[Reader-list] the Act of leisure

[Anand Vivek Taneja]

Dear Iram and Taha,

" We invite readers and writers on the list to share personal experiences/
discuss opinions/ raise questions on the institutionlistion of leisure and
the surveillance/ control of leisure/public space in Delhi and elsewhere.
How law determines the way we behave and how does one perform in the face
of this bareness of act?"

So - 
A brief history of the death of a professional loiterer -  at the
Humayun's Tomb Complex -
or, the grass belongs to the Aga Khan...

1998 -  I jump an old, crumbling medieval wall, and land up in the
walled garden surrounding Isa Khan's Tomb, an enclosure just off
Humayun's Tomb, and so far, 'free entry', whether you jump the wall or
enter through the gate. The ticketed entry started only at the
Humayun's gateway to Humayun's Tomb, further on. Precisely by having
leaped the wall, the 'free' walled garden where no one bothered you
seemed like arcadia.

2000- A hot summer, I have to see off a friend at Nizamuddin station,
but am a bit early. so i go to Isa Khan's Tomb, still free entry,
climb upto the roof, and lie down in a small window cut into the eight
feet thick drum supporting the dome, for light and ventilation. the
thick stone, and the cross ventilation are cool, and i have a
beautiful, undisturbed hour of sleep, waking up to see the names of
many lovers carved into the plaster... evidence of other loiterers 
who lounged around here at peace... many families loll around in the
green lawns of Humayun's tomb come evening, it is a popular picnic
place.

2000. winter - People from The Naramda Valley have arrived at
Nizamuddin Station in the morning, to protests against the Supreme
Court's recent decision to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
Volunteers from Delhi have been told that there is police surveillance
on, and in order for the proposed dharna at the Supreme Court to be
successful, we have to disperse all over the city. it's many hours
till the dharna, where do we  go? As the sun is rising, twenty of us,
villagers and shehri-s walk into the Isa Khan Tomb enclosure. No one
bothers us for the first hour or so, but then the guard from Humayun's
Tomb (hired from a private security agency, in which the guards are
trained at, ironically, HumayunPur, behind SafdarJung Enclave)  comes
visiting, and looks very worried.
We tell him we're here for Deve Gowda's Kisan Ralley - of which the
posters are up all over the city, and are left in peace.

2001. railings go up around the Humayun's Tomb Complex . The entry to
Isa Khan's Tomb is now also ticketed.  differntial ticketing.
foreigners pay twenty five times more than indians do - ten rupees
versus two hundred and fifty. you don't need white skin to be a
foreigner. or black skin. you could be from the north east. you could
have long hair. you could be carrying a backpack. i get used to being
asked the potentially profound question, 'Kahaan se aaaye hain?' The
Jahaan-e-Khusrau Festival starts, at which the least of the tickets is
a hundred rupees.

2001. summer. i am sitting with a woman friend on the roof of isa
khan's tomb. a security guard comes and asks us to leave. then he
calls me aside and asks, 'kaam banana hai kya?'

sometime in 2001. there is a shootout in the humayun's tomb parking
lot, at night. the police kill an alleged terrorist.

2004.last sunday.  much money has come in to the humayun's tomb
complex from the aga khan trust over the past few years. part of the money
has presumably spent on the hi-tech entry turnstiles  with magnetic
strip cards, operated manually, by the security guards. and the
computerised ticketing. inside, there are notices that warn you not to
sit on the grass, and there are many guards patrolling to ensure that
you do not. and last sunday, i noticed that there were men, in plain
clothes, noting down the number of each and every vehicle which was
parking at Humayun's Tomb.
XXX

- Monuments=Museums=Malls=Control Space

-	All leisure space/time is potential profit. 
-	All leisure/space time has to be channelled/disciplined/regimented.
-	'Have you seen anyone but drivers sitting in the park (read Greens, 
read Commons) in M-Block Market?'
-	'Shift the patriwallas into the park'. 
-	'Do not walk on the grass.' – signboard at Humayun's Tomb. 

