[Urbanstudy] me n my delhi

[amit ranjan]

Hello all
My project, if that hackneyed word suggests anything, is a little offbeat. Have been a student of literature for 7 years formally, and got a little disillusioned with academic papers. So, I intend to write a non-fictional piece on my negotiations and tryst with the city. 
Recently i read stuff on Nangla Machi, and ventured there myself. This is what I saw (it's in a newspaper format, for I work for one), and this will definitely have space in my final work
Pl do respond
Thanks

Nangla Maachi

I walked in the ruins


Nangla Maachhi is on the banks of Yamuna, just before the Nizamuddin bridge. Nangla has been swept away. Not by Yamuna
but by the tide of judicial activism, which generally is as active as a dormant volcano.  A division Bench of the Delhi High Court, comprising Justices Vijender Jain and Rekha Sharma, set up a Yamuna Removal of Encroachment Monitoring Committee in January this year. And thunder struck on March 29, without warning, like a flash floodth
bulldozers, chisels, men in uniforms ensured that the residents of Nangla and the stars would stare at each other directly. Former Prime Minister V.P.Singh organised a rally on the 27th, but even his efforts haven’t borne much fruit. In a few days time, Nangla, the shelter for the poor for the last 30 years, will be a heap of rubble. 1500 houses are gone, 3000 remain. Vague figures. No one knows. It’s surprising that the fastest news channels are aren’t asking people, “Aapko kaisa lag raha hai”. It seems Nangla has already been erased from the memory maps.

We walked through the old clustered village. We walked through the ruins. It felt like our own ruins
A bevy of children following us in a trail, flies, mosquitoes, bricks, corrugated sheets, anger and despair


Thirst
We’ve been roaming the maze of Nangla for two hours in the heap of fallen bricks. We are afraid to have the water that’s being offered, especially after speculation of water borne diseases. We hit a shop with a fridge. “Cold drink hai kya,” we ask through our parched throats. The shopkeeper laughs, “Saab, bijli to kab ki gayee. Baaki bhi chala jayega.” His little child is ecstatic, as if it’s a game, “Sab toot jayega, sab toot jayega.”

We’ll become terrorists
“Delhi has to be beautified, you see,” says Mukesh Kumar, the Pradhan of the village, “and the easy way to do it by eliminating the gareeb instead of gareebee.” Flour is selling at Rs 18, sugar at Rs 40. “We had heard Sonia ji is kind. Will the games (the 2010 games) be played only in Nangla. Why not Akshardham? That’s also on the bank of Yamuna,” says another young man who works as a sweeper. The discussion heats up. A woman in a green saree and a face red with heat and rage says, “We’ll become terrorists, and throw bombs at the establishment.” Three others cheer her, “Yes we have no option but to become terrorists.”

Glass palace
Gujratis of the basti make showpieces out of glass, and sell it in various markets. Ajay’s masterpiece, a glass palace adorns the crest of a brick heap that was a home three days back. The palace also has a dish antenna to log on to dreams. He used to make a fortune of three thousand a month through this business. Now what? “Terrorist banoonga,” the same refrain. It’s a difficult lane. There’s cement and sheets strewn all along, in dirty water. A little girl is defecaeting in the drain, another one is taking a bath, stark nude and some others semi-nude, with rats creeping and crawling up the drains. They are oblivious of the world. Shame is also a luxury.

Yeh Shaadi Nahi Ho Sakti
Bollywood villains slip into real life more often than not. There is a marriage scheduled for the 4th of April. An old man is busy making a fancy gift with thin bamboo sticks and colourful streamers which the bride’s mother will gift the groom. The only little hitch is that the basti might not last that long. “On the 29th, the army men outnumbered the bastiwallahs six to one. We broke our own houses, so that the children don’t get hurt,” says Updesh Kumar, a tailor with an ailing eyesight. “It’s our duty. We are mere actors,” says an RAF jawan who contends nothing will remain by the 4th or 5th.

Burnt, and steaming
Babita is three years old. Food was being cooked in her house, when the demolitions were happening. The mother, Munni, ran out to protest. Protest often provokes. The machines raged in, the poor girl was caged in. The pot of boiling water fell on her, and she got burnt very badly. There’s a little boy in the hands of Munni, and the sight of him shakes you up from within—he is so malnourished. He is the ninth child of the 35 year old Munni, and has nine flies hovering around his eyes. Shabnam is the 3rd of the 9 children, and used to run a phone booth to help her family. She poses with a big smile sitting on her bricks. “Why the hell are you smiling,” curses an old woman from behind, and stares into my eye, “You have got your news. And it will be supressed. If you help us, Gods will bless you. If you supress it, all our curses will land on your head.” A whole crowd joins. Men with teeth as yellow as the sun, women with voices fighting a lost battle. More images, more sounds


The bevy of children is trailing us as we leave Nangla. Children, children everywhere, not one man to think
about their future. But they are all smiles. Laughing, posing for pictures, running, playing with cycle tyres. Tomorrow is another day. 







hunt for love is haughty falconry
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