Nangla's Delhi

Through the night, hundreds with candles searched their names among the dot-matrix lists of plot numbers issued by the State, plastered across the outer wall of the masjid. With morning came a day like no other. From the first thud of the hammer six months before, to this moment of travel across the city to the timeless, open environs of Savda-Ghevra, it had been a bargain with time. On the morning of 30^th August, the settlement of Nangla Manchi lay splintered into a hundred sites.

A section from the blog has been edited as "Nangla's Delhi" in Sarai Reader 06
Link to Sarai Reader 06, Turbulence:
http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_06.html
Link to Nangla's Delhi in the Reader: http://www.sarai.net/journal/06_pdf/09/01_nangla.pdf

“Entertainment will never be the same again”, said the billboard showing a mass of junk electronics being swept away, over the parchee tent opposite Nanglamachi. I kept looking at it, wondering whether to take in this piece of irony staring at me, or to ignore it, or to see it in relation with all other ironies present in the situation. I decided to be indifferent.

360 degrees at the entrance to Ghevra

Point of view:
Sonu Book Depot
And Gift Gallery
And Cosmetics Centre
All kinds of books for standard one to twelve can be bought here.
For example, Guides, Sample Papers, etc.
Note: Cosmetics and gift items can be bought here at appropriate rates.
For example, Lipstick, Bindi, Cream, etc.
Vir Bazaar Road, Lane with the main bus stand, Ghevra Village, Delhi – 81

Parchee issued by the MCD, as receipt of payment of Rs. 7000 - "share money from dwellers" towards a plot of land elsewhere in the city.

The gate remained shut, guarded by two policemen. One man stood holding the bars, peering in. In his left hand he held a white polythene bag. Behind him men and women formed separate lines. Men stood along the wall on the left side of the gate, where the cycle repair stall has been since the first round of demolitions. The women formed another line along the right, where two cobblers – one of them always asleep – set up their separate stalls.

I felt uneasy, like an outsider to that which I was witnessing.

Before my eyes, the foundation of a new neighbourhood was being laid alongside the erasure of the last bit of social relations of an existing one. Today the felling of Nangla leaped closer to its destined conclusion.

Five men in plain clothes appeared before Nangla. They set up a small, faded red tent by the Ring Road. One of them turned into a messenger and reached the Hafiz at the mosque. On hearing his message, the Hafiz looked worried, lost in another world. The messenger returned to the tent, sat on a chair and waited. The Hafiz spread the message over Nangla like one throws broken garlands over a crowd:

“Everyone is urged to gather all their documents, organise Rs 7000, and get their slips from under the tent in the park by the Ring Road.”