[Reader-list] What is in this word "evidence"?

[Shveta]

Dear All,

Over the years you have read texts written by writers living in LNJP 
basti (near LNJP hospital and Turkman gate) on this list. LNJP basti, 
one of the few remaining older squatter settlements in Delhi, is now 
under pressure of eviction and demolition. There is a survey in 
operation in LNJP now. This survey will determine how resettlement will 
happen.

Here is a text by Babli Rai on the survey.

warmly
shveta

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What is in this word "evidence"?
Babli Rai

"Sleep has vanished from my nights, agonising over what will happen 
during our survey. We have lived here so many years, made so many 
things, but we can be turned homeless overnight..." The word 'homeless' 
runs through our lives today like a shiver down the spine. He who 
doesn't have a plot of land to his name does not exist. Listening to my 
father I sensed, our sense of self, our entire existence is connected 
deeply to this place in which we have lived many years. But it is not 
enough to have lived in this place. Today the ground has hollowed out 
like a bottomless pit, the walls of the house are shifting away from us. 
And we are trying to keep everything together but, I think, not too 
successfully.

"When we first came here, we saw it only as a place to shelter ourselves 
in. We saw possibilities here, which were first and foremost, and 
perhaps only about earning a living, finding a sustenance to live life. 
When the VP Singh cards began to be made, we saw our names inside 
official registers, and thought now we have been included in government 
ledgers. Slowly, as we continued to live here, we realised it is not 
enough to just build a house somewhere. When it presented itself as a 
possibility, we got our ration cards made. The ration card was something 
through which we could get sarkari benefits, that is rations at lower 
costs than in the market. That is, it made it possible for us to save 
some money from that which we were earning while living here. Over 
twenty five years, through different kinds of counting done by the 
government, we too began to get different numbers. Every corner of the 
house we turned into a corner for safe-keeping the various slips of 
paper we received in the process, so that they remain secure."

How long have we lived in this place? As soon as this question knocked 
at me, I pulled out all the documents in the house, to look at them 
closely, again. We have lived here for twenty five years. How are we 
going to prove this? Here is a small visualisation of what will happen 
when the surveyors come to our house: They will ask for evidence. They 
will say to my father, "Babuji, what can we say about mistakes that may 
have been made in your documents. We are here only to see what there is."

What is in this word "evidence"? Often, it was our neighbours - those 
who live around us - who were sufficient as "proof". What they said 
about someone was accepted. Today each and every one of those who can 
vouch for atleast the last twenty years of our life are here, near us. 
But when they speak, the government behaves as if it were deaf. I have 
understood this. And today when I look at my neighbourhood, I see the 
present situation has transformed it into a row of deaf and mute people. 
They are all waiting for their turn; and each one will speak only when 
it is his turn to speak. We will have to be our own witness now. And for 
that we need our documents, our sarkari papers. So I sat down, with all 
the slips and papers and documents spread out around me, my eyes fixed 
on them, in the lookout for the official language of evidence. Every 
document is as if ready to spill like the white of an egg. Every paper 
must be touched softly, it's edges smoothened tenderly, lest it tear and 
become meaningless. And when you can't find a document, the turbulence 
that causes is such that you become like a diver, diving into the deep 
oceans, in search for your lost treasure.

Lest you think I am alone in thinking this...

A man, anywhere between 80 and 90 years old, whom I call babaji and have 
seen here since I was a little girl. He has laid the foundation for and 
built innumerable brick and cement houses in LNJP with his own hands. I 
remember in my childhood, whenever he would be making a house, we used 
to get beaten up by him for sneaking away wet mud from what he was 
building. He says a lot in a few words, communicating much more through 
his gestures than his words. He took me by my hand to his house. His 
house is still kutcha, after all these years. He wanted to know what was 
going on. He seemed in the dark about the nature of the survey. Then he 
wanted to know when the survey team would reach his house.

He pulled out a heavy bundle which had his documents. Where is your lal 
card, I asked? He brought out an old, stiff wallet and pulled out his VP 
Singh card from it. And along with it tumbled out innumerable receipts 
of materials he must have purchased when he was making different 
peoples' homes. I began reading out the names on those receipts, and he 
started telling me, "Ah this one must be from Mehtar Bhai, who used to 
sell cement masala at Turkhman Gate. There weren't any shops inside LNJP 
from which construction material could be bought in those times." Where 
is your old ration card, I asked him. I asked him for different 
documents, and he unknotted different polythene bags looking for them. 
It looked like all these knots were being undone in front of us, for the 
first time in many years. I'd put aside the document, and then then ask 
for a document made before that one, or one from after it. He'd nod his 
head and open a different bag. He remembered which document was in which 
polythene from the way he had knotted it, or from rags of cloth of 
different colours tied over them. With each document there were slips 
and receipts, and he'd say whose house they were from, so I sat there 
conjecturing whose house was made in which year.

I made a set of documents and asked him to get them photocopied.

I explained to him that in the survey, the survey team would only pay 
heed to documents issued by departments like their own, that they want 
to only see if you have given them adequate respect over the last twenty 
years, that it was very important he should get across through his 
documents that he was worthy of being resettled in a new place.

A woman had been sitting nearby all this time, and she looked very bored 
by all this, as if she had grown tired of waiting for her turn for the 
survey. She said, "Sarkari work used to get done so quickly earlier. But 
now you have to keep waiting endlessly. When the lal cards had been made 
here, long ago, everything had got done so quietly, with so much ease. 
They had hung a red curtain near Nehru Hill Park to make a background. 
We had all gone together. As soon as we got there, we were each given a 
number, and then we sat down to wait for our turn. They would keep 
calling out the numbers, and each one would get up when his or her 
number was called, go stand in front of the red curtain and get his 
photograph clicked. Neither were too many questions asked, nor was there 
any fear. They only asked, your name and your father's name and jot them 
down. No one asked what use these would come in. All that we thought was 
that now we too have been counted by the sarkari counting.

"But look now at how many questions are being asked, as if their 
questions are our truth. Then these officers used to want to earn some 
small money here and there, but they'd do their work. Look at them today 
- they don't take a step without their followers. Earlier we used to 
take everyone with us wherever we went, but today it is meaningless to 
think of doing that. It feels like thousands of people are fighting 
amidst each other."

I sat there a while longer, listening to the old woman. She had in her 
the capacity to reconstruct a time that has gone by. She could recall 
who she had gone somewhere with, what kind of an environment she 
encountered there, what kinds of questions and confusions all of them 
grappled with. But all these stories - what do they hold today?