[Reader-list] On Delhi

[Pheeta Ram]

Dear Zainab and others following the thread,
Your point about a direct and close correspondence between how 'we' narrate
the city and how 'we' perceive
it is insightful. I have a few random thoughts to share.

There are a few preliminaries we need to take into account even before we
make up our mind
to read Rana's piece on (adjectives required) Delhi. Beginning from one end
of the spectrum, the author, the 'class'/es he belong/s to, his intended
class of the audience, the platform/s and forum/s where the piece makes an
appearance, the
'classes' these forums are accessible to. The string can be reassembled
according to one's object and more variables can be brought in to really
appreciate the 'rich' complexity of the "impenetrable" city.But one can
certainly not discuss a piece of writing on a city without taking into
account all these functional variables and constants together and if one
does others need to point out to truly appreciate the effort made by the
writer at understanding the city.

In this age, which most people now like to call 'post-Marxist' or even
'post-capital', the real tragedy has been the concepts that bore currency
during the heydays of Marxist discourse. These concepts had a certain
remarkable potential to render bare the webs of complex relationships of a
society. 'Class' has been one of these concepts which is absentmindedly, and
blissfully so,ignored whenever we talk of such pieces as Rana's. To hazard a
theoretical conjecture: there is a certain invisible compact between the
author and the reader whereby the text becomes a cozy (even if described by
its synonymous "disturbing") habitation for both, a reflection of their
lived relations. Without expending more labour i can say that as one t-reads
line after line of Rana's piece one becomes aware of its implicit horizon of
experience/narration, that is, the boundaries of a particular 'class' or
'segment' of society.

Beginning from the one end, it's now a much worn out argument against
English press or "Indian" writers in English that they have a superficial
understanding of the 'Reality' of India. The argument comes from vernacular
writers/press of course who believe that India resides only in villages and
mofussil towns which the urbane and anglicised "English writers"/press are
justifiably denied access to because of the medium of communication. The
tangle has seemingly been resolved with the understanding that each writer
(especially while writing a 'non-fictional' piece) should be  true to
his/her horizon of experience without trying to co-opt or appropriate (or
monopolise) the experiences ( and categories) that s/he doesn't have a
'direct experiential access' to or atleast must situate him/herself in the
text in his material dimensions. On this account, i would say Rana comes out
clean ( and who am i to give him a clean chit, i ask myself) because he
writes and reports only what he has an 'access' to and certainly doesn't
tresspass (for he can't, certain lifeworlds, or spaces are accessible only
to the 'insiders', its another case whether they can write of them in Granta
or a Sarai mailing list or not). He very honestly limits himself to the
Delhi roads when it comes to marveling at the very overwhelmingly complex
exhibition of "*city's* social relations."

Just imagine the interesting gap between "Delhites" and "Dilliwala". While a
writer writing in English has access to both the terms, a writer writing in
Hindi or Bhojpuri won't be able to appropriate the word "Delhite" without a
reference to the class of people it directly refers to. Recent debate
between "Delhi" and "Dilli" was primarily a class debate. A text is as much
a piece of writing in as it is of writing out:"Delhites admire social rank,
name-dropping and exclusive clubs, and they snub strangers who turn up
without a proper introduction," Rana writes.

Hostility of a city towards its residents is as much imaginary as it is
real. Places are differentially hostile depending upon gender and class. A
lower class citizen experiences a different kind of hostility in a posh
urban residential area or a "gated community" as compared to an upper class
( apologies for dishing out clean binary categories) mobile intellectual
whom the capital drives to unwillingly access places and wrestle for spaces
in lower class ghettos or "slums" which have been patently hostile places in
our cinematic imagination. Why would a Pali HIll resident visit a Mumbai
slum or a chawl? The malls that engender a glitter in our eyes also emanate
hostile vibes towards certain stratum of society. We are always afraid of
the unknown, curious or otherwise. Whereas an army of gated community
residents can march out on a broad daylight jaunt into a 'hostile' part of
the city in order to diffuse that hostility or "conquer" that hostile part
in their imaginations, such luxury is not afforded to the " (hostile)
residents of the hostile part of the city."

Though crude and cliched, these arguments nonetheless afford 'us' a bit of
consumable clarity.


On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 11:56 AM, Zainab Bawa <bawazainab79 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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