[Reader-list] [With text] Introducing Bahurupiya Shehr

[Shveta]

Hello,

It seems the text didn't reach. Apologies, there is a bug in my mail client (copy pasting from gedit sometimes fails). Here it is again.

best
shveta

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Bahurupiya Shehr
Launch/May 01, 2007/India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla/public-dialogue/books/bahurupiya-shehr

*Some how's and why's of the writers of Bahurupiya Shehr*

I want to thank all of you for being with us here today. My name is 
Yashoda, and with me is Shamsher. You all probably have many questions 
about the book, and the making of the book. So do we. Here are some 
“why's” and “how's” from the writers of Bahuprupiya Shehr.

Why the CITY?

In living in it, the city seems close; but it seems far when it is 
narrated. It is this distance which becomes a challenge for narration. How?

The city wears many masks. It takes on a new guise with each mask. 
Countless forming, dissolving shadows agreeing to be co-travelers, such 
is a city.

Traveling with another without ascertaining his identity increases ones 
curiosity, smolders desire. Through writing, through narrating, we try 
to exhaust distances. We bring our sense of being alone into conflict 
with our attraction across distances. From watching it, the relationship 
with the city becomes one of talking to the city. When this happens, the 
city neither lets us sleep, nor lets us awaken from our trance.

Why a BOOK?

Every book is a resting place. A means to keep ones thinking alive. A 
book has the capacity to carve out its own place in every context. A 
book makes space in our lives for us to halt and be lost in ourselves. 
One argues with a book. A book is rejected. A book is also accepted, 
made one's own.

Amidst the many rejections of the city, this book is our hope to find an 
acknowledgment, an acceptance.

Why this NAME?

Shape-shifting! Is the person sitting before me the same as I see her? 
Or is there more to her than what I can see of her here? Instability is 
the breath in every image. After all, is there anyone here, whose image 
is the same everywhere? Or who does not feel a restlessness at being 
pinned to an image?

A name underlines something. But “Bahurupiya” 
[shape-shifting/polymorphous] relates to every passing image. It is an 
endeavour to acknowledge the possibility of recognising the tug inside 
each one, before they are named and marked. In “Bahurupiya” one feels 
the scale of the possible, and also finds a corner for a weakness. In 
“Bahurupiya” there is that shadow too, which we may not want to come 
face to face with.

How was it written?

To us, writing is not about falling into someone's life; writing is to 
put down in words the time, questions and tussles that have been 
narrated to us, and in which, splashing about like a novice swimmer, we 
try and find a shore of our own thoughts. This is the scaffolding in 
which we start collecting the scraps of desire to express, and so write. 
In entering this realm, the stream of questions we pose to ourself, and 
the answers we ourselves provide, is relentless.

That we have entered someone's life is not the important thing – no 
entry pass or card records or marks it. What matters is, what are the 
terms with which we let someone step into our life. This is what 
produces for us the challenge to go beyond a mere transcription of the real.

We found our ways of expression from those around us, from those near 
us. In the world of ideas, we are our own guides. How are we acquainting 
ourselves with a space and how is the space introducing itself to us is 
always a fraught question. Maybe the eye says the answer is clear, but 
in our mind the tussle – with that which remains beyond clarity – 
continues. Because when it comes to thinking, no thought is complete in 
itself.

Every word pulls us within it. At the same time, each word also holds in 
it a possibility to embark us on a flight without a destination. In 
writing we transgress our own limits; in joining words into a sentence we
continuously settle into and uproot within us many ideas of what a city is.

Writing! Need, habit, entertainment and hobby are not what we desire. In 
needing, we are alone. In habit we are chased by boredom. It is not 
entertainment, because that makes us dependent on the new. It is not a 
hobby, because hobby seeks futile gatherings. How is writing different 
from these?

To us, writing is to follow our insane desire over huge distances. This 
desire gives us a force to tussle with ourselves. And the tussle makes 
us vulnerable not only to our own thoughts but also leaves on us a 
special imprint of the images of many others.

Nothing is near us. But a sudden incident or change can make the knit of 
the city come unraveled. It is not easy to stand before this – yet we 
search a language so we may be able to.

Changes feed our desire and curiosity to write, changes animate our 
minds and propel us into creating our own contexts of thought.

Why an imagination of a reader?

Everyone lives in her/his own context, tries to live in her/his own 
context. When we read, we debate with that which is settled in our 
minds, we explore the different dimensions of the images we have 
accepted as complete, we are provoked. When we read, we create a 
different sight with which to view ourselves. Reading nurtures the seeds 
of a third context beyond “yours” and “mine”. A third context, where 
lives knock at the realm between the imagined and the real, searching 
and making their meaning.

Why write what you did?

Every space has its specificities, gathering which it keeps alive its 
stubbornness to live, to continue. The texts in this book dwell in the 
challenges of this stubbornness. Connected to this is time. Time, whose 
capability is not only in its certainty. The time of the past, the 
present and the future form a triangle; within which fading and dense 
memories are selected, nurtured.

Each instance of time is different from the other. This difference 
becomes the tension, the conflict between two texts. We question this 
conflict, as much as we stoke it. The smouldering heat that the texts 
contain, their questions, the decisions in them, the measure of spaces 
in the texts – all these are the heartbeats of the texts. Time, moments 
are the texts' pulse. Sometimes the pulse – or the time – becomes 
strong, at others, it grows weak. When small moments join with thousands 
of others, we find ourselves among others. Our texts inhabit this 
ecology of the measure of moments. In the scale of the small moments, 
sometimes we feel ourselves extending beyond our own measure.

**

After this, the writers read some selections from the book.