From far it looked like nothing more than an empty field. As we neared it, small houses made of bamboo mats and poles could be seen. Some houses were adjacent to each other, while others were apart. I walked on and soon I found myself stading in the middle of a process of the making of a new part of the city.
Two rickshawalas stood on either side of the lane. There were carts, one after the other; people were selling things. There were five to six shops. This part has taken the form of the first market in Ghevra.
"It doesn't seem to me you have come from somewhere else. You seem to me to be from here itself!"
When she said this, it broke through Yashoda and my hesitation about it being our first day here. Smiling, we sat down on the cot that lay beside the cot on which she was sitting.
Noorjahan baaji lived in a house of forty yards in Lakshmi Nagar's area number 8 for fifteen years. Now she has been given a plot of 18 sq m here. As of now, the plot has not got transformed into a casing supported by beams of concrete. There are few people around, and so Noorjahan baaji's heart is not in this place yet. "But so what! I have somehow made my place amidst others who live here, and I live among them."
The narrow spaces between houses that have been constructed does not shy away from inviting others. It is prepared to soak in different kinds of presences into itself.
There are three cots in her house. Sitting on one, the dark skinned Noorjahan apaa, with half the hair on her head having turned white, gold ear rings strung into the string attached to her spectacles, was intently opening the chain on a bag she was holding. Another bag emerged from this bag, shinier and more beutiful than the one before. She unzipped this second bag, and it revealed a third bag, more beautiful than either of the two before, and with fresher colours. Seeing this, a smile spread across my lips. I said excitedly, "Wow! Bag inside bag! It's looking so beautiful."
Sweeping her hand over a bag she said, "My daughter gave this to me; she made it from the scraps of cloth left over each time she got a new suit stitched. She said to me, 'ammi, use them to keep your special things'." Saying this she began looking at the bags lovingly.
“Can't you do it in lesser time? The sooner it gets done, the better. There will be a roof over our heads and a place to rest. Then one will not feel reluctant to return home everyday.”
“It's a 12 m sq plot, I am a mason. My hands and feet and not machines. It would be good for me if the job could get completed in lesser time; then I could move to my next job.”
Eyes are trying to calibrate the measured plot of land from behind a veil, “Mistryji, how many bricks should I order?”
The mason paused, looked upwards, moved his head from left to right, looked at the four corners of the plot. His lips moved slowly.
“It will take 4000 bricks. If more are needed, then we will see.”
Right where Ghevra begins is a corner, where, under the shade of a huge tree, some hawkers gather. Vegetable sellers, sellers of summer drinks, spice sellers, people who manage STD-PCO booths – they have all created a feeling of a small market here. This place, and the way in which people here talk to each other and work, gives a glimpse of the capacity of people here to make their new space and spend their time in it. I spoke with one person here, whose name is Sunil. He must be around 25 years old. He is well built and he has a thick mustache. By profession, he is a truck driver.
Many words weave a space together. If a string is removed from a woven mat, the mat does not weaken. But the missing string is immediately visible. This is exactly how it is when there is an absence of certain words.
Usually, when one sees four people having gathered and chatting, one knows they are doing “time-pass”. But words like time-pass, getting bored have not taken seed in Ghevra yet. Here, seeing four people together indicates something serious is being discussed. Seeing a group like this, people passing by unhesitatingly try to join in the conversations by standing near or far from the group.
Countless people are being cast onto the land of Sawda-Ghevra.
Those lives, which had once before transformed a barren land by infusing it with life force and decorating it, have now begun to descend on the land of Ghevra, to once again take on the challenge. Another struggle to give direction to the wayward lines of time has begun. The process of rehabilitation of settlements from Lakshmi Nagar and Shahdra has begun.
One man has driven four to six bamboo sticks into the ground to create a frame; tied ropes around the frame and made a cover by putting blankets and sheets over them.
The afternoon sun shoots rays like arrows to the ground. In the fields, each grain of sand seethes like lava.
Two men sat on the dusty ground, making a thatched roof. There was a big needle in their hands. They tightened bamboo poles to a bamboo mat with a twine they had strung through the needle. When, after standing near them for a while, I sat down beside them, they glanced towards me. I asked, “Are you making a house, or are you artisans?” They replied enthusiastically, “In today's world, who isn't an artisan! Everyone is an artisan, someone lesser, someone more than others.”
The afternoon glare reached the low wall of bricks; the wall hastily soaked up water being sprinkled on it. The sum total of the first two days' work had been a foundation with an elevation of two feet. It takes one week and one day to make an entire house.
But how will this calcuation account for the day preceding this one week and a day?
This year Ravana will be brought from Nangla and will be slain in JJ Colony Sawda-Ghevra's B-block. The tent has been set up. Those who set it up said, “This is where we are going to live now. There we used to set up the stage for Ramlila on government land; but this space is our own. Then why should we not perform our old Ramlila here!” As of now, all the artists are separated from each other. But whatever the case may be, a beginning has been made.
