[Reader-list] Reaching Nangla, Today

[CM@Nangla]

Dear All,

As we lock the NM Lab today, we are unsure of whether we will return to a
standing room tomorrow. Police has arrived, in a huge strength, in
protective gear and with water canons. Close to forty tempos stand along
the Ring Road, some shared, some hired by a single family, to pack and
leave. The cost of hiring tempos has become prohibitive today.

Lanes are busy with families. Everyone has stepped out and is sitting in
front of their house with all their samaan. The lanes are also busy with
Nangla being emptied out. Men, young men, old men, young women, older
women, boys, girls, all walk up and down, carrying things. There are
suitcases, and there are bundles, snowcem buckets - 5 together - with
smaller items, cots, big beds, cartons, buckets, single items like chairs
being taken out of Nangla.

Some things need two people to be carried - like a blue refrigerator,
asbestos sheets pulled out from roofs, a set of two green doors... Two men
stop to rest as they carry a cupboard. The lanes leading out of Nangla have
lengthened today.

All of these will be carted into the tempos, laid up in an arrangement
outside the dwelling, or in the beginning of the green Indraprastha Park
opposite the locality, and when the entire house has been emptied, the
family will sit by it, on it, or in a carefully set up chair along it. As
the day progresses towards afternoon, some have opened their umbrellas and
sit under its shade, right outside their houses.

A young girl passes by with her younger sister, through the gathering
families and their stock of things from the house, asking, "Is our tempo
further away? Is it that one... the last one?"

A small collection from a house - a white box with 'Shalu kufi' painted in
red on it, a table fan, two bundles with some household samaan, lies
unattended in the corner of the lane through which one enters Nangla.

But the other entrances and exits to Nangla, which were sealed up with
chest-high walls two months ago, are also active today. A pile of bricks as
steps, or short ladders have been set up. And houses flow out from Nangla
in bits and pieces through a relay by being passed from inside by one
person, and being carried away by another from the outside.

There is a vidaai in progress as the lane turns. A bride decked in bright
red stands surrounded by the smiling faces of her husband's male relatives
and friends. Two more weddings are due for tonight and tomorrow. A woman,
carrying things from her house on her head, stops by a group of policemen
to say, "Let the houses towards the inside be for a while more. There is a
wedding there." All along the lane, bright red and pink sequined dresses
are drying after a wash.

One can reach the lab today by walking along where the police is standing
inside the locality.

Jaanu has dismantled all the computers in the lab. He will pack the lab
first. "My neighbour, the amma, is looking for me all over. My house is yet
to be packed." His father has not come back yet - most people had left for
work before the police arrived, and are now returning, if they can be
contacted. Dilip's father and elder brother can't be. Only his mother and
younger sister are at home. "I have gone home so many times already. But
there is no activity there right now. Nothing is about to happen there
today. No one is packing."

Only conversations, soft conversations, with almost each strand
discernable. The deck that plays loudly outside the lab, but is made softer
when Ankur, Dilip or Akhilesh request that it be, for the sake of
conversation in the lab, is quiet today - and the young man with long hair
who plays it is sitting at the end of the lane on a cot. Doors and
thresholds are being quietly dismantled, the screws of bolts being
unscrewed with a screw driver, the roofs being removed by gently scraping
of the cement from the edges. Nangla is quiet today.

Our neighbour, who often lent us knives and utensils when we cut fruits in
the lab has left. One can walk into and out of the one room house at will.
Stand at the door and watch people pass. One can climb up the stairs of the
landlord and look around at tarpauline roofs, watch the landlady walk up
and down the lane umpteen times, her child in a pink dress to her breast,
her young daugther, Preeti, walking at her side in a black and white frock.
She stops from time to time and says, "My heart is shrinking. Will they
bring the bulldozers in today?"

The bulldozers arrive after two. Two of them. Today the shops are being
razed. Men have come with rickshas to pick up from the rubble intact
bricks, which can be used again.

Today shops, tomorrow the peripheral houses, and the day after, the
remainder of Nangla. The Nangla Gaon and some houses built before a cut off
date will be allowed to be. They will take time to think of rehabilitation.
There is no rehabilitation for the majority of Nangla, which is being
dispersed into the city today.

Jaanu packed much of the lab material before leaving to pack his home.
Prabhat has organised a room in Shashi Garden (Khichri Pur) for him to
shift. From tomorrow Jaanu will come to Nangla in the mornings, and leave
at night.

We will begin again, and Prabhat and other comrades from Ankur will slowly
recover and pick up the dispersed threads of relationships from the lab,
the kitaab ghar, the baal club, the learning centre, by finding out if
there are places in the city to which more than two families have shifted
together.

Looking now towards tomorrow,
shveta 

CM Lab, Nangla Maanchi

http://nangla.freeflux.net
http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net

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It quenches the thirst of the thirsty, 
Such is Nangla,
It shelters those who come to the city of Delhi, 
Such is Nangla. 
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