[Reader-list] On Delhi

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Rana and Dear All,

Please forgive me for not making myself clear.

The point is perhaps, not just limited to real estate, or necessarily
to your text alone but perhaps my reference was to a broader issue -

Which perhaps relates to creation of narratives about city like Delhi.

The point being why in the last many decades we, the reader are
prompted to approach the idea of Delhi through what seem like a ready
made stock of characters and stock notions?

Land being just one of them.

Let me take this opportunity to expand my thoughts concerning
representation of the idea of Delhi.

Let me also suggest that there is of course nothing wrong in re-using
previously used, previously crafted stock of characters or notions,
that is perhaps indicative of smart thinking, but I wonder if there
can be novel ways of describing a city, other than by simply deploying
seemingly typecast notions and figures like- clogged roads, the figure
of L'enfant terrible, DDA/ Property Dealer nexus, Nouveau riche and
the figure of a cynical journalist etc

There seems to be no dearth of literature on Delhi in the public
domain which does not seem to have previously relied on these
typification.

 I wish to re-visit these types, more so, in order to think and
reflect as to why is it that there seems to be rather limited range of
descriptions of the Capital city? I am sure there are more than 'n'
number of ways to read the idea of Delhi?

Why, for instance, the notion of insight or a suggestion towards an
uncanny element which must be a normative attribute of any form of
writing; seems to be conspicuous by its  absence from recent
literature on cities like Delhi? Although I do not know whether this
should be normatively included in any and every form of writing on big
cities.

For the time being, though, let's leave these questions aside and let
us re-visit some of the above mentioned notions, one by one, to
ascertain for ourselves, how different people, belonging to different
eras which were seemingly unconnected through time and space have
attempted to create a memory for us, towards an idea of Delhi.

1. Clogged Roads-

 1.i . A popular travelogue from Lonely Planet series describes the
Roads of Delhi as thus-

In a densely populated city such as Delhi, even road space is at a
premium, not just for traffic but also for everything else....[which
is ] shared by bicycles, cycle rickshaws, scooters, motor cycles, auto
rickshaws, carts drawn by horses, bullocks, or the odd, camels, cars,
taxis, vans, trucks, buses, and an occasional elephant.

[ Horton, P,  Plunkett, R and Finlay, H. 2002 Lonely Planet. Getting
around- Metro p. 81]

1.ii. When Mark Tully writes, No full stops in India, he describes the
roads of Delhi in 1991, as thus-

...the streets of Delhi are nevertheless clogged up Japanese designed
cars and scooters...for the less affluent there are only decrepit,
outdated and fuel inefficient buses quite in capable of providing an
efficient service even if the roads were cleared of them.

[as cited in Waugh,D 2000. Geography an Integrated Approach p.619]


1.iii. While writing Twilight In Delhi in 1940, Ahmed Ali,  tells the
story of Mir Nihal a merchant of Delhi who is grappling with loss of
power post 1857 seige of the city by the British. Ahmed Ali decides to
use the following words, to describe an event thus giving us a view
how these Delhi roads could have appeared.-

The procession passed, one long unending line of generals, and the
governors and the tommies, and the native chiefs and their retinues,
and soldiery like a slow unending line of ants.

[Ali, A. 1994. Twilight in Delhi. p 105]

2. The figure of L'enfant terrible. aka Bade baap ki bigri hui aulaad.

2.i. Sanjeev Nanda appears to one, like a postmetropolis version of
Duryodhana. Duryodhana a mythical character whose pride was
instrumental in the creation of Inderprastha (Delhi ) in the first
place. He was also the one, by the way, who snatched the city from its
'rightful' owners. Thus turning the then Delhi into a lawless city.
Duryodhana's father was blind to his follies and in the end had to pay
a price for this neglect.

Like Inderprastha is often described as that which was imagined by an
Asur architect called Maya, so does subsequent descriptions of the
city seems to rely on prevalence of surreal structures. But we deviate
here...therefore we come back to this character of Bade baap ki bigri
hui aulaad aka Baba logs aka L'enfant terrible!

Apart from Duryodhana, I can think of Aurangzeb, we may call him as an
erstwhile inhabitant of the city, who also had scant regard for the
rules and regulations of the day and was rather interested in doing
what he thought 'fit' . In an urban context what he did was no
different from what people in power do now to Delhi which is to
demolish, erase and subsequently construct. Maybe if some future
historian were to write a text on the history of urban Delhi then we
may have more material to quote from.

