[Reader-list] On Delhi

[Zainab Bawa]

Dear Rana,

Thanks for posting your piece on the reader-list. I read it a few days ago
and was very disturbed. Your essay, coupled with a few experiences in the
days preceeding to my reading of your essay, lead me to question the notion
of "city". I want to initiate a discussion along this lines and on tangents
related. On first reading of your piece, the picture of Delhi that I got was
of this dark, gory, vulgar monster. The city appeared like this abyss, this
morass, in which you just sink. I am not in denial of the incidents and some
of the trends that you have described and explained in your piece. I am
wondering about how we are constructing narratives of the city. The issue of
how we narrate the city has been of particular concern to me in recent times
because I think that the manner in which we describe the city and the
experience of the city has serious repercussions for the city itself - dark,
gory city and subsequently, the practice of the city as this dangerous space
which you do not venture out in the nights or certain nooks and crannies of
the city that you cannot go to because you perceive them to be dangerous.
About 5 years ago, I had organized night walks during the month of Ramzaan
in Bombay where we would walk in the night through areas like Dongri, Bhendi
Bazaar, Nagpada, Foras Road and all the alleys and nooks that we otherwise
don't visit. On two of the three walks I organized, the people who came told
me how they have never visited Dongri earlier, even though they have been
resident in the city for many years, because of the fear that Dongri is this
place where people roam around with knives and swords and a riot happens at
the drop of the hat. One reason for this perception of Dongri is the way in
which the area has been projected in films, in writing and even in the
narratives of the 1992-93 riots.

I think about Delhi and how I used to hate being in Delhi during my initial
visits. I was told that Delhi is a city of thugs and that everyone is out to
loot you. My own behaviour towards auto drivers was subsequently conditioned
by this perception. Delhi always appeared as this dangerous city in which I
will be looted at any moment and so, I was always on my guard. At some
point, as I frequently visited the city and lived in different
neighbourhoods and areas, more out of compulsions and accidents rather than
choice, and then I discovered my own Delhi - the hustle bustle at Tees
Hazari bus stand and other bus stations where people are flowing in and out
like water, the experience of refugee friends from Burma who hated the city
and rightfully so for the attitude of the Delhiites towards them, the
affluence of South Delhi, and a particular warmth and comfort of Old Delhi
which really made me love the city despite all my antagonisms and anguish.
It is these varied aspirations, and often times very contradictory and
ambiguous desires and aspirations, that prevail among different people in
the city that I am now seeking to know and narrate.

I think back of my own writings on Bombay between 2003 and 2006 and how I
have lost not only my words, but also my romance with the city following my
move to Bangalore. I lived Bombay and loved it through the very mundane acts
of living. I talked to people who had stories to tell that not only
intrigued me about their lives, but also got me to think of the city, of
aspiration, of desires and how people invest themselves in the city. After
the move to Bangalore, my engagements in Bangalore with groups and
individuals who were fighting about a city (perceived) to be lost and a city
emerging from the ruins and the ghosts of the devastated present into a dark
and dilapidated future, shaped a good deal of my own understanding of
cities. I have subsequently lost my relationships with both Bangalore and
Bombay. It is only now, through acts such as eating food with friends who
live in rehabilitation housing and squatter settlements in Mumbai, listening
to their everyday experiences of the city, that I am reconstructing my own
self and my relationship with Bombay. The reconstruction is continuously
confronted with anxities and fears about a city that is losing itself to
"capital". And yet, the stories I come across each day, remind me that we
are all invested in this capital and more so in the city. We are invested in
the city through our emotions, aspirations, desires, hatred, anxieties and
we are embedded in the capital, in different ways. I feel like owning a car
now because I see that as the only way in which I can attain my freedom in
Bangalore and move around the city at nights - a city with dismal public
transport and with its citizens living in a certain fear of the night as a
time in the life of the everyday city which is unsafe. I am invested in the
trajectories of capital, in the city and the production and reproduction of
space in the city in ways such as these.

I apologize if my thoughts are too rambling and not totally coherent. But I
am really thinking about whether we have lost the romance with the city and
whether the loss is really real and whether now is a moment when we think
about cities and how we tell stories. And I don't mean to ask this question
in a sense of drawing any binaries between the dark, vulgar capitalist city
and the mundane, everyday life of the city laced with figures and characters
who are either beyond the reach of capital or who will be put to death by
the noose of capital. I am really asking for a serious rethinking of
narratives and how these narratives lead us to not only tell the city, but
also to imagine and practice the city and for our own relationships with our
own cities (whether these are places or non-places or homes or destinations
or spaces of demolition, eviction, violence ...). ...

Still thoughtful, (mildly nostalgic about my Tees Hazari bus station which
is my relationship with Delhi), and in a spirit of conversation,

Zainab

-- 
Zainab Bawa
Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher

Gaining Ground ...
http://zainab.freecrow.org

http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics