[18-07-2006]
On returning from Ghevra, when I enter my home, I can't see anything. I sit on one side and slowly wait for things to make themselves visible, for them to reacquaint themselves with me. Sometimes ma keeps to herself, lost in her work; at other times she asks me, “You're back very early today?”
I go to the toilet, then come back and drink water, and lie down. My mind revisits the morning I spent in Ghevra. Today Ghevra's journey to becoming a colony doesn't seem immeasureable, but I don't seem to be able to cover it. I feel my mother's past time is in that place somewhere. When I ask her, she says, “How can I recount my days in Mustfabad? Neither water not electricity; houses far away from each other, ground of sand and dust...”
To reach Ghevra you travel beyond Shakarpur and the big shopping malls and clubs, beyond the stretch of road where huge construction work continues. The journey challenges and asks us, “Where are you in this?”
A section from the blog has been edited as "Nangla's Delhi" in Sarai Reader 06
Link to Sarai Reader 06, Turbulence:
http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_06.html
Link to Nangla's Delhi in the Reader:
http://www.sarai.net/journal/06_pdf/09/01_nangla.pdf
Dear Friends,
For some time now, we have been thinking of ways in which it can be possible to allow for fresh images of Nangla Maachi to appear in the eyes of those who live in our locality, JP basti. One of the things we have done is to paint the couplet “It quenches the thirst of the thirsty, such is Nangla; It shelters those who come to the city of Delhi, such is Nangla” on matkas (earthen pitchers which cool water, popular in the summers), and to place these in different places in the locality.
From up above, in the sky.
I think I may fall, what if I do! But what have I to fear? God has, after all, made me to fly. But some of the others like me live the fear more intimately, and have begun to shy from flying. Perhaps it is the sights that they see which makes them fearful. I remember one such sight. Brick after brick was falling apart. It was a heart-wrenching sight. From the sky, people flocking and moving from where they live looked like us flock of birds. Constantly on the move. But when their place of abode is destroyed, what is it that they go out to seek? Is it for a new home? A new set of troubles and woes? A new identity? A new recognition or regard from the city? But from here, up above in the sky, from where I watch them, I feel all of this will not be possible...
Shadows are bound to form and follow us around as the sun's youthfulness increases. Settlements in Delhi today are not untouched by the demolition of Nangla. They also feel the scorch of the orbit of time that Nangla has passed through, and continues to, still. For instance, LNJP also perceives its future through Nangla.
“Instead of being constructed, Delhi is shrinking. Inside, it is becoming as constricted as it seems open from the outside, where people think it is their own. In the coming days, Delhi will become a city of uniformed people. This city is what it is because of its crowds, its density. When the number of people reduce, how will this city breathe? Will this city become one where, rather than living in it, people merely spend their lives in it?”
Stickers, audio files, and other media forms from the Nangla Lab can now also be viewed at:
http://www.sarai.net/nm.htm
As the evening spreads, street lamps that line the roads begin to cast their light, and cars begin to race on the roads with their twinkling headlights.
The evening at JP is radiant. People have wrapped up their work, and with time on their hands, have come out onto the main road, searching their friends, and respite from the April heat. Those who work in workshops have dried their brows and have come out to lighten the lines forming on their foreheads. People passing by on the road continue to halt at and move on from the shops according to their needs. Everyone holds their everyday tightly in their fists, careful that they don't lose their grip, lest it slip out.
People decorate their houses according to their needs. Every person has her corner/space/objects in her home, which she decorates with love. For instance when my father used to do his sewing work at home, he used to decorate the corner where his machine used to be kept, with posters of heroes, heroins and models. It wasn't important for him to know their names. He used to see in the clothes worn in those photographs a publicity of his own work.
A twenty-twenty five year old man is sitting by the road, his legs folded under him. Next to him is a hillock-like pile of things, covered by a sheet. Whenever a car passes by, the sheet blows a little, tearing off a bit, and the steel utensils, cans for storing flour and children's clothes become visible. The basti is in its everyday rhythm. People know that a settlement has been broken somewhere, but the reverberations of that are deep inside hearts, not on the surface. But those tremors have taken a concrete form and lie before everyone's eyes today, as this young man by the road. People passing by him ask him, “What happened brother? Why are you sitting here?”
