[Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting

[Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai]

Jan 20 2006

Good day to all! My name is Dilip D'Souza. I'm a once-computer
scientist, now-writer, in Bombay. I'm honoured and delighted to be
part of this eclectic group of people, humbled by the range of things
all of you are attempting. I'm appending below a summary of what I
want to do with this fellowship. Any comments/help/critiques welcome.

cheers,
dilip d'souza.

Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com
---

Village in the City: Bombay in microcosm

Bombay, the big city, and everywhere else seems rustic. That's the way
I invariably feel whenever I return home to Bombay after a trip
somewhere in the country. And yet the oldest truth about Bombay is
that it, too, was once a collection of villages. What's more, there
are ways in which the big city has not lost that character. Or let's
say this: in this big city, you can still find traces of that
character.

There are parts of Bombay that are still essentially villages. In my
suburb of Bandra alone, lanes narrow to warrens, houses look over low
walls into each other, you can even see ducks being raised. Ranwar,
Chimbai, Sherly, Pali Malla, these are the old villages of the Queen
of Bombay's suburbs. And there is also Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, still
held up as a model of urban living; also parts of Agripada, CP Tank,
Kalbadevi and more.

Yet there's another theme I'm trying to get at here. This lies in the
way people deal with each other in these neighbourhoods, the humanity
that large cities make us pessimistic about finding.

For example, in CP Tank I once saw first- and higher-floor residents
lowering baskets on ropes to the pavement, to buy vegetables from
cooperative vendors. Seems to me a small indicator of a different
time, a different place, a different pace. More and more city
residents go to large  supermarkets for their supplies, or pick up the
phone and get their vegetables delivered in minutes. Yet in Bombay's
congested heartland, some housewives use baskets on ropes.

Bits of humanity intrigue and appeal to me, not least because I fear
they are vanishing as even these little spaces in the city get torn
down and built over. So my plan is simple: go hunting for them and
tell those stories. I want to document not just the physical reality
of these villages in Bombay, but the little signs in them that speak
of a possibly disappearing, or at least forgotten, humanity. My
interest is also in the larger lessons: what do these daily
interactions say about life in a city? Or about the great conundrums
of modern India: secularism, liberalization, poverty?

I want to emphasize that I don't see this project as a paean to the
past, nor as a mournful ode to a nearly-vanished history. I'm
interested in making the case that life in a city is an experience
made of these small interstices. That these may have been villages,
but they are the foundation of great metropolises. Very simply, I
would like my essays to get my readers thinking about the people who
make up a city. Not the buildings or parks or flyovers, but the
people.