The kilometers don't feel like they have been traversed, on reaching Ghevra. Instead, the distance seems to hide in the spread of Ghevra.
Ghevra is discussed often in Dakshinpuri. How can it be otherwise? When a settlement in the city is faced with demolition and there is talk of relocation, a resettlement colony like Dakshinpuri begins to reminisce. Images and memories from its own past emerge. The thought of every moment passing in the settlement that is being demolished begins to evoke moments that constitute its own past. Narrations begin about what the city had flet like when one was being evicted from ones own home. The tension in the city becomes near to the self.
In moments like this, the only difference between Dakshinpuri and Ghevra seems to be that with the passage of time, Dakshinpuri has reclaimed its place in the city, whereas Ghevra has just begun on this journey.
"Where have they brought and left us, so far!" When I hear someone in Ghevra saying this, I feel the distance between Dakshinpuri and Ghevra has stretched and become infinite. It seems then that Ghevra is not only distant from the present moment of Dakhshinpuri, but also from the imagination of the emerging city.
A small space had been left between two walls before the entrance to the house, for a wooden bench. The kuchha floor was freshly plastered with a paste of mud. A 2006 calendar hung on the wall of matted bamboo.
Twelve hands of one family with hammers, small and big, break into smaller pieces bricks that have been used before, to fill a broad, leveled piece of land. They are laying the foundation of their home, on which the walls that will then gather palimpsests of time of generations of their family, will be built. Each time this image appears in the mind, there will be another beginning, a fresh energy and people will quicken again their slackening pace. It seems people in Ghevra have resolved to challenge the limits of their capacities.
The attraction of the city lies in its expansive spread. People are strangers to each other in the city; but for a city, no one is a stranger. A city is a space that allows nameless relationships to nurture. The city doesn't invite anyone to it, but no one who comes is turned away either. If someone has the verve and capacity to arrive, then the city doesn't hesitate in owning that person. There is fear in the city, but there is also something that allays fears. Something that makes one free of worry. A woman who has always been in a veil in her village can head towards the city with her two-year-old child.
In the thousands of corners in the city, there will surely be one that holds space which is destined for me. “City”, the word holds this meaning that everyone shares an understanding about. People come to the city with this stubborn thought in their hearts, searching their corner. Unstable routines become their identities, with which they enter the city, beginning once again to plant their feet.
You see the word “Ghevra” rushing around on buses before you reach Ghevra Mod (Turn). The value of the word “Ghevra”, written on the bus stop is not limited to identifying the place. It will circulate in the city with a velocity as signs and in different voices.
