The Unmaking of the Riverfront, by Shveta
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 30th August, the settlement of Nangla Manchi lay splintered into a hundred sites.
Security guards and policemen guarded the gate of the school. Residents turned alien to the familiar space, where only last month hundreds had procured their children's school leaving certificates. Inside, MCD officials sat across tables under a dark blue canvas roof, issuing white slips against the pink ones issued a few days before. An old man, his blue ink-marked thumb wearily away from his white kurta, waited as his companion carefully folded their white slip with his passport size photograph and plot number.
By the time a woman procured her slip and reached her home, it had collapsed to debris in the clutches of a yellow trawler. Her household items breathed heavily underneath, as she stood aside, waiting to remove brick after brick to pull them out. A constant stream of objects traveled around her. A television, a suitcase of clothes, a bundle with steel utensils, an umbrella, speakers of a music system, a wooden cupboard, a cot bent with years of being sat upon, a purple stuffed toy, a rusty red cylinder.
The dense spread of Nangla diminished and kept slowly collapsing to the ground under the unrelenting hammers of the demolition squad.
The young tempo contractor gently told an old man after checking his white parchee, to find another family he would travel with. He was on contract with the MCD for fifty tempos. Two families to a truck – several had already left for Ghevra. Scrap dealers haggled with women casting away what could not be carried. The weighing balance got no rest.
Many stood by the fresh MCD notice with their documents, still awaiting the first recognition of their documents. Hundreds of residents of Nangla will continue in their waiting, with indeterminacy and uncertainty, for many more months. Having been compelled to differentiate through documents, living through circulation of fragmented information and rumours, witness to performances of influence by local politicians and hopeful of their responses to sudden actions of the State, withstanding repeated encounters with bureaucracy and court petitions, and doubtful of a stable and legal plot of land in the city, remarkably, people not only survived, but created in them a renewed energy for building another, new settlement, elsewhere.
By evening the thumping hammers and the clamour of the falling bricks had stopped. It takes four hours to physically raze a thirty year old settlement to the ground. The tired demolition squad dragged its feet away. A handful of policemen stayed behind. Women cleaned small pockets to create corners and set up kitchens for one night. Children sat beside bundles of household items, narrating the elders' plans for the next day. With all structures in its path felled, breeze from the Yamuna blew unencumbered. Outside, on the Ring Road, traffic eased, as the last tempo to Savda-Ghevra had left for the day.
Text written for Tehelka, Vol3 Issue 36, 16 September 2006.
By the time a woman procured her slip and reached her home, it had collapsed to debris in the clutches of a yellow trawler. Her household items breathed heavily underneath, as she stood aside, waiting to remove brick after brick to pull them out. A constant stream of objects traveled around her. A television, a suitcase of clothes, a bundle with steel utensils, an umbrella, speakers of a music system, a wooden cupboard, a cot bent with years of being sat upon, a purple stuffed toy, a rusty red cylinder.
The dense spread of Nangla diminished and kept slowly collapsing to the ground under the unrelenting hammers of the demolition squad.
The young tempo contractor gently told an old man after checking his white parchee, to find another family he would travel with. He was on contract with the MCD for fifty tempos. Two families to a truck – several had already left for Ghevra. Scrap dealers haggled with women casting away what could not be carried. The weighing balance got no rest.
Many stood by the fresh MCD notice with their documents, still awaiting the first recognition of their documents. Hundreds of residents of Nangla will continue in their waiting, with indeterminacy and uncertainty, for many more months. Having been compelled to differentiate through documents, living through circulation of fragmented information and rumours, witness to performances of influence by local politicians and hopeful of their responses to sudden actions of the State, withstanding repeated encounters with bureaucracy and court petitions, and doubtful of a stable and legal plot of land in the city, remarkably, people not only survived, but created in them a renewed energy for building another, new settlement, elsewhere.
By evening the thumping hammers and the clamour of the falling bricks had stopped. It takes four hours to physically raze a thirty year old settlement to the ground. The tired demolition squad dragged its feet away. A handful of policemen stayed behind. Women cleaned small pockets to create corners and set up kitchens for one night. Children sat beside bundles of household items, narrating the elders' plans for the next day. With all structures in its path felled, breeze from the Yamuna blew unencumbered. Outside, on the Ring Road, traffic eased, as the last tempo to Savda-Ghevra had left for the day.
Text written for Tehelka, Vol3 Issue 36, 16 September 2006.
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