A bench is? by Shveta
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 bench is no longer calling anyone to it. There are no tea ceremonies around it now. No gatherings for light talk and making jokes. No one sits on it and gestures for another to join her, to share the bench with her. The bench is not a space of hospitality. The bench is no longer a bench.
What lingers after the violating storming by the police, the slow, painful emptying out of Nangla, the repeated return of the bullodzers, the resounding echoes of the voice inside, 'this life may be ours, but the decisions?', the relentlessness of the sound of hammers, the falling of walls left standing alone when no one is around, the endlessly continuing walks of the surveyors in the slowly deserting lanes?
A space built together, carefully, slowly, bit by little bit, has been ripped apart. Its inner coherence destroyed. Its ability to generate practices of being together extinguished. The fragments of Nangla, the fragments which constitute Nangla, will never again join.
A long process of making meaning, again, will begin. A process of saying, "the bench is a bench" will begin. Slowly, over time, the process of teaching a young one that pillow on a bed in a house with orange walls is for resting ones tired head, will begin. Slowly, a cup will be put on a saucer, and not just along it. A knife will be put together with an onion to slice it. A screw driver will be put to a screw to tighten it into a wall. Slowly... but it will never be the same again.
What lingers after the violating storming by the police, the slow, painful emptying out of Nangla, the repeated return of the bullodzers, the resounding echoes of the voice inside, 'this life may be ours, but the decisions?', the relentlessness of the sound of hammers, the falling of walls left standing alone when no one is around, the endlessly continuing walks of the surveyors in the slowly deserting lanes?
A space built together, carefully, slowly, bit by little bit, has been ripped apart. Its inner coherence destroyed. Its ability to generate practices of being together extinguished. The fragments of Nangla, the fragments which constitute Nangla, will never again join.
A long process of making meaning, again, will begin. A process of saying, "the bench is a bench" will begin. Slowly, over time, the process of teaching a young one that pillow on a bed in a house with orange walls is for resting ones tired head, will begin. Slowly, a cup will be put on a saucer, and not just along it. A knife will be put together with an onion to slice it. A screw driver will be put to a screw to tighten it into a wall. Slowly... but it will never be the same again.
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