Personal Background

Comrades, I am an Indian Muslim coming from a family of doctors. My father grew up in crushing poverty, but he broke his back to pull his siblings out of the mud, ensuring they all received medical educations. Today, my uncle is one of the top oncologists in Delhi-NCR, and my father serves our community as a general physician.

​Because of my father’s practice, I live closely near Azad Market, right next to Sadar Bazaar. For those who don't know, this area is the jugular vein of Delhi's supply chain. It is the historic, beating heart of wholesale goods and food that keeps this massive city running. But behind the bustling economy and the immense wealth generated here lies a dystopian reality.

​The patients who come to my father’s clinic are mostly the labor workforce of these markets. Sitting in the clinic, I hear and see heart-wrenching stories every single day. I want to share what the systematic destruction of the unorganized working class looks like from a medical and human perspective.

The Stolen Childhoods and the Excluded Women

​The general condition of the workers here is beyond awful. It is overwhelmingly a male workforce, and the reason for that is grim: for female workers, this environment is an absolute nightmare.

The lack of basic safety makes women highly susceptible to sexual assault and harassment, effectively pushing them out of even this desperate avenue of survival.

​For the boys, the exploitation begins as young as 10. You see children roaming the streets doing "light work" acting as street hawkers, running errands, or simply begging. By the time these kids reach adolescence, they are already physically ruined. We see 14-year-olds with stunted growth, mental and physical impairment, chronic malnourishment, and severe dehydration.

They work 14 hours a day on their feet. When they take off their cheap sandals in the clinic, you see the feet of an 80-year-old or a battle-hardened military veteran covered in thick, bleeding blisters, callouses, and scars.

​The Grueling Machinery of the Night

​For the adult men, the problems compound exponentially. These men are treated worse than the machines they load and unload.

Some employers are so sadistically authoritarian that they refuse to let the workers sit down, forcing them to stand in the blistering Delhi heat even when there is no work to be done.

​There is a chronic, maddening lack of sleep among this demographic.

​10:00 PM to 5:00 AM: Heavy trucks full of goods arrive under the cover of night to bypass city traffic laws. The laborers spend all night unloading tons of material by hand.

​5:00 AM to 10:00 AM: Before the normal market timings even commence, these exhausted men must physically distribute the goods across the endless maze of the bazaar.

​A Medical Tragedy: Broken Bodies and Drained Wages

​The heavy lifting destroys their bodies in ways that are difficult to witness. Historically, the unorganized sector in India has always relied on the expendability of human life, and here you see it in real-time.

​They repeatedly suffer from severe joint dislocations, slipped discs, and immense muscle sprains or complete tears. By the time these men reach their old age if they survive that long their spines are so bent and deformed that they cannot even rest on the most comfortable mattress without agonizing pain.

​The cruelest irony of their existence is that the meager wages they sacrifice their youth for are ultimately flushed down the drain. Every rupee they save goes directly into medical treatments to momentarily soothe the bodily destruction caused by earning those very rupees.

​The Slums: Surviving Without Air

​When their shift ends, there is no sanctuary. They live in nearby slum quarters, paying ₹1,000 per person to share a single, cramped room with up to 20 other men. Calling it "overcrowded" is a polite fiction.

​There is zero ventilation. Forget a cooler or an AC; there isn't even moving air. Because they lack a safe, private place to wash the sweat and grime off their bodies, fungal infections run rampant.

They come to the clinic with massive, bleeding skin rashes covering their torsos and groins. For their daily necessities, they rely on the public MCD toilets to excrete and bath.

The stench of these toilets is so putrid and violently overwhelming that no person who has known a day of dignity could tolerate standing near them for a minute, let alone bathing in them.

​The Death of Protest

​Historically, the working class has utilized strikes and protests to demand better conditions. But these men? They don't even have the privilege to protest.

​They have resigned themselves entirely to this fate.

There is no structural safety net, no union to back them, and no alternative. They are the absolute sole source of income for their families back in their home villages. If they miss a day, their children starve.

