Here and Elsewhere, by Lakhmi
In the last few days, things have been made and unmade, there have been doubts about what it is that is being made, what is being unmade, and questions about what the new plan is, after all. A dwelling is broken, and along with it, its time, weave, modes of living, questions about life are ripped apart, and replaced with turbulence, tension, and a realisation that even the eye of law has stopped casting its gaze upon the dwelling.
A dwelling: In which people live in self-evolved modes, in which each moment gives rise to a new fable about life, and in which eyes dream living dreams: “What should be painted on this wall?” “The roof drips, I should get a new roof laid.” “The legs of the cot have to be removed and placed under the almirah.” “A new window in the house will be good, as it will mean sounds will flow into the room all the time.” Dreams like these, and so many more – including those which are not limited to one's own courtyard.
But law draws new lines and makes new boundaries every moment. Those who live in cities live in these maps that are drawn everyday, and the lines of which clash with the lines of their lives.
It is not that people who live in cities don't redraw maps themselves. Whenever difficulties are faced regarding water, electricity or sewage, old and new lanes are dug up, and technicians of the city, who can be found along different lanes, are called upon.
Today, once again, the enterprise to remake the city has begun, on a large scale. New beautiful maps and plans are being drawn up. These are perhaps, impossible to take to some conclusion without evictions and demolitions. But how many ever new maps and plans demolitions make possible, demolitions pierce and sting lives. Demolitions distill out lives from walls, lanes, brick-paved pathways and doors. The approaching imagination of the city must change so many forms when this happens.
Does this imagination include a demand for an understanding of the time lived in the city by a dwelling like Nangla? Nangla has already given up the first half of itself to the city. The remainder, not as yet fully unmoored from Nangla, tries to distract itself from its own decisions about its future, and continues to light up the same place in which it has lived for years, and where, passing through the membrane of the curtain, conversations, events, happenings of the streets, lanes and roads of the city used to get transformed into stories.
In Nangla today, there are pockets where people have left, and along with them have taken away even the sounds of the place. The three days of demolition were a new direction of the city for Nangla Maanchi. Many neighbourhoods lie empty in Nangla, and inhabitants have scattered in different parts of the city in different colonies, where new relationships, new contexts, new neighbourhoods, new stories will now be born. Memories will be made, and memories will be dispersed.
It seems as if demolitions have not removed pages from the diaries of lives, but added many new blank pages to the diaries, for something new to be inscribed on them. But how will the city include this in its own understanding and perspective?
For people who remain in Nangla, demolitions are being lived in installments. Everyday, the same question appears in everyones' mouths, “When is the next date?” Those who have the capacity or the power to gather a hundred others around them, busy themselves in guesswork, planting some poles of re-assurance. “What is about to happen?” asks each pair of eyes. These questions and the desires they withhold, ask that the direction of the future take them elsewhere. What will this “elsewhere” be? How will the law, and the city, inscribe this in its imagination?