[Reader-list] Thanks Shivam

[Shivam Vij]

coolzanny at hotmail.com

Dear Zainab, here is my reply:
 
>>In fact, we were having a discussion yesterday where
a 
friend pointed out how governments invest in the urban
areas/cities 
because that's where the evaluation/assessment of the
government takes place. 
Someone had once mentioned in a gather that in Mumbai,
building more 
and more flyovers ensures re-election of the
government, that's why the 
success of Shiv Sena and now the NCP government
continuing on the same lines 
(or roads should I say?).<<


I don't agree with this. Voters everywhere vote on
local issues even in national elections. So if
drought-hit farmers don't get relief they will vote
against the incumbent party, and if new flyovers don't
come up in Bombay to reduce traffic stress, Bombay
voters will vote out the incumbent. Bombay alone can't
bring any party to power: you need the whole
Maharashtra. Everyone evaluates the government on how
his surroundings change.  


>>I have never traveled on the Delhi metro, but what I
have often heard 
from Delhiites is that the metro is nothing but "an
eye-wash". They don't 
see it making a dramatic difference to Delhi and to
the lives of the people.<<


Tauba! tauba! What lies! Those who say the metro is an
eye-wash are obviously not in touch with ground
realities. These may be people who are staunchly
against globalisation (the metro has been built by
co-operation between 9 countries and has an upmarket
feel, with McD and Dominos inside the ISBT station.)
They maay be people who travel in cars and did not /
are not going to experience the transition from bus to
metro. Or these are people who have never travelled on
the metro. Or they're just too plain cynical. Or they
want to oppose the India Shining campaign and the
politics of "feelgood", which would be a case of noble
intent but bad example. These are exactly the sort of
middle class people for whose the Yamuna Pusta slums
have been razed: rich apathetic middle class of
Delhi...
 
>>My 
interest in the Delhi metro emerged from the fact that
perhaps, it 
would end 
up being some sort of an interactional space.<<

Sorry, it is even less interactional than buses.
Because it has the upmarket fee it takes away a
sarai-like atmosphere. I use sarai here as in the
original meaning and not the institution! sarai as in
a networking space for travellers.

 

>> because I, as an outsider, have 
often perceived Delhi to be a cold city, a city where
I am constantly 
watched and judged for my possessions, status,
position in society.<<
I think this attitude of surveilance changes in the
metro: it makes the people more insular. But perhaps
this is because the metro has just begun, people are
too busy watching the metro to watch the people. but
one point is that the metro takes much less time than
a bus, upto one-fourth in some cases. It's too fast.
That reducestime for both interaction and surveilance.


>>Bombay 
has always given me an egalitarian feel and I
attribute this, in large 
measure, to the trains and buses, in which the rich
and the poor travel 
together.<<

The metro will increasingly do this, because it's more
respectable than the bus. It has AC. Metro authorities
have made provisions for people to park cycles,
scooters and cars at the metro stations, take the
metro to their destination, come back by the metro,
and go back home on your parked vehicle.  Even in
buses the travellers ranged from lowest of the low
class to lower middle class and students of even
middle class backgrounds. But the car-travelling
arrogant elite hates the very mention of 'bus', and
now you know why they even dismiss the metro.

>>But in Delhi, I feel a bit 
handicapped because of a poor public transport system,
though I must 
say 
that some of my friends have been saying that the bus
services have 
improved 
quite a bit in Delhi.<<

The bus service keeps improving in Delhi all the time!
But the rate of improvement is too slow, and if one
aspect improves another crops up. The issue of buses
in delhi is very complicated and the local press can
play a positive role. but the press gets heated up
only when a blue line bus kills a man or two. 

 >>Again, the structure of the city is radial, while 
my 
worldview has been linear living in Mumbai all my
life.<<

And a delhite's view becomes radial!

>>My fascination with Mumbai trains is because of the
amount of 
information 
that flows through trains. There are inputs to the
worldview through 
chats 
and conversations; the presence of women from diverse
castes, classes, 
religions, traveling together is in itself a flow of
information.<<

Not so in delhi

>> The sale of goods, each one of them novel to me (I
have been collecting some of 
them as an archive!), gives me ideas about
technology.<<

Some times people too come to sell in delhi buses. If
i meet you i will enact who they sell, because i was
in splits when i first saw that performance. But these
good are hardly collectible. They always cost 10 Rs
flat. Plastic tablecloths, petty paamphlet-like books
on ayurved or astrology or hinduism, or a set of five
penss, a ruler, a notepad - all for ten Rs, all of
which lasts five minutes. and there are sometimes
people to sell coconut, peanuts etc. and beggars, but
only some times. once in ten journeys. and once a
singer came in - he was so talented! he was singing
about life and death, some folk song. but the bus was
too crowded for me to give him some money like others
were doing, moved by his voice.

>> The other interesting bit that I have found is that
trains introduce a 
sense of structure and comfort in the life of the
Mumbaiite. One of my 
interviewees had said that she likes train travel
because it is 
structured and defined; in her words, "You know that
after Borivali station there 
is Kandivali and then Malad."<<

This happens in delhi buses too. u know that after
mall road will be khalsa college, then Camp, then
model town, then azadpur, then shalimar bagh - if u
know ur bus routes. 

>> This made me wonder whether what people want 
today is greater predictability in their lives given
that we are 
leading uncertain and insecure lives (no secure jobs,
a volatile financial 
market, new innovations).<<

i'm a student of literature and i read the same about
the victorian age in england, and my teacher also says
today's india is a lot like victorian britain. but i'm
wary of such arguments: the urge to control has always
been there in man, even in pre-historic societies...
as a student told a teacher: for every age u say that
the middle class was rising and there was insecurity
and people were suffering...

>> I wonder whether trains give women a sense of
control over their lives.<<

Not just women, but everyone. Not just trains, all
media of transport. 

>> I am not a feminist. But my interest is in
envisioning spaces where 
women can interact, meet, exchange information, have
unconditional urban 
spaces, because having a larger worldview is
especially important for women, 
given that increasingly, fundamentalist movements and
political campaigns are 
trying to reach out, influence and condition women's
minds. Further, 
children of tomorrow will learn from the women of
today because women 
spend more time with the children and for the child,
the mother is usually 
the first reference point. It scares me to think of
rigid and authoritarian 
mothers - we would have pathological children!!!<<

Perils of generalisation and over-reading. Not your
faault, we all do this! Women will always find some or
the other interactional space, but what is even more
important is to have uninhibited hetrosexual
interaction spaces without the fear of sexuaal
assault/ discrimination/ violence/ prejudice/ sexual
repression.... 

Hope this helped,
Shivam

PS: Sarai please do something about viruses i get
attached in mails that sound like sarai mails on my
other ID (shivamvij @ ststephens.edu), on which i
don't take the sarai list!




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