New Delhi, Oct. 9 -- Kotla Mubarakpur sits in a part of Delhi where the city seems to gather all its confidence around it. South Extension, Defence Colony, AIIMS, the Ring Road: the names carry the promise of access, movement, arrival. Kotla is close to all of them. Its location is extraordinary-Delhi pressing in from every side, with all its institutions, ambitions and appetites.

And yet a neighbourhood can be close to everything and still feel cut off.

Kotla is an old urban village folded into the capital. Its lanes are narrow, its roads broken, its market restless with people hurrying to work. The city has grown around it, but growth does not always mean exchange. A vibrant mosaic of languages, customs, faiths, trades and ways of liv...