 - It costs over six hundred rupees to watch the Taj in the moonlight. 

I have been reading The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping - a
bulky, wrist spraining volume in which text is often incidental to the
argument,  edited by Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas,
and Sze Tsung Leong. To me, it is a remarkable documentation and
reiteration of the processes and the architecture that is shaping
urban spaces globally, but not in the registers of intervention and
outrage, as one would have  expected, but of cynicism and irony.

The last article in the book, which to my mind significantly sums up
the various urban trajectories that the book maps, is 'Ulterior
Spaces' by Sze Tsung Leong, which dwells on the concept of 'Control
Space.'

To quote – 

'Currently, data represents the technology by which the city is being
reconfigured, regardless of its physical composition. Information has
become the new mapping device that unlocks the city to reveal the
inner working of life, economics and society in vivid detail…
 

'…the manifestation of the powers that configure the city have shifted
from the outwardly visible to the invisible; in other words, the city
is rendered less through composition, gravity, form or material than
it is through statistics, demographics and economic performance…

'… control space is motivated by the desire to understand, predict and
even fashion the ever-changing, often imperceptible, processes of
urban life. As a result the shape of the contemporary city is no
longer cohered by the physical visible characteristics such as form,
iconography, or density, but arrived at by default, as the residue of
ulterior motives.

'AIDA™. Artificial Intelligence Discrimination Architecture.
Originally developed to identify Russian missiles in space, AIDA is
now used to "recapture possible store defectors in a pre-emptive
strike before they start shopping elsewhere."

…(Safeways) will be able to spot consumer unhappiness by cross
checking existing sales patterns (through data from loyalty cards)
with current baskets… activate corrective measures – such as direct
mail and special offers.

XXX

The grass that still grows in M-Block Market, Gk-I, is not 'controlled
space'. Yet. Leisure that is not consumption is not in the state's
interests because it has the potential to be subversive. (of course,
the Ego Thai terrorist problematises that…) It is not in the interests
of those who the state chooses to partner –who want you to consume.

Shuddha  once drew linkages between the absences that (de)linked ACP
Rajbir Singh of the Delhi Police, The shootout in the basement of
Ansals Plaza, the figure of the terrorist, and the criminal negligence
of the Ansals that led to the Uphaar tragedy…. Those linkages are
important to my understanding of the Pandu in CC –especially with a
new mall and mutiplex coming up at what was once Grandlays.

The space for leisure is the space of consumption is the space of control. 
In the interests of National Security, please Keep Off the Grass. 



