[Reader-list] an experience of ramlila maidan

[Ruchika Negi]

*witnessing*

Ramlila Maidan/ 21st August



At least this was one argument I was adept at, “Why 50 rupees? There’s
always a jam at this time, so why should I pay you extra?” He replied
smugly, “There is too much jam because of this Anna thing, you pay me 10
rupees extra, okay?” We both laughed uncomfortably, in that one moment both
living our individual ironies of the reality around us. We understood each
other.



I find it hard to articulate what I am witnessing around me. Many adjectives
have been debated and fought over this. My desire to experience these
contentious adjectives probably led me to Ramlila Maidan.



I felt oddly self-conscious asking the auto rickshaw man- “Ramlila Maidan?”
One old chap simply smiled, silently shaking his head in refusal. The roads
were clogged so the auto drivers were wary of going in that direction. The
one who relented asked us to get off at Connaught Place and walk from there.
The streets were spotted with a few people, flags in hand, their slogans of
Jai Hind and Vande Mataram gently ruffling the quiet around them. As we
neared the ground, the numbers increased, became large groups of assorted
sizes and colour, some wearing the ‘I am Anna cap’, some holding candy floss
in one hand struggling to pin the Anna badge on the their chests with the
other; speeding bikes that grazed you slightly as they went past you- three
or sometimes four huddled together with bandanas and all; children perched
on backs and shoulders, the women chiding the older ones to walk in a row,
men in uniform around a crossing looking a little bored and hot, a traffic
policeman trying hard to smile while he told people to leave their vehicles
at the barricade and walk, boys and girls, couples holding hands, the
numbers more dissipated as compared to the swelled-up TV screens that I had
been seeing at home.



The crowds looked peaceful, even happy in their enthusiasm to participate.
That moment seemed both a spectacle outside and a question within. Perhaps
all of us walking in that one collective moment, carried the binaries within
us. Most of the people around us filmed themselves or their friends and
family members on their mobile phones as they marched ahead towards the
Maidan. Some stopped to pose for each other and passersby smilingly obliged
to take photographs of others- groups standing head to head, flashing their
best smiles at the camera or a shy bride reclining against the Maidan wall
slyly glancing at her husband from behind his mobile phone camera. My friend
and I joined the crowd walking ahead of us led by a colorfully dressed
Hanuman, with an anti-corruption chorus behind him. A TV camera soon perched
its attention on the quirky Hanuman, teasing the crowds which now stopped
walking and gathered around the TV crew, many talking simultaneously, while
others shoving their necks into the frame to fill up the margins. At the
entrance, some lady constables checked the women behind a curtain, the ones
we now see at cinema halls, looking distracted and rushed, their fingers
carelessly rummaging through women and their bags.



A voice thundered through the loud speakers as hands came together in unison
to applaud, in rhythm with the climax of the speech. A row of men with heads
turned towards the stage at the Sulabh Shauchalaya van outlining the Maidan
premises on one side, a group of young men talking among themselves only to
stop to contribute to the cheers, a child held by his young mother looking
startled at the shouts around him. Pauses in between filled up with a mass
outcry against ‘them’, the state, the corruption, a collective vulnerability
of a people. A few did not say anything, may be because they had just walked
in and there was too much confusion and it was hard to follow or comprehend
what one saw.



The voice on the stage said the time was right. Those who think of us as
servants must realize that we have become the Maliks now. So do not dare to
treat us like Naukars any more. The owned had become the owners. There was
something deeply disturbing in these assumed roles, implicitly implying a
reversal of divisions, an inversion of categories. The language seemed to
have appropriated a crack, a disjunct without questioning it for itself. A
girl sitting on her father’s shoulders held the ends of her floral frock and
yelled ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, her father the first one to shout after her
till everyone standing around me turned to look at the little voice behind
them, exchanging quick glances and sudden smiles of wonder and patronage to
join in the slogan.



The next voice on stage said that just because we do not see more of our
Muslim brothers standing among us at that time, we should not think that
they are not with us in our battle. The difficult month of Ramzan was
holding them back. He himself had come from really far despite his Roza and
others would come too. His Muslim brethren had already sacrificed a soldier
in Anna’s Army, Shehla Masod who had laid down her life for Anna and this
country. Corruption was a terrible thing, a great wrong that had to be
amended.