​When you look into their eyes, you don't see dreams of wealth or upward mobility. Their hopes and dreams have been battered down to a single, humble plea: to be given their basic human dignity.

"There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success."

— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I am only ever a temporary sanctuary for people at their lowest. I listen, I care, and then I am discarded the moment their storm passes often tossed aside so they can run right back to the very people who broke them in the first place.

Forget romantic relationships; I don’t even have a single friend. Whenever I try to share a glimpse of my own life, I am met with shallow excuses. If I ever dare to ask to be treated with basic dignity, I am blocked. I am never given the grace of closure, just passing remarks that I am "weird," "boring," or that we just didn't have enough in common.

Living with severe, chronic physical pain for years has drained whatever resilience I had left, acting as the final nail in the coffin. Trying to make friends here on Reddit was my last, desperate attempt at connection. I told myself that if this didn't work, it was fait accompli. And it seems I am done.

Now, I just lie awake at night. When I stare back at my past, there is nothing but a vast emptiness—and my future mirrors it perfectly. In the quiet dark, I try to soothe myself by repeating this:

"The world's fragile good comes from unremembered souls; countless lived in silent devotion, now lying in graves no one visits or mourns."

But my heart rejects it. No matter how many times I tell myself this to make peace with being unremembered, my chest still aches.

I am not posting this to ask for a friend. I am simply exhausted.

True desolation is being left with nothing but the grief of grieving, and such has become of me

How do you make your heart at ease when this is your reality?

P.S.- English isn't my first language

​I am writing this out of sheer desperation and fear for our people.

Please, swallow this bitter pill: do not go.

​If you step onto those streets, you won't be treated as a citizen exercising a democratic right, you will be made a target.

You will be hounded, arrested without charge under draconian laws, and instantly vilified by the media.

Worse, the police won't just stop at you; they will pick up your parents, brothers, and relatives as hostages to break your spirit.

​How much more evidence of our reality do we need?

​Decades of stolen lives: Countless Muslim youth have rotted in dark cells for 10–15 years, their youth destroyed and families bankrupt, only for courts to quietly declare them innocent.

​Unchecked state violence: Custodial murders happen with total impunity, and in riot after riot, our blood is spilled, our homes burned, and no one is ever held accountable.

​The Kashmir blueprint: Look at what has been done in Kashmir for decades the human rights violations, enforced silences, pellet gun blamings, mass detentions, and untraced custodial disappearances. That horrific blueprint of complete impunity is what they bring to any Muslim who dares to speak up.

​Remember what happened last time.

​When we took to the streets at Jamia and other protest sites for basic dignity, no one stood with us. We were met with brutal lathi charges, blinded by pellet guns, and hunted down while crowds chanted "Desh ke gaddaro ko, goli maaro saalo ko." Society didn't just look away many actively cheered for more violence against us.

​We are completely alone. ​We have been morally, politically, socially, and economically abandoned. No political party will reach out or stand by us because they fear losing Hindu votes and being labeled "anti-Hindu."

​Basic humanity is now a crime if you have a Muslim name.

​Look at Mohd Junaid and his relatives arrested simply for distributing food and water during the protests and no one has mentioned this or came forward for support.

​We are dehumanized every second on news channels and social media until hatred has completely infected daily culture.

​Your bravery will not bring justice; it will only bring the full vengeance of the state down on your family.

​Please. Stay home. Protect your families. Stay alive.

The way of life in Old Delhi (It's going to be a very long read)

​I was born and still live here in the labyrinth of Old Delhi. Raised in a household of doctors, I’ve had the privilege of observing my community from a unique vantage point.

Life here is a paradox, a dense, chaotic tapestry where the upper, middle, and working classes live cheek by jowl, bound together by invisible walls that the rest of the city has built around us.

