced together on land no one claims, their presence often seen as a problem rather than part of the solution. They build the city, clean it, cook for it, and keep its wheels turning. Yet access to clean water, stable electricity, safe shelter, these remain just out of reach.

The paradox runs deep. The same people who fuel the city’s ambition are left waiting at its edge, unheard and unseen.This invisibility isn’t accidental. This isn’t a flaw in the system. It is the system. It has been etched into the very framework of urban life. In plans that erase their settlements. In policies that overlook their needs. In budgets that never reach their streets. Neglect takes many forms: it is the absence of infrastructure, the silence in official records, the indifference of those in power. Over time, it becomes design. With every step the city takes forward, those left behind fall further.

The divide grows not just in distance but in dignity. A city cannot truly thrive when its foundations are built on forgetting.Framed as tools of order and development, zoning regulations slowly redraw the city’s map, pushing the poor further from its heart. Across India’s booming cities, families who have lived in informal settlements for decades wake to the sound of bulldozers. No notice. No plan. Just an order to vacate.

These are not isolated events. Slum demolitions and evictions have become the fine print of beautification drives. Displaced to the city’s edge, where water is scarce and transport infrequent, communities are left to start over with nothing but memory. What is lost cannot always be rebuilt because it is not a house that’s taken, but a neighborhood, a livelihood, a sense of belonging. 

Perception has power, and in cities, it writes the rules. Informal settlements are painted as encroachments. Media headlines echo this narrow view labelling them as symbols of disorder. What gets left out are the early morning street vendors, the children walking to overcrowded schools, the families building lives one brick at a time.
This narrow lens feeds into policy. Decisions are made about these communities. Social hierarchies quietly dictate whose voices are heard and whose needs are dismissed. Class and caste mark invisible boundaries across urban life. Those who sweep the streets, clean the homes, and build the towers are kept at arm’s length from the power that shapes them. Power continues to erase them from the blueprint, failing to acknowledge what their labour makes possible. The city does not speak their names, but runs on their footsteps.

I walk past these settlements quite often, sometimes without a second glance, sometimes with my gaze naturally lingering longer than I intend. A girl threading jasmine flowers. A boy drawing with chalk that will vanish with the wind. A mother whispering “tomorrow” when her daughter asks about school. These fragments stay with me long after I’ve gone, slipping into the moments of my own life.

Above the flyover, the city insists on its progress, but below it, I see another kind of resilience, one stitched into everyday acts of survival. I write about them not because I can solve their struggles, but because looking away feels like a deeper erasure. Their lives run parallel to ours, shaping the very city we move through. To notice is the smallest act I can offer, to acknowledge is the least I can do.

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About the Author

Jigisha Sonii is an architect turned writer with a deep interest in design, art, and travel. A keen observer, she finds joy in shaping her thoughts through words. Her writing is driven by a desire to explore the everyday with nuance and to make design more engaging.