[Reader-list] Fieldnotes from Nizamuddin basti-Re: Child Friendly Environment

[Sudeshna Chatterjee]

A lot happenned during March. I completed my first round of interviews
with 31 middle school children, 15 boys and 15 girls (Muslims) and one
Hindu girl. I also observed specific places that children mentioned as
favorite play spaces. The process of transcribing and translating the
interviews has just started and will keep me busy for sometime.
Meanwhile i thought of sharing a fun piece from my fieldnotes. Please
drop in your comments.

Sudeshna

The car in the trees

The open space between the Hope Project and the municipal school is an
adventure playground. The most fun thing in it being the windowless,
seat-less, totally gutted skeleton of a white fiat, neatly placed
between two Keekar trees. Even though the wheel-less vehicle is
actually placed on the ground, it gives the impression of floating
between the trees with the Jamia-tul-Binat madrasa, the teashops and a
couple of small homes as backdrop.

When I first started going to Hope regularly (mid-February), the car
was pretty intact, at least the skeleton resembled the structure of a
car. I had photographed it, though I do not have any shots of children
actually playing with it, I have seen play happening around it.

During the course of the week (the first week of March) that I started
an intense observation session in the open space that parked the car,
an episode was reported to me by no other than the principal and the
director of the NGO. I am a fortunate researcher indeed; everyone at
the school has become my extra eyes and ears in the community looking
out for events and play episodes that is an interesting use of, or a
deviation from the normal use of play space. The teachers and other
school staff, I have realized from the many stories reported to me,
understand my study as how the basti children use space and resources
for play.

Rita, the school principal sits in a room right across from the open
space with two large west-facing windows looking down into it. Rita
tries very hard to protect her windows from the scorching sun. The
electric blue, plastic-lined bamboo screens, hanging in the front face
of the building outside her windows, provide evidence of her
resistance. However, once in a while, at sunset, if she is still
around, Rita rolls up her screen to let in some fresh air. It was a
day such as this, when Rita and Kamini had an evening meeting in the
small office of the principal.

The next morning Kamini, the director of the Hope project, caught up
with me in the wide central staircase, the social space of the
school—the vertical chowk of this building. She said, " Sudeshna, you
should have been here yesterday evening. Rita and I were sitting in
her office, when we heard these shrieks from outside. So we looked
out. The kids were all over the car. My first reaction was to get them
out as I thought they might get hurt, and the next one was, Sudeshna
should have seen this!" I asked, "What were they doing with the car?"
"They were all over it, in it, on the roof, everywhere, obviously
having a ball. Ask Rita about it." Kamini said as she went down
towards her office.

I went up to Rita's room. "Hi Rita. I believe you were witness to some
car adventure outside yesterday?" " Oh Sudeshna, you should have been
there! It was in the evening after school got over. We were having a
meeting here. We heard these shouts from outside. We both went over to
the window and looked out. There was a boy sitting in the driver's
seat pretending to drive vigorously. A girl was sitting next to him in
the front passenger's seat. There were three kids sitting on the roof
with their legs dangling over the frame of the windscreen. We actually
saw the roof buckling in and our hearts nearly stopped as we thought
the kids inside the car will get squashed. When the roof started
buckling at a precarious angle, the kids on top got off. They
collected some stones and sticks and started propping up the roof
again. The moment they were satisfied, they were up on it again. There
were several adults standing around near the teashop as they always
do. We heard some of them shouting at the kids, 'children get off the
car, its rusty, you will get cut, and if you fall you will break your
limbs, so please get off'. But there was no stopping the children.
Somehow the roof even though it kept buckling never caved in on the
inside passengers. They repeatedly fixed the roof till they were tired
of it, at which point they left the car alone and went off to the
other side." I said, 'oh I really wish I was there!"

But as I listened to Rita, I realized that as a researcher such a
situation is ethically a tricky one. Suppose I was standing there, and
it was great material for my work, but it was also a potentially
high-risk situation, which I, as an aware adult, should have done
something about. I guess the other adults who witnessed it tried to
talk the children out of the situation. The two most educated persons
working in the community also witnessed it with their hearts in their
mouth. The question such situations raises for me is what are the
thresholds of outside control and intervention during fieldwork? The
community is well aware that their children live, learn and play in
near precarious circumstances most times. Its possible that the
thrills had by playing with a real junked car under trees and a rough
rubble-strewn track are possibly much more spine-tingling than playing
with mini plastic cars in enclosed cement driveways. Its difficult to
judge though as children who had had one of these experiences are
unlikely to have had the other in Delhi.

I consciously look at the car everyday as I enter Hope now. Yesterday
the roof had touched the edge of the driver's seat, a severe case of a
broken back. But the day before (fourth week of March) when I was
taking some pictures in this open space, three children had climbed on
the bonnet of the car and tried to get photographed. I had noticed the
roof was low at that time, but not as bent as now. It certainly has
seen some more action after I last shot it. Over the course of a
month, mid-February to mid-March, I witnessed the gradual
disintegration of the most interesting play equipment available to the
kids living in Khusru Nagar, Nizam Nagar, and Baoli Gate precincts in
Nizamuddin Basti.