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.

“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.

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.”

Today Bijender bhai sahab was not with his harmonium, the scrap dealer was not at his shop.

“You didn't go?”

I stopped. “Where?”

When Jaanu went home from Delhi for a few days, he described Nangla to his baba, beginning with happiness, and turning to its condition in the days of its demolition.

“Baba, where I live, there are big houses and small houses. Most of the houses are small. You know, like the little mud hut near the row of flowering plants in front of the house.”

“Son, how do people sustain themselves?”

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.