Nangla's Delhi

From the built form of LNJP Basti - where living quarters, workshops, studios, shops, meeting places, storage spaces are joined in an intricate meshwork. Rather than zoned urban settlements, why not take this route! Here's two structural propositions, from two very small sections of LNJP.

^{Neelofar's Ghera} 

^{Neelofar's Ghera (Another view)}

 

^{Proposition 01: From Bhoori Maiya's Lane (Top View)}

^{Bhoori Maiya's Lane (Zoomed in)}

More drawings coming soon :)

The First Woman

A bucketful of colourful clothes soak by the door. Soapy foam has formed over them. Beside this bucket is another one, filled with water. A middle-aged woman furiously rubs a cake of Phool soap on a pink salwar kameez. The soap fights the dirt of the suit without lathering. She now scrubs it with a brush. Her manner is hurried. Her muffled voice shows the strain. “I have to finish all this quickly,” she says, “Then I have to get Preeti from school”.

As soon as I entered Nangla, I heard a clear sound. It was from a harmonium. Someone was playing the tune of an old film song. But his fingers did not sound practiced. I wondered where source of the sound was. The tune faltered more than once, but it wasn't difficult to recognise the song.

[I]
It's 9:00 AM. Black clouds have overtaken the sky. It is quiet around Nangla. Cars are speeding by on the Ring Road. Suddenly, water starts to pour down from the sky. Bikes stop and young men driving them take shelter under the bus stand. Very few people from Nangla have stepped out today. Those who have, have covered themselves with black tarpaulin sheets.

Nangla's morning began at 10:30 AM today. Everyone may have woken up at day break, but the early morning downpour kept everyone indoors. The day was thrown back by an hour by the rains. The day's chores began a few hours late, and will have ended later than they usually do. There are additional tasks to be done as well – like sealing the cracks on roofs. Materials accumulating for months on the roofs of homes have to be cleared and a new place found for them. Garbage has to be discarded. Disarranged tarpaulin sheets have to be placed again carefully on the iron rods that make the framework of the roof, and rejoined at the edges.

"A cooling river and a pair of hissing serpants flank Nanglamachi. The river is the Yamuna, and the serpants are the two wide lanes of the Ring Road with their speeding traffic. Even stranger clasp each others' hands to navigate across the Ring Road." [A popular description of the Ring Road, at Nangla.]

One always waits for the one who comes. Different people relate differently with those who come - as guests, as friends. And after a  few days, the one who comes changes to one who has the capacity to be a host, to welcome others. I think of those who come, as friends. But some friends throw colour on our faces in a way that there is no option but to be smeared by it.

A sound emerges from the loudspeaker of the mosque, and spreading through the lanes, envelopes the settlement, giving it something unique to be recognised by.

Every place has mosques, but there is something special about the experience of the mosque here. Each evening, a new sound emanates from here and makes home in people's minds. Sometimes the sound startles, sometimes it brings joy. Whatever the feeling, the sound makes everyone halt for a while. People otherwise immersed in their work pause for a moment. Feet stop on the way to their destinations, morsels of food remain uneaten in hands and mouths.

Look at this fellow here! From his mannerisms one can tell this is the one day in the week when he can give in to the impulse of not getting out of bed. Idleness has settled on his body. His heart says, just keep lying on your bed on the floor. The sun has risen so long ago, but he has covered his face with a sheet and is playing hide and seek with its rays.