However it does not comes as a surprise that when Mohsin Hamid, for
instance, writes about Lahore in his Moth Smoke, he chooses the name,
Aurangzeb aka Ozi to represent decadence. Ozi by the way, was also
involved in a hit and run accident in 1998 in Lahore, like Nanda in
1999 in Delhi, and he escapes law by coercing someone less fortunate
than him to take the blame, like Nanda through his family tries to
influence the key witness.

2.ii. Then in post Independence India we had Suresh Kumar.

SK, as we all know, was the son of the Defense Minister of India.
Although SK was not exactly killing people but yes, like Nanda, he
appears  as a public hazard in the eyes of quite a few. I, of course
refer to the infamous sex scandal which came to fore when Surya
Magazine broke the story.

Journalist Rajinder Puri, who in 1978, was the then campaign in charge
of Janta Party had this to write about the incident-

-A defense ministers son, in a defense dealers car, related papers in
the backseat of the car and the car was used for a romantic rendezvous
- was it right that the son of the defense minister should be so
careless about affairs which could imperil the nations security ? That
set me off !-

[ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/proj_tabloid/puri.shtml ]

2.iii And who can forget Sanjay Dutt aka Sanju Baba but he belongs to
Bombay doesn't he, so what!! for Delhi did we not have Sanjay Gandhi
aka Sanjay Baba to haunt our collective imagination.

In what Harsh Sethi cogently describes as an anthropology of power,
Raj Thapar has this to write about Sanjay Baba in All These Years-

-Sanjay, the son, was so deep in the game of  governance, if he
wielded so much power over his mother, the story was far more
terrifying that we had ever thought. Indira had over the last three
years, given in to him in small ways, we had thought.

[ Thapar, R. 1991. All These Years: a memoir. p. 399 ]

There's also a section in the book where Raj Thapar writes about a
small but significant incident which leads Nehru to ask Indira about
her son's involvement in alleged incidents of car lifting from the
diplomatic enclave which comes under the purview of Lodhi road police
station.

During his day, as we all know that Sanjay was deeply passionate about
a range of interests- like borrowing farm lands from friends from
Gurgaon to play spanner-spanner-in-the-works , or fly planes at
fantastically low levels so that, being the dutiful husband he was, he
could assist his wife by drying all the clothes hung in the backyard.
And Yes, when he was free during evenings, he would easily drop by
Trukman Gate in his Ford Jeep to evangelize about vasectomy to the
illiterate hordes of Islam.

And now! during the elections, we had to sit patiently when HIS son,
blessed be his soul, Varun, started to evangelize on the fine art of
plucking hands out of illiterate hordes of Islam if they were to
behave improperly.

It seems, In Delhi, every now and then, we pay homage to a myth, which
not the myth of Rama but that of Duryodhana. To keep his memory alive
a son has to be sacrificed in the public consciousness. His fall has
to become a fable.

It escapes me that what's so transformative or alluring or symbolic
about this character that it needs to be mentioned, analyzed and
written about again and again, every time one has to write about
Delhi?

3.  DDA/ Property Dealer nexus.

3.i.  Who can forget Dibakar Banerjee's excellent film on urban
transformations around Delhi called- Khosla ka Ghosla, which was
released in 2006?

The film was about Delhi, about the change in housing sector, about
the promise of a new wealth and the desire to fulfill a long cherished
dream of possessing land, of owning and building a house. And the film
was a story of lives of all those characters which were caught in this
conundrum.

Did the character of Kishan Khorana, not signify- the corruption, the
impropriety, the obscene wealth, the (ab)use of power, the way is
which these lands are coerced from owners?  Did the character Asif
Iqbal not point towards the methods or processes which are employed to
acquire legitimacy of land?

[ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466460/plotsummary ]

But was it any new or was it an old story excellently told?

3.ii. Or for that matter one could think of an eminently forgettable
cinematic text like Jugaad, which was directed by Anand Kumar and
released in 2009.

The film story revolves around municipal corporation of Delhi's
inspired 'sealing drive' and how an advertising agency owner tries to
find his way through a maze of characters involving property dealers,
corrupt MCD officials, to reclaim the land where his agency one stood.