 
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:59:08 +0100, iram at sarai.net <iram at sarai.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> We would like to initiate a discussion on the reader list on issues
> involving the performance of law in our everyday lived experience through
> the institutionalisation of the leisure act and the intertwining of
> leisure space and surveillance.
> 
>  Some of the issues that we would like to probe/ excavate/ explore/
> understand also through an experiential study of the New Friends Colony
> Community Centre, are:
> 
>  - The nuances that govern the State and non state players in their
>  behaviour in non formal spaces which do not seem to fall under the purview
>  of either public or private space.
> 
>  - The control/ censorship of thought and action as a direct fallout of the
>  use of quasi legal language by the State and its implications in codes of
>  deemed public behaviour.
> 
>  - The ambivalent dictates in the name of public security and legality that
>  form the basic subtext of restraining ordinary forms of leisure.
> 
>  - Does the State want the public to stay within the `private' space of
>  the home- safe and secure and to come out only to engage in some form of
>  economic activity or other?  And is leisure activity in public space
> possible without spending money?
> 
>  AN INCIDENT: On a cold, foggy evening, last winter, Taha and a couple of
> other friends, Bikas and Gaurav, all students  from Mass communication
> Research Centre, Jamia were sitting at the fountain opposite Bon Bon
> pastry shop in New Friends Colony Community Centre. CC, as it is popularly
> called by Jamia students, lies in the shadow of Softel Surya hotel. It is
> surrounded by a number of posh south Delhi gated colonies, the Jamia
> University and its hostels,  and a few other middle class colonies. The
> last bus stop for #400, is Okhla Village barely 2 kilometres from CC.
> 
>  So far, CC has been able to cater to all its distinctly diverse
> communities of patrons.  So, if there is the stylish Ego Thai on one hand,
> there is also a more middle class  New Delhi Food Corner, serving the best
> butter chicken in all of Delhi.
> 
> The khaki uniform is not an unfamiliar sight in CC  because of the
> presence of New Friends Colony  thana within the complex of shops and
> restaurants. The  people seemed to be used to a certain amount of police
> presence and  control, especially around diwali, dusshehera, eid, new years
> eve, 26th January,  and the 15th August.
> 
>  Despite illegal encroachments by shop owners, and a mushrooming community
> of street kids from the Okhla railway station flyover complex, the
> relationship between the police and public is what can be termed as
> normal- normal to our times. The wine and beer shops close at 10 pm but CC
> would remain open till 1 am on normal days. That evening, as these friends
> were sitting at the fountain and talking about what young people would
> normally talk about… studies, career, politics, films,colleagues, etc
> that Taha noticed a man in khaki with what suspiciously looked like a 3
> CCD camera, video recording what looked like themselves!
> 
>  On questioning, the man proudly identified himself as Pandu[name changed],
> a constable  with the NFC thana. They told him that they were media
> students in MCRC,  Jamia and were working with Zee news, star news and
> CNBC! On hearing this, Pandu revealed that he was friends with an ex-
> student who worked as a reporter  with Aaj Tak news channel.
> 
>  He pointedly asked them to sit in either Barista or Mc Donalds, if they
> wanted to be out that late and instead of loitring around.
> 
>  According to Pandu a training in digital camera and basic non linear
> editing software  had been given to at least one constable  in all police
> stations of Delhi. Instructions had been given to record the janta from
> 7.30 pm till 9:00 pm everyday.
> 
>  Pandu proudly showed these guys the footage shot so far. A couple of men
> having beer in a car, zoom in to the number plate of the car, some close
> up shots of women and mid shots of themselves. In fact, because Taha's
> face was covered by a shawl, he had changed the camera angles to get a
> better shot. It was amply clear was that Pandu was a not a very good
> camera person!
> 
>  Pandu disclosed, with an air of self importance, that because an alleged
> terrorist  arrested from some part of Delhi, had apparently had dinner at
> Ego Thai, orders were issued to video graph the area,  map people, and
> generate profiles of  regulars and new comers.
> 
>  In retrospect, the enormity of the situation did strike these people but
>       final projects were on and you don't take pangas with the police if
> you
> are a law abiding student from jamia Millia Islamia. Hence, though  the
> matter was much discussed/ debated, but just that.
> 
>  This summer Taha ran into Pandu again. At CC. He promptly shot Taha for a
> a few minutes, smiled, waved a hi and went on his way like a friendly
> neighbourhood constable. Possibly his camera work had improved but one can
> only guess, for this time he did not show the footage to Taha.
> 
>  College was finally over. Taha and his friends have left the hostel. Bikas
> wrote a short story about the incident but I guess lost it in shifting
> accomodation. He works with CNBC. Gaurav is a free lance photographer
> and Taha is a  researcher on information society.
> 
>  Community Centre is as welcoming as before. They are now building a mall
> cum multiplex cinema hall on top of Mc Donalds. CC just might change.
> 
>  We invite readers and writers on the list to share personal experiences/
> discuss opinions/ raise questions on the institutionlistion of leisure and
> the surveillance/ control of leisure/public space in Delhi and elsewhere.
> How law determines the way we behave and how does one perform in the face
> of this bareness of act?
> 
> looking forwards to responses,
> cheers,
> iram and taha
> 
> _________________________________________
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-- 
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and
taste good with ketchup.
http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/