The Edges of a Road, by Lakhmi
It was the 34th day from the day of the first demolition of Nangla. Nangla had lived each day with a new sound, a new noise. Today Nangla had begun to recall the sounds of the day people had first come there, with their few household items, to live here. But the time was not the same. A tent had come up on the other side of the road, below the DLF board. A crowd had gathered outside Nangla to witness the tent. People had returned to Nangla with a few household items.
Tents are set up on special occasions. Sometimes these occasions concern each person and all the families who live in Nangla – for instance when a politician delivers a speech, or when some officials come to make inquiries for some documentation. Is it a similar situation today?
No one wants to let the tent – its size, its form, its colour – out of their sight. After all, when police stands before a tent, looking out in your direction, how can that scene be left unseen by any pair of eyes? The other side of the road was filled with people. The edge of the road barely contained them. Men sat on small mounds of earth, wearing waist-clothes and vests, heads covered with a cloth. Women stood in their sarees, their bangled hands shielding their eyes. Their inner stubbornness stopped them from walking across and entering the tent.
The tent began to reveal itself, like a secret, in conversation after conversation. Everyone said their own thing.
“Today parcheez (slips) will be cut for land.”
“No. They are saying the tent will remain here for three days, and then demolition will begin.”
“I don't care about parcheez, I have bought rations for a month and will live here.”
And so, each of the pair of eyes, brimming over with questions, watched the tent, and measured it through such lines. Some people made small groups and lectured others. The excitement of the tent and the worry of the home moved along together, in everyone's minds.
On the other side of the road, the empty tent swayed in the wind.
The other edge of the road was lined with chairs, in patches with shades of trees, which seated RAF (Reserved Armed Force) and Delhi Police personnel.
The Supreme Court had stayed the demolition till the 9th of May. Then why this tent, and why now?
(...)
An RAF jawaan sat inside the tent, behind a desk covered with a white cloth, looking at people gather on the other side of the road. His name is Mahinder Singh [name changed]. Singh has been working with the RAF for a few years now, but has been unhappy with his work the last two months.
A small group of people, who felt they could ask the RAF jawaans and the Delhi Police personnel questions directly, walked into the tent, stood before the desk and, their heads lowered, asked him, “Sir, why has this tent been set up here?”
Singh replied, removing the sheet of the tent that kept blowing onto his head from behind him, “This tent, you see, was set up today, you see, to give parcheez for the new place. We have come – we came at 9:30 AM – but neither have the DDA people come, nor can we see the tent people anywhere.”
“Sir, when were you told you had to be here?”
“See, it's like this. We are told you have to go on such and such date for your duty. Go with so many people. So we come. But actually this is not our work, you know. But these days the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) is busy in election duties. So we have been deputed here. Our work is to maintain peace. Our work is when there is a strike, there, when there is an earthquake, there, when there is a politician's lecture, there, so no one gets excited, you know, in case of a riot, there, etc. Actually, I do not know much about today. You can ask one of the Delhi Police people.”
“Look, the DDA personnel have not arrived. But the tent has been set up. There is a riot in peoples' hearts across the road because of the tent. Look...”
“About this tent, it is like this, you see. The tent wala must have been told to set it up here on such and such date. He is not concerned with anything beyond that, you see. He is only concerned about his booking. He will remove the tent when the time of the booking is up. But this riot in peoples' hearts that you are talking about, who is to know what will come of it? We have been seeing it for two months now. This is not our work, after all. We have been going all over the city the last two months.
“Just last month we were on duty in this place. You see we reached there at 10:00 AM, and they began the breaking at about 11:00 AM. Some people had removed everything from their house. But those who hadn't, bulldozers were moved on their houses as well. You see it is not possible to reason and say, 'why not finish with another house, which has been emptied, and then return here'. They just shut their eyes and moved the bulldozer. There was some poor woman, who had a shop with plastic items like buckets and mugs. Without looking at her things, they broke everything. Inside, there was one mug stuck in the other. When it broke, about two thousand rupees came out of it. We said, take your money. If it reaches someone's hands, then you will lose even this. But she kept crying.
“You must know about the fire in Pushta. We were sent on duty there. We were at one end of the basti, but the fire was at the other end. That is, about two kilometers away. By the time we could reach that end, the fire had reached us. So much got finished there, that I cannot tell you. It was difficult to see. This is not our work, you see, but we have to see all this.
“Our work is just this much that we can pull someone's hand with force. We hold sticks and batons, but only to frighten. We have bombs, but they only make a sound, and do nothing more.”
Singh sat in the tent, looking across the road, and recounted all this one after the other. He probably didn't want to recount all this, with the other side of the road in his view, but the images kept appearing. Maybe the path he had taken when he joined the RAF has got lost in the last two months. “This is not our work,” he kept saying. Maybe he was uneasy with the gaze his uniform attracted, and his conscience grew uneasy with that gaze.
The pairs of eyes watching him sitting alone in the tent, will evoke his form to frighten their kids at night, if they refuse to sleep. Along with changing the meaning of things, eviction also changes the form and shape of things, and the mirror in which one looks at oneself.
“Our work is to maintain peace,” he said as he tied and tightened his shoe laces, and moving towards his battalion to collect them and leave for the Tilak Nagar police station, he continued, “our work is not to break houses.”
The tent was now emtpy. The numbers on the other side of the road continued to increase. Time moved slowly, and sounds became denser, and denser.