[ http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0677187/ ]

3.iii.  At one level real estate for housing is a simple game. It
relates to the stock. Demand versus Supply.  If there more demand and
less supply. There's bound to be speculation. Various people will
enter the speculative market hoping to make a quick buck.

Consider this piece on Delhi's housing  situation 25 years ago.
Reading an essay written by Arun Kumar in EPW in 1982 on the eve of
Asian Games in Delhi and then juxtaposing it stuff written on
contemporary Delhi one is left with a feeling as if nothing much
happened in all these years. That the city has not evolved. One
wonders if that is the case?

- Delhi along with other urban centers of the country have been
experiencing a phenomenal boon in real estate prices since 1977. In
the capital city the increase has been particularly steep.
notwithstanding the existence of DDA, an official agency charged with
the planned development of the Union Territory-

Later in the essay Arun Kumar adds,

DDA seems to be bending its rules to favor builders... in fact it is
believed, that most conglomerates of brokers, builders and financiers
in Delhi are overextended and are unable to make full payments to the
DDA for the purchase made in previous years.

[ Kumar, A. 1982. Economic and Political Weekly. Real Estate as
Business. p 1984 ]

4. Nouveau riche

4.i. For someone like, Sumanta Banerjee  Nouveau riches of India about
SIX years ago, in 2003 stood for, a 'small transparent cocoon'.
Commenting on the then state of affairs, she says, 'that small
transparent cocoon of the Indian Big Rich is bursting at the seams,
with Ferrari's and BMW's, farm houses and malls, exclusive townships
and wine picnics, mega bashes and show biz weddings.

It's an incestuous world of a symbiotic relationship, between demands
for luxury goods, and five star privileges, by a minuscule portion of
India, and their supply by the handful of rich manufacturers and
producers who are everlastingly creating newer and newer demands.

[ Banerjee, S. 2003. Economic and Political Weekly. Better 'Nouveau'
than Never. p 5145-5146 ]

4.ii Charles W Pratt. reviewing a Naipaul's book in The Rotarian in
1991 almost EGIHTEEN years ago has this to offer-

-Because of industrialization, and the green revolution in rural
areas, a new class of Nouveau riche persons are emerging, and these
persons are exposed to the first time to university education,
comfortable urban life, stylish living, and western influences-
materialistic comforts...At the moment things are chaotic here.

[ Pratt,C.W. Mar 1991. The Rotarian. Vol. 158. No. 3. p.4 ]

4.iii. An article contributed by Local Self Government Institute
Bombay describes the 'new' recipients  of redistribution wealth in
1978-

The nouveau riche in the country are generally exhibitionists. One can see them
in the posh residential colonies of New Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta


[ Quarterly journal of the Local Self-Government Institute (Bombay).‎ - Page 20
by Local Self-Government Institute (Bombay), All-India Institute of
Local Self-Government - Political Science - 1978 ]

5. The figure of a cynical journalist.

5.i  In 1983 -Jaane Bhi Do Yaroon- was released, where the trope a
cynical journalist was used both in an ironical manner by the presence
of two cynically naive photo-journalists who wanted to expose an
instance of builder/politician nexus related to an urban development
project and their calculative editor who makes a bargain in the end
with the very builders/politicians who she was supposed to expose. But
of course this was related to Bombay and not Delhi.


5.ii  Then in 1986, just three years later, a film called, New Delhi
Times was released which had Shashi Kapoor playing the character of an
oxymoronically cynical yet hopeful journalist called, Vikas Pande. In
New Delhi Times, Vikas's job was to hold the proverbial mirror to a
rapidly degrading Delhi political and social elite. He is
disillusioned in the end because the power elite do little to back him
up.

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The point being what do these stock descriptions mean to us? What is
this idea of a city that we are asked to conjure or to interpret? Why
does it appear as if we are persuaded to consume this dominant notion
about the city? What makes extremely perceptive professional writers,
repeat stock notions about Delhi decade after decade after decade by
re-packaging perhaps a torpidity of imagination as a novelty'?

Does writing about Delhi in a particular manner by using readily
available - types- not reduce, a remarkable city to, 'a predictable
city'?

Warm regards

Taha