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

[zainab at xtdnet.nl]

Dear Dilip,

I cursorily ran through your idea of the fellowship project. Just a quick
comment. I am not exactly sure at this point where you will be getting
to/at through the process and period of six months, but an important
things to think through is not just the humanity aspect of the city, but
aspects of local relationships, systems and practices which are being
transformed in the making of the global city - what are these local
relationships? why are they important that is if they are at all? what
happens in the making of the global city?

Focussing exclusively on the humanity aspect makes things very
mushy-mushy, romantic and teary eyed which is something that I consciously
avoid in my methodology and processes of research.

Cheers,
Zainab



> 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.
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>


Zainab Bawa
Bombay
www.xanga.com/CityBytes
http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html