I looked around me. No one seemed interested in who the others around them
were, there were no invasive curiosities, no prying questions when you
refused to join the mass chorus and chose silence instead. The crowds asked
little of itself. Everyone was ‘aam’ yet singular in that mood. We all
seemed to share a common sentiment- a faint realization that this
participation, at this juncture, really mattered, irrespective of which
version of reality one adhered to or believed. The different calls from the
stage beseeched you, evoked you, sometimes even told you to look at the
situation in a certain way- the decays and the triumphs rolled in to a
rhetoric that asked only one thing of the bystander- to perform in the
moment, to partake of it in one’s own special way. That the rhetoric in
itself seemed fractured was not important to think about just then. It was
not a moment to flounder, not now when the Maidan stood for an expression,
an experience and a chronicle, all at the same time.



The crowds of Delhi cheered on and a few young people, cartons in hand, wove
through the maze distributing drinking water pouches to everyone. These boys
and girls asked you politely if you wanted water, gave it to you anyway and
went on to the next. No one pushed you in the rib to get ahead, there was no
need to be either rude or civil- the gesture of those who were helping the
crowds sustain their resolution to stand and be a part of this moment was
neither lauded or abused. It seemed like a given, a contribution that was
both required yet unasked. It was an act of self-will that asked for neither
a sanction nor censorship. Everyone standing in those crowds had something
to say, a position personal, intimate perhaps. I have seen people talking to
eager cameras on television about how, if they too had paid bribes, probably
they would have become class I government officers. It was because they
desisted that their fate was otherwise. People speaking of ration cards,
admission to educational institutes, parking spaces in the city,
Commonwealth Games, Kapil Sibal, farmers’ rights and much more- as if the
aroused consciousness now saw no boundaries. Everyone was a victim, everyone
outraged at this discovery.



The stage broke into a song- “Mitwa”, from the film Lagaan. People swayed
and clapped their hands. A man dressed as Gandhi swirling on one leg with a
stick in hand, perhaps a symbol of Gandhi’s lathi. Few gathered around him
in a circle and goaded him on. On another side of the Maidan, some people
were sitting inside a tent, a man with a long beard lying on a table ahead
of them. Another man stood close to his head, fanning him. Peering eyes
looked at him and then passed on. Perhaps he was also fasting with Anna
Hazare, like some others there. A woman came on to the stage and dedicated a
song to Anna Hazare as she spoke about the fact that she, as a mother,
wanted a “safe, secure nation to give her children”. Two young boys standing
in front of me held the tricolor and swayed it gently from one side to the
other while tapping to the beat of the song. They were smiling at the
provocative lyrics of the singer, nodding to each other from time to time.
There was something beautiful in that image for me, the complexity inherent
and moving.  There was no argument in that gesture, only the brevity to
believe in a promise. It did not matter who made that promise, or if the
reason to believe itself was foggy. People flashed chart papers at you,
which said the Indian law was still based on what the British left us. It
was time for change. The PM must go back. It was time to change. We will not
bow down now. Change. The screams were loud and clear- everything around had
to change. A loss of faith requires one to clutch on to something new,
something immediate, an assurance sometimes, or even ambiguity. Something to
shield while lying in wait.



On the road, a man stood outside his Maruti car, wearing the Anna cap and
shouting at the traffic constable who was probably telling him to walk ahead
from that point on- “I will see how you stop me.” The constable was trying
to calm the scene down as more people gathered around to see what was
happening. The policeman looked strangely singular, perhaps because of his
uniform, perhaps because one could not hear him from a distance as his voice
drowned in the din. His hands, silently moving in the air in a gesture to
pacify made him appear like a conductor of an orchestra that had completely
gone out of tune.



We stopped an auto-rickshaw. The driver asked for an inflated sum. We said,
“We are coming from Anna’s rally. You should take us.” He smiled and agreed
to charge us according to the meter. “If you were in the rally, why did you
come back?” he quizzed us. “Tired, perhaps,” we said, “a little bored.” “If
Anna also starts feeling like this what will happen?” “But don’t we need to
think about what will happen now?” “Yes”, he said, “the work has to go on.”
He had gone to the Maidan for some time, but had to go back to his work. We
rode on as more motor-cyclists crossed us, revving their bikes, holding
flags, shouting slogans, standing ahead of the zebra line on traffic signals
or skipping them at times, in a rush to join the rally that was about to
start at India Gate.



Ruchika