[Reader-list] public solidarities

[hansa]

for two months, i taught as part of a disreputable money making graduate programme tht is supposed to be bringing in revenue to many colleges in bombay- is completely unplanned and unregulated(and so perfect for people like me who can step in to play teacher teacher and do as we please.)

i was taking a class in scriptwriting etcetra two hours every week, and mostly perhaps discussed just that - think visual! don't say symbolism too soon, time and space, space and time- alfred hitchcock says.

the college is in 'town' in bombay, but manages to have an interesting eclctic character, and has students from the less tree lined avenues coming to study.

when i was told to set a paper for their exams- i gave them photos9taken by monica on this list) of unpeopled city spaces- vacant park benches- an auto line up at night, etcetra, in the hope that the photos would help them write scripts that connected characters with space.

what i got were scripts that shook me from my teaccher teacher complacency. 

there were stories that saw in those spaces our normalised strange futures, and wrote narratives of our present.

the park was projected 27 years ahead- into a space where affiliations to this or that country- india or pakistan- divided all spaces microscopically. so the same park bench had at its corners a couple with differeing nationalities, sitting in a pretty park morning, having an intimate conversation across the fence dividing them, on mobile phones.

the couple is middle aged, prosperous, gold shinig here and there- they are plannig for a sons marriage, planning around the visas that will take two years, just like childrens educations are supposedly planned for today keeping in account exisiting rules.

children are playing as they do in parks today- a ball goes across to the other side- the pakistani sentry as matter of course picks it up, throws it to the indian sentry who gives it to the children.

children wave out to each other across the fence but will not cross. sentries do their job as jobs- people work around new rules- and carry on.

in another story- a down and out man with a small plastic packet around his neck comes to where the autos are parked- he gets in exhausted, into a parked, empty auto, and takes out a hardened bit of paav- bread, from his plastic packet. he munches the hardened bread opens the auto dikki with a metal rod and finds something to drink and his mood changes- he is happy go lucky now and in bambaiyya hindi revels in his capacity to make a new home every night- and covering himself with a tattered cloth he carries, he falls asleep.

at night a mob comes, with objects and righteousness and a readiness to pillage and they burn the line of autos, and feel vindicated.

somewhere else, the park benches find a small stone in their midst. a flower seller exhausted from his day drops his basket and goes off for a pee and a nap. someone walks by sees the flowers and thinks it is a shroine and throws coins, coins accumulate.

the flower seller returns, grins at his luck and peoples foolsihenss and picking up the coins, leaves behind the flowers.

other stories- love story with an alien in a park overlooking bombay- love despite otherness- she is bald has sharp pointed teeth- and the city scape spread below the park choppers flying with ads...

what i loved and was sometimes was starled by was what i saw as perspective in the face of violence.

many of my students are muslim, and while i have been away from bombay for a bit, i can

imagine that zubairs description of the saffron flags coming out all over.

younger people, their anguish and their clarity. i could i suppose work at trying to shoot one of these stories with them.

i have walked past classes in wilson where i have heard animated discussion with young professors-

on issues of violence of identity- 

how to create more public voice for these solidarities?

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