​What unfolds in these alleys is a complex sociological drama. It’s a story of survival, hypocrisy, and the intricate ways patriarchy adapts to survive. To borrow a concept from Angela Davis (speaking on Black women in America) and Edward Said (on the Palestinians) what you see here is the tragic reality of the "victim of victims."

For the well-off Muslims of Old Delhi, the neighborhood is both a sanctuary and a prison. There is a deep, simmering resentment about not being able to move out.

Try buying a premium property in a posh Delhi neighborhood with a Muslim name, and the doors quietly shut.

​But alongside this forced ghettoization is the fear of losing our cultural ecosystem. Move to South Delhi, and you lose the halal butcher, the authentic Mughlai joints, the proximity to the mosque, the community rhythm. So, the wealth stays trapped inside the walled city.

​And how does this trapped wealth express itself? Through big, fat, obscenely expensive weddings. Even though religious doctrine strictly forbids such extravagance, the most zealous and pious members of the upper class throw their millions into these spectacles. With no other socially acceptable avenue to flaunt their status, weddings become the ultimate theater of validation.

Step away from the wedding halls, and the poverty is heartbreaking.

There is a persistent, tragic cycle among the working class. Men often take on hazardous, brutal labor and die prematurely. They leave behind wives and children with absolutely no safety net. Because of traditional and religious strictures, these widows cannot take up outdoor jobs or sales positions. So, what’s left? They turn to local Muslim charities, or they try sewing clothes from home.

But even that meager lifeline is being severed by cheap, mass-produced clothing pumped out by Chinese machinery.

Take the case of a 60-year-old woman I see in my neighborhood. She sits on the road selling papad for 15 hours straight. She has no husband, and several daughters over the age of 18 at home. Why aren't they married? Because they cannot afford it. Dowry hasn't disappeared; it has just been rebranded. It is now a covert, expected, "respectable" exchange of massive wedding expenses that poor families simply cannot bear.

To make matters worse, we are currently in the grips of a severe water crisis. The lack of clean, adequate water distribution hurts everyone, but it is actively breaking the poor.

There is a fierce push for education across all classes right now. The poor see it as the only escape velocity from poverty. The wealthy see it as a necessary credential to secure better marriage prospects.

​But for women, credentials rarely translate to autonomy. The patriarchal structure here is an iron grid, though it occasionally produces fascinating sociological anomalies.

​Recently, there’s been a surge of women attending Islamic classes organized by female scholars, heavily influenced by figures like Farhat Hashmi. (Note: The Sri Lankan Easter bomber claimed inspiration from her, but having listened to her, her teachings are surprisingly inward-looking. The core message is: everything going wrong for Muslims is because we have given into worldly temptations and abandoned piety).

​These classes have created a bizarre power dynamic.

They have given women a rare, socially acceptable space to gather and find autonomy. Consequently, women are now dominating men in sheer piousness. They come home and tell their husbands, "You have become irreligious."

​The husband’s response? "You have become too religious."

​It’s a rigged game. A woman cannot win—whether she is fiercely secular or fiercely pious, the terms of her existence are ultimately judged and determined by men. The power structure always protects the patriarch.

When it comes to inter-religious relationships, the community's stance is an absolute, condemning "No" for both genders. However, the punishment is violently gendered. It is always the woman who is sacrificed, ostracized, and made to endure the worst of the atrocities for crossing the line.

​Conversely and interestingly while polygamy is technically permitted in the religion, it is fiercely condemned by the society. I have seen numerous cases where a man takes a second wife and is entirely outcasted by his own family thrown out of his home, stripped of his inheritance, and socially boycotted. Culture, in this instance, heavily overrides scripture.

​I am not a sociologist; these are just the anecdotal observations of someone watching his home evolve and fracture.

​But when you look at the women of Old Delhi hemmed in by systemic Islamophobia from the outside world, and crushed by the patriarchal traditionalism of their own community on the inside the parallels to Davis and Said become undeniable. When a community is marginalized, it often tightens the chains on its most vulnerable members to feel a sense of control.

​They are the oppressed of the oppressed. The victims of victims.