[Reader-list] Many Lives of an Urban Village

[ravikant at sarai.net]

This is a translation of the first post from Prem Kumar Tiwary, Sarai
Independent Fellow. Please get back with questions and comments. ravikant
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Sahipur and its Many Lives
 

I am working on Sahipur which is a peculiar village on the north-western
fringes of Delhi, about two kilometres from the Ring Road in the Shalimar
Bagh area, also close to the Azadpur Vegetable Market. Sahipur was a proper
village before 1968. Its language, geography or appearance - everything
about it was rural. But Delhi's expansion into a metropolis changed it all.
The entire internal and external structure of the  tradional village broke
down. Of those old days, only memories survive in the form of architecture,
dialects and tones. 

The village is a migrants abode now, most of the people are from Bihar, but
also from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and the
South. The migrants have transformed its material and cultural life and it
is visible in its changed language, identity, lifestyle, belief-system,
ethics and aesthetics. I am interested in exploring the basic contours of
this change. I will endeavour to look at the creative tensions that this
encounter between the  city and the country has generated. The interesting
feature of Sahipur is that in spite of all the changes it remains a
village, even if it is a born-again one. For example, the people continue
to entertain themeselves in old modes in spite of the arrival of TV and the
resurrection of radio. The workers here are involved in a wide range of
production systems, networks and goods but I will focus especially on those
involved in electronic media items.

To  sum up, my reasearch hopes to tell the tale of a village that once died
and came alive yet again.

Prem Kumar Tiwary
Hindi Lecturer, Dayal Singh College
Delhi.