[Reader-list] i-fellow post two

[Kaushiki Rao]

I'm really sorry to be so late with my posting.  I've been trying to
set up a blog and scan pictures for a while now, and have only just
figured out how. (My blog is more horribly pink than I planned and the
pictures are kind of mini-sized.  Still.)

a FEW observations:
	
Getting to know Bawana has been really fun.  Every time I drive in I
get a little jolted.  I cannot get over the sudden transformation from
wide, empty, open spaces to congested, narrow gullies and three storey
buildings.  Although it is physically quite small – maybe about 3 km
sq. – it contains a great deal.  Eight thousand families live here! 
Besides that, there are electronic stores, tailoring shops, dhabas,
schools, and cinema shacks.

Look on the blog I just set up ( www.bawanais.blogspot.com ).  It has
pictures of 1 ½ year old Bawana taken from the terrace of a building. 
Compare it with the pictures of the 20 year old Sarvapriya Vihar
colony, also taken from an elevated angle.  They're shockingly
similar.

Just today I was in Kondli, in East Delhi.  This place used to be a
village around which the city has grown.  Walk away from the main
road, and it still feels not quite part of a city.  Each house is
surrounded by a relatively large plot of land, buffaloes walk the
streets munching their lunch, and it's truly quiet.  It's hard to
believe that this place is only 10 minutes from the very busy, very
urban Laxminagar.

Getting to know people in Bawana has been interesting too.  Many
people in their early 20s are free during the day, and talking to them
has been great.  Many have discontinued college because it is so far
away and they cannot get to it in time for class.  Instead, they've
set up several youth organizations – Yuva Kendra Munch, and a theatre
group for example – and they use these as a means to spread what they
term "social awareness" about cleanliness, AIDS and other issues they
consider important.

Beauty and Sanju, two such youth, were telling me that because the
government did not distinguish between castes or between ethnic
backgrounds while distributing plots, people of different castes and
ethnicities now live next to each other.  Where in the Yamuna Pushta
there used to a be a Bengali block, a Punjabi block, a Rajasthani
block, a Jat block and even a Madarasi block, here in Bawana everyone
lives all mixed up.  When I asked if they or anyone else they know
find that strange, they said that it was a bit disconcerting at first
– different cooking smells, different foods, different languages,
different ideas of neighbourliness.  People didn't know how much to
trust each other anymore.  But now, they say, people enjoy it.
Neighbours exchange recipes and languages.

Planned urban design is the base from which people seem to rebuild
their lives.  The size of a plot, where it is located, how permanently
it belongs to the resettled resident – these all form a part of the
base from which people settle into a space.  So, over the next month
or so, I plan to research Delhi's resettlement and urban planning
policies.