Nangla's Delhi

As the evening spreads, street lamps that line the roads begin to cast their light, and cars begin to race on the roads with their twinkling headlights.

The evening at JP is radiant. People have wrapped up their work, and with time on their hands, have come out onto the main road, searching their friends, and respite from the April heat. Those who work in workshops have dried their brows and have come out to lighten the lines forming on their foreheads. People passing by on the road continue to halt at and move on from the shops according to their needs. Everyone holds their everyday tightly in their fists, careful that they don't lose their grip, lest it slip out.

[I]

A woman sits, a hammer with a wooden handle in hand, amidst the rubble of her broken house. She picks up one brick at a time, knocks the cement off it, cleaning it, and making a separate pile of cleaned bricks. The heat of the sun makes her sweat, and the sweat halts like small beads on her face. She stops from time to time, to wipe the sweat away, with the hem of her saree. Some beads trickle down to her lips, and her tongue drinks them. She turns her body and drinks water from a small vessel she has kept in the shade. Her lips are moistened.

Nangla looks different in the morning. There is no electricity, and sounds echo softer than they do otherwise. The echoes of demolition and eviction are also softer. It looks like Nangla is finding its way into a new life, in the morning.

People decorate their houses according to their needs. Every person has her corner/space/objects in her home, which she decorates with love. For instance when my father used to do his sewing work at home, he used to decorate the corner where his machine used to be kept, with posters of heroes, heroins and models. It wasn't important for him to know their names. He used to see in the clothes worn in those photographs a publicity of his own work.

The grey cement ground that is used for morning prayers was scratched with various shapes for playing games, using red chalk. The green doors of class rooms were shut and locked with identical locks. Some doors were not locked, though, and one could peep through them to catch a glimpse of what they may have looked like when they were still in use. The dust infused air had settled in the class rooms. Piles of dust lay accumulated in the corners.

A twenty-twenty five year old man is sitting by the road, his legs folded under him. Next to him is a hillock-like pile of things, covered by a sheet. Whenever a car passes by, the sheet blows a little, tearing off a bit, and the steel utensils, cans for storing flour and children's clothes become visible. The basti is in its everyday rhythm. People know that a settlement has been broken somewhere, but the reverberations of that are deep inside hearts, not on the surface. But those tremors have taken a concrete form and lie before everyone's eyes today, as this young man by the road. People passing by him ask him, “What happened brother? Why are you sitting here?”

His face bears a thousand lines, like a map through which Ataabul traces the path to return to his yesterday. His eyes are moist. Many questions seem alive in them, rising as if from deep inside his turbulent heart. The walls of the new house have not been plastered yet. The threshold is without a door. Ataabul sits beside it, his back to it, his legs folded under him. He is wearing a white kurta pyjama. Light is flooding in from the door-less threshold, hiding his face in darkness, loosing itself in the grey walls of the house.

A short video using a still (digital) camera, at Nangla Maachi. To us, it is intriguing in the blurring of lines between measuring for "Building" and measuring for "Demolition".

For Measure 01, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03LmdaxVlrY

Video created: March 30, 2006.

Nangla Maanchi stands at the crossroads of life where the lane, the house, the space, the street corners which had been considered to be ones own for twenty years are today being snatched away. Who is it who is snatching away the small space that one called ones courtyard and why? What is it that lies ahead? Everyone has an answer to this, but everyone crosschecks with each other, trying to get a stamp of consensus from those they are surrounded by.

There is a restlessness in the city. Everyday, people roam the streets, with their inner landscapes, tussling with it amidst others, on roads which are like the lines on our finger tips - which cannot be removed, erased. From where one stands, one can sense the present time, look back and see time that has passed, but no corner of the time to come can be seen. Ahead, there is a sky. The sky flows into time that is to come, it is the intimation of things to come. Time watches everyone through the frames it makes with its different weights and scales. Nothing is hidden from the eyes of time.