Nangla's Delhi

As soon as the fear in the heart settles into the eyes, the wind, the space, objects, everything turns into nothingness. That sight which makes the heart tremble and break, as soon as it appears before the eyes, and the body feels like it is being stung by a thousand ants. All kinds of thoughts make their home in the heart.

People are filling their hearts with the consolation that some of them have a few more days to prepare themselves before their house will be broken. When they know they will not be allowed to live here anymore, then why not convince themselves of the fact that this will indeed happen. Struggling with what is happening to them, they are allowing some glimpses of the everyday to resurface. That is why stoves have begun to be ignited again. The dwelling is with us, among us for a few moments longer.

There is a lot that the morning today has lost. Like always, people are making their way to the public toilets, tins filled with water in hand. People reached there, like everyday. But the queue that is there otherwise is missing. Everyone recognises its disappearance.

A bench lies at the edge of the lane, in the middle of the street, amidst locked houses and shut doors. It's a wooden bench. Broken from one leg, but otherwise complete. It is not painted or varnished. One of the three plain planks, which make its careful, decorated back, is cracked from the middle. A young girl in a pink salwaar kameez passes by it. Many minutes later, a young man with a moustache and ruffled hair walks past it.

The sky came into Nanglamachi today. Unless blue is the colour of holes in walls. Green walls, pink walls, white walls, dappled sunlight walls, "love is enough" poster walls, high walls, dispensary walls, Rakesh
Cable walls. The sky made its way through falling tin roofs, carefully dismantled doorframes,over asbestos ground, broken bricks and intact ones. With each new hour there were new sky formations and new vertical maps of Nangla being created. One didn't have to stare for too long to see it happening.

I had been running from this place. It shows us a deep shadow of our future. A future that will not let go of us. It follows us, gazing at us through different frames.

Now most houses have been broken. People are breaking their houses with their own hands, and taking out that which may be of use later.

When a house was made, can only be known when it is being broken.

That aunty, packing her household, getting ready to move, was saying, "My son got this made on his birthday. That wall, it is the residue and the result of the estrangement between my husband and his brother. This roof, it was made pucca when my son got his first salary."

Today, each house is retelling its making before it is broken.

Everyone is lost in the rhythm of a drum beat today. Someone is busy packing, someone is sitting near the samaan. All around, things are being packed, things are being broken. And things are being chosen and picked up from what has been broken. Children are collecting scrap metal and buying ice-cream in exchange for it.

[I]

"When someone is executed, they are asked what their last wish is. We were not asked even that. 'We will tell the date, we will tell the date' and look where they have brought us today. You tell us what sense to make of this? First they came and wrote numbers on our doors, and said, 'this one will not break', and then came and painted over the numbers themselves. What are we supposed to do now?"