A decade-long auto boom put the town and nearby villages on the global map. Now a slowdown is choking them.
You should have led with the king of spades and not saved it for later,” Nanku tells Chauhan. “Have you forgotten how to play?”
Chauhan smiles sheepishly while shuffling the cards, a half-lit bidi perched between his lips.
Chauhan deals. Nanku falls short again. He is livid. Only one man, Sawant Singh, who’s in the lead, seems to be enjoying this banter.
It’s past noon in Aliyar, a village near Maruti Suzuki India’s manufacturing plant in Manesar, and men are concentrating hard on the game at hand. They’re playing Call Bridge, a four-player card game popular in these parts. After …
Pradip is a co-founder at The Morning Context and leads our newsletters vertical. He has previously worked at The Ken as a staff writer, at Mint as an assistant features editor and the Deccan Chronicle as a copy editor. He works with a slew of expert newsletter writers across subjects and domains. His own writing spans the gig economy, farmers caught in the crossfire of technology, global warming and parents trapped in the edtech wave. Some of his best stories have come at the intersection of technology and human endeavour.
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