The Gate Is Closed

It was a Saturday and I came back home from college at 5:30 pm. I live in a gated community. My house is situated in the east end of the gated community and the community park is in the west end. Therefore, my Saturday evenings are mostly quiet. The street dogs barking, as they chase each other, is usually the only sound that one can hear in the otherwise unperturbed silence of the evening. Having lived here for almost a year now, the barks and howls of the dogs seem to have blended in with the silence.

That day, I wasn't too tired after college and I felt like getting some fresh air. At around 6 pm, I got my walking shoes out and left to the community park. It usually takes about 3 minutes to get to the park from where I live. As I got closer to the park, the silence was slowly replaced by the chatter and laughter of the children playing in the park.

One third of the park is designed as a play pen, complete with the seesaw, monkey bars, swings and slides. The other two thirds house a badminton court and some carefully maintained plants and trees. There is a pathway, all along the perimeter of the park, where the old and the young walk to get in shape and there are a few stone benches here and there. The park is bound on all four sides by high concrete walls and has two gates. One gate faces the inside of the gated community. The park forms the limit of the gated community on the west end and the other gate, therefore, opens into the streets outside the gated community.

It is quite unconventional, if I come to think of it. The second gate is almost like a security breach. It challenges the entire idea of the 'gated' community. However, nobody says anything about it and  I, for one, really liked the idea of the second gate.

Right outside the second gate is a world that bears a stark contrast to the quiet,  almost sophisticated and comparatively wealthier world inside the gated community. The  houses there, although concrete, lack planning and organization and are quite smaller than the ones inside the meticulously organized gated community. The streets seem to be filled to the brim, with houses and shops cramped into whatever little space is available. The air smells of various types of food being cooked and reeks of garbage at the same time. The people are  simple, loud, cheerful and seem to know all their neighbours, unlike us. Children from those streets enter the park through the second gate.

The second gate is not a barrier. In fact, it is more about breaking the barrier.

After a short three minute walk, I entered the park through the first gate. I took a deep breath to get some fresh air into my lungs and I started walking on the pathway along the perimeter of the park, towards the play pen. A few middle aged women, men and some older people were walking on the pathway with me. Three teenagers, two girls and a boy, were jogging with their iPods in their pockets and their earphones plugged into their ears. I simply kept walking around the park observing my surroundings.

The children in the play pen really caught my attention. One group was decorating a heap of sand with flowers that they had plucked from the plants nearby. Another group of children were busy pretending to ride a motorcycle while they were on the seesaw. Yet another group of children were climbing up and down the monkey bars and were competing with each other to be the first person to climb up. A few children, however, seemed to be playing not with other children, but with their adult companions.

On my third round around the park, I noticed something. The children who were playing with the adults seemed to be dressed better than the ones in the groups. They looked well fed compared to the children in the groups. However, they also looked a little lonely. On my fourth round, I noticed three of the kids playing with the adults watching the children in groups with an expression that clearly implied that they would love to join the other kids in groups. The adults were doing a blatantly mediocre job of distracting their kids and getting the kids to play with them.

That is when I realized that the second gate was useless. There are three gates, not two. This third gate exists in the minds of the adults and unlike the second gate that is always open, this third gate is always closed. The third gate is locked and sealed with differences.

Wealth. Caste. Standards of living. Education. Occupation. Language. Religion. You name it. There are differences everywhere and in everything and somehow, these differences have always managed to keep that third gate closed.

We're all trying very hard to open more gates, just like the second one, so that we can learn to coexist in spite of all the differences. But, no matter how many gates we open, nothing will change till the third gate remains closed.