[Reader-list] X-1 days to disappearance / Nangla

[aasim khan]

Hi..

I am sure you guys have heard the Delhi high Court
verdict...Clean up all the slums on the banks of
yamuna by 30th april.No stays on the verdict
allowed.Is this the final countdown?I don't know and
may be no one will until the deadline...Ours is a city
of many secrets.

but my  question is who is counting whom???

Aasim.




--- Shveta <shveta at sarai.net> wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> NM (Nangla) was lively today (Tuesday, 28th March).
> There were two new 
> faces - Riyaaz and Omveer. Mukesh (who I sometimes
> run into in Bhogal, 
> near where I live) had also come. Akhilesh and Dilip
> had come. Of 
> course, Jaanu was there. "NM is not breaking this
> week, so you are 
> seeing so many faces." Ankur's family is packing the
> last few remains in 
> their house. We had heard yesterday that his family
> had decided to shift 
> on Sunday.
> 
> As I entered Nangla, there was a tempo with an
> entire house packed in, 
> ready to move. Akhilesh said, "Wadhwa
> Tempo." I met him at the entrance. "It's not an NM
> tempo. They have got 
> someone from outside to move their things".
> 
> There was a huge rally yesterday at Jantar Mantar.
> Rajdar Babbar, VP 
> Singh... all political leaders were present. Anwari
> Aapa, who everyone 
> knows but whose name it takes everyone time to
> remember, had walked 
> around NM yesterday with a big stick, catching young
> men by their collar 
> and telling them, "Go to the rally". She has lived
> in NM forever. A 
> young man walked around saying, "This is where I
> grew up, this is where 
> my grandmother died. What should I leave behind
> here, what should I take 
> with me?"
> 
> Many went to the rally. It was a huge rally. Women
> went in big numbers. 
> They lost their slippers in the rush of the rally.
> And also because they 
> took them off and beat police. And there was police.
> Tear Gas. Firing. 
> Water hose pipes.
> 
> "Mistryji" is just one who has come back with a hole
> in his arm with a 
> bullet hit. "We beat them with all our might. We had
> worn old slippers 
> and gone so we would not regret losing them, or
> their breaking." They 
> all went with belans and sticks too, and used them.
> 
> But faces are smiling today. They have been told the
> demolitions will be 
> postponed by three months. What the truth value of
> this is, I guess will 
> be known once some of our comrades go to the nearby
> police station to 
> ask them on which date they have been asked to be
> present to oversee and 
> control the "crowd" during demolitions.
> 
> Jaanu had gone to the police station yesterday, with
> Avantika and 
> Shabana (Ankur). The head constable looked at them,
> then through his 
> papers, then around the room, then at them. "Oh
> break it will. See I 
> don't want to break it. But break it will. If not
> today, then tomorrow. 
> But sooner than later. Our force will be present. It
> has to be. 
> Otherwise how will it happen. See, demolitions will
> happen over four 
> days. First two days of peacefully trying to evict,
> and the last two 
> days to make it happen one way or the other. First
> the most illegal 
> ones, and last the pre-98 ones." So now we all have
> a clearer image, and 
> can rehearse it in our minds before it happens.
> 
> The landlord of the house in which the lab is, and
> who lives above the 
> lab, has emptied the house. "If it is postponed by
> three months, maybe I 
> can let it out to someone else. I have packed up.
> When it has to break, 
> then why wait?" She had gone to some meeting today
> morning, and was not 
> there when the lab had to be opened, and Jaanu just
> undid the screws of 
> the bolt and opened the lab. She had come in, her
> child to her breast, 
> laughing and saying, "I will have you reported for
> house break!" She 
> spent the entire morning washing the house and the
> corridor, cleaning 
> everything.
> 
> There is no electricity in Nangla, since yesterday
> morning. "It's 
> probably a local cut." Jaanu said. "Maybe they cut
> it or people would 
> not have gone to the rally. I am sure they are
> replacing cables right 
> now. I am sure it will be back by evening." Everyone
> agrees.
> 
> "You should have seen this place yesterday." Jaanu
> again. "I walked 
> around after people had left for the rally and put
> stickers [It quenches 
> the thirst of the thirsty...] on everyone's
> thresholds. I almost got 
> beat up. But everyone is hapy with them today. Make
> sure we have more 
> tomorrow to stick, ok? We've finished the ones we
> had here."
> 
> It was as if the entire locality had gone fluid
> today... so many people 
> just came into the lab. Just dropping in, chit
> chatting, and going away. 
> Old men, drunk men, young men, all men. "What are
> you people doing?" 
> Just general chit chat.
> 
> Jaanu has decided not to remove the photographs he
> has stuck on the 
> walls. "When the basti breaks, and this room is
> broken, they will fly 
> around and people who pass through will pick them up
> as puzzles without 
> a location."
> 
> We made plans today, for a broadsheet, for texts,
> for photographs of 
> decorated (saji huwi) Nangla, for mails to be
> written on the CM list, 
> for companion conversations in the other labs, about
> the speed of time 
> in thinking about the making of NM and the speed of
> time as we wait for 
> it to be broken, about how to write about people who
> just dropped in for 
> a while today, about the texts everyone had written,
> about Jaanu's plans 
> to play his recording of the "Loudspeaker" text
> maybe from a deck or 
> from the microphone of the masjid, about making the
> lab a convivial 
> space for the coming little time, about mails sent
> out on various lists 
> and about how many stories will now slowly link in,
> about people 
> shifting, about cricket, about things in general.
> 
> Now I am waiting to see what tomorrow morning will
> bring.
> 
> shveta
> 
> Keep reading http://nangla.freeflux.net
>                        
> http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net
> 
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