Between the ages of five and twenty, I lived in a defence services gated colony in central Delhi with my family. It was occupied entirely by the families of officers serving in the Indian army, navy and air force. Well, not entirely. There were also the ‘servants’ who lived in tiny quarters connected on one side to the officers’ houses via a balcony and, on the other, to a ‘servants’ staircase’ at the back of the building. The wider ‘officers’ staircase’ led to the main lobby on the ground floor, which also had two lifts. Each lift had a sign above the door. One said, ‘Officers and families’, while the other simply said, ‘Servants.’ Now, segregation based on hierarchy in the armed forces isn’t a new thing. In fact, hierarchy is what militaries are structured around. And like all Indian upper-middle class families, we had help at home inhabit our servants’ quarter. So hierarchy was the source of our comfortable daily routine.

But my ten-year-old self had watched the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Mard on VHS and the scene where Bachchan’s character is disallowed from entering a club — because of a sign saying ‘Indians and Dogs Not Allowed’ — was rather fresh in my mind. We had also briefly studied the freedom struggle in school, and I knew that this was one of the features of a ‘gulaam desh’. In my child’s mind, our separate lift system with its signage seemed uncomfortably similar to the colonial clubs that didn’t allow Indians and dogs entry.

I began to notice that some of the ‘khadoos’ officers (the same ones who would yell at us if a ball from our cricket matches landed in their balcony, or if our improvised hide-and-seek game was too loud) would often scold the servants if they caught any of them using the officers’ stairs or lift. I would witness these scoldings sometimes and feel extremely awkward. Later, I’d make it a point to say hello to the servant yelled at — most of them would just stare at me, and ignore.

By the time I was thirteen, I’d learnt about the heinous institutionalized segregation in apartheid South Africa. The separate lift business was continuing and, I decided to confront my naval officer father, also a uniformed member of this discriminatory system.

‘Papa, remember how there was apartheid in South Africa?’ ‘Hmmm,’ he replied, only half-attentive.

‘Well, we have our own kind of apartheid in Sangli Apartments!’ I carried on, animatedly.

My father put down the newspaper he was browsing through. ‘Really? How?’ he asked.

‘The segregated lifts! Isn’t it wrong to have separate lifts for servants and officers? It’s inequality!’

‘Well, it is,’ he replied carefully. ‘It’s a certain hierarchy that the armed forces have institutionalized and well, frankly it’s prevalent in other ways —’

‘Yes, but isn’t it wrong?’ I interrupted.

My father smiled. ‘Well, if you think it’s wrong you should do something about it.’

‘Like what?’

‘Protest. That’s what they did in South Africa. That’s what we did in India, to get our freedom.’

The possibility that I could do something in this case had not presented itself to me. I wrote a letter, scribbled in my best handwriting on a page torn out of my mother’s college attendance register, demanding the end of the lift and stair segregation policy. My father suggested I get some other children — my friends — to sign it but they seemed totally stumped. A few said they would ask their parents, a few refused outright. It didn’t even strike me to ask the ‘servant children’.

The next day when I went to present the letter to the secretary of the apartment complex, a recently promoted brigadier, it had two signatures — one was mine and the other was ostensibly my brother’s (forged by me).

The brigadier took the letter and frowned.

‘These are the rules, beta.’

‘Yes, uncle. But it’s not fair.’

‘Why isn’t it fair?’

‘Because it’s not equality.’

‘What’s not equality? Officers have a lift, servants have a lift. We have a staircase, they have a staircase.’ I was unprepared for such bland logic.

‘But their lift and staircase are dirty,’ was somehow the only reply that came to mind.

‘Then they should keep it clean.’ And he bid me goodnight.

I felt deflated. My parents consoled me.

‘It’s more important that you tried.’ ‘But nothing changed.’ ‘Well why not start with making a change in your personal habits, like Gandhiji did with khadi.’ My protest now took on a new form. I started hanging around the lobby in my free time. Each time I saw a servant approaching, I’d jump into the lift and invite them in. Then I would personally take them up, and ride back down to the lobby. It felt thrilling — like a surreptitious elevator-civil disobedience movement. Two days later though, one of the khadoos officers caught us and scolded both me and the servant I was trying to escort. I tried to argue but the servant — a thin wiry man — apologized, glared at me and scooted.

I decided to change strategy and began my elevator-satyagraha. Every day, I began to use the servants’ lift. Initially, I tried to get my friends and brother to follow my example but that didn’t last more than once. And I knew why. The lift had a filthy stench. It was also dirty — there were always gutka packets and cigarette or beedi butts strewn around, and the walls of the lift had unidentifiable stains. I decided to use the servants’ staircase instead, which was as dirty if not more. I grew tired of rushing up the stairs while holding my breath and the families living in the servants’ quarters stared at me as I went up and down.

When my father learnt why I had abandoned my elevator-satyagraha, he suggested that I start a community cleanliness drive but by then, my idealism was exhausted, and my indignation was dulled. Perhaps finally, the comfort of the cleaner officers’ lift had seduced me into just following the discriminatory rule. It was so much more convenient!

Or perhaps I had learnt a harder lesson, one whose full meaning was not apparent to me then. I had learnt not just that sometimes protests don’t succeed in achieving their aims; but, more importantly, that sometimes when fighting for a cause one has to confront some unsavoury truths about one’s own reality and one’s own complicity in the ‘oppression’ we are fighting against. But most importantly, I wondered, do protests that lack the participation of those who are ‘affected’ tend to fizzle out?