Nangla's Delhi

When one dwells in a place, one also abides by the ideas that are accepted in that place as being ideal for living. We even think of our future from within the mesh of these ideas. What seems to be at stake here is a consensus, arrived at over a long duration, about what should be sustained as the basis according to which life ought to be led. When a dwelling that has existed for a long time is broken, it is not only their homes that people are evicted out of. Demolition threatens people by scraping at the very foundations they have built their entire lives on.

It was after the demolition of many homes that some people found a place to live in, in Ghevra. The demolition of ones house leaves one steeped in many difficulties. In some ways, the energy mustered by different people to take care of their daily needs after a demolition, becomes a new basis on which to start constructing life afresh in a new place.

These needs include food, water, electricity, roads, means of transport, ways of earning a living, a house, a toilet. But there are some things which have more to do with ones heart and with a search for inner peace and self confidence, which also need an externalisation and a form. Such as: a mosque to offer namaz, a gurudwara to listen to guruwani, a church to find some peace of mind, a temple to pray in. These find their own place amidst the jostle of the everyday.

And they have in Ghevra too.

Ghevra, 24 June 2008

[I]

The daily journey to Ghevra has now become a pleasant one for me, but as I approach the turn that leads into Ghevra I can see, children in their school uniforms, restlessly crossing the road, back and forth, back and forth. Trying to get back to their homes, they call out to any richshaw driving past, "Bhaiyya, please take us along!" After four passengers have filled a single rickshaw, they climb in, standing in the space that is leftover between them. When the rickshaws don't slow down to take them in, they run along them and hang from the edges, uninvited. Sometimes they get together in small groups and plead with the drivers of trucks that carry mud, but which are empty, and travel homewards in them, joking with one another. Some travel without permission, clinging to the ladders and handles on the water tanks on their way to Ghevra, sometimes getting a beating from the drivers for it. One day I saw a water tank on its way to Ghevra. A boy hung on to it, even though at the back of the vehicle was painted the line: Don't hang from me, or I'll throw you off!

What makes someone silent, and when? It's so hard to understand this. Sometimes people are fearful of teams of government officials, and at other times it is the officials who get frightened by the thought of what people might do. What makes government officials fearful?