An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on December 23, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, December 13, 2010
This one's for the Members of the Parliament, by the members and of the members.
A magazine, due to be launched next month by the Constitution Club, will map the unknown side of the members, their quirks, their hobbies, and spread them across 28 pages.
This will be their space where they can write about what the other mainstream media won't explore, or cover, officials said.
Because even under the constant public stare, the eye, the representatives always had the other side, another dimension to their public life.
The magazine will make them more human to the public at large when the magazine, at some later date, starts selling at the stalls. Tucked into these pages, their personalities will span out beyond the tag of the policy maker.
In his own time, former Union Minister of State Vijay Goel likes photography. And that's a lesser-known fact about his life. South Mumbai MP Milind Deora strums the guitar in clubs because that's what he is passionate about.
Called the Central Hall, the magazine's editorial board will have journalists, editors and members, including HT Media's Sobhana Bhartiya, The Pioneer's Chandan Mitra and Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the BJP spokesperson and secretary of the Constitution Club, who will take turns to write columns.
“The purpose is to cover what media doesn't cover,” Rudy said.”This is the first of its kind. For 60 years in the history of the Constitution Club, we never had our own publication.”
In the works for more than six months, the magazine will be circulated among the members at first. But the officials plan to make it accessible to the public later.
The first issue of the monthly magazine will include an interview with Sharad Joshi, as well as a feature on Prakash Jadavekar’s wife Prachi, an academician, and how “an MP’s wife can make a difference to society in her own way”.
The reporting and writing will be done by the Club's research cell, Rudy said.
Each issue will consist of 5-6 features, including one on the Constitution. For instance, the lead feature for the first issue is on how does a bill become an act.
Members can write about their own experiences as well. Rajya Sabha Member Shahid Siddiqui has written a personal account of his experience of staging a play on the occasion of Children's Day and his take on the laws regarding child welfare in the country.
“We thought there needs to be a publication where parliamentarians can write about themselves rather being dependent on others. They together will own it,” a Constitution Club official said.
The cover has been designed by Anando Dutta, a visual designer who has designed logos for Tata Infotech using the cover of the Indian Constitution.
When it launches for the public, the cover will be redesigned, officials said.
“We are still in the decision-making stages. It took 50 years to come out with a magazine so we are taking it slow,” the official said.
The magazine also seeks to provide a forum where families of the members can interact and know more about each other by featuring them in its pages. Features will also cover their spouses, their children and their activities.
Besides adding a gym and a spa to the Constitution Club and organizing a car rally of the Parliamentarians, the magazine is the latest edition to the club's offerings to its members.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Love in the times of war - Parliament members come together for photo shoot
Since we didn't get the permission to witness the event, we tried to reconstruct the scene here through people's memory and description of it. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on December 3, 2010.
Here is the full story.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, December 2, 2010
In the nine rows, as they sat or stood according to their designations, the hundreds of Members of Parliament and the ministers looked like school children posing for a group photo. They giggled, adjusted their clothes and poses, and smiled often.
Only the camaraderie that was infectious at the moment just before the session and the chaos that has been disrupting the work, was fleeting, only captured through the lens of a special camera.
Dressed for the photo shoot, a tradition, a ritual that would capture them in one frame, a visual record to be hung in the inner lobby of the Lok Sabha, the members reached before time, smiled too often, and cracked jokes.
The shoot was scheduled for 9:30 a.m.
No 2G scam was going to come in the way of their smiles as they looked into the camera that rotated, and clicked, capturing the moment for eternity.
For the South Mumbai MP Milind Deora, the session was bitter sweet, a reminder that all of them should take the sense of pride that they felt at the moment when the shutterbugs clicked farther than the stands.
“In a school photo shoot, you have different houses but you still come together for a larger purpose. That was missing. It didn't manifest itself in this session,” Deora said. “Last time, when it was my first photo shoot, it was not in the backdrop of this unproductive session. Why can't this happen everyday, why can't we let our sense of pride in belonging to this institution precede our differences and have constructive debates?”
As newly elected members, one of the first things they see are the photographs, hundreds of representatives smiling out of one frame, the sense of unity superseding the diversity, of the differences of political agendas.
It was the former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who first commissioned the group photo in 1956 and since then it has been a ritual, an institution in itself.
Gopal Krishan Datt, the photographer and son of late Anant Ram Dutt, who Nehru had asked to click the group photo way back in the 1950s, stood on the stone platform and dictated the photo session to the hundreds of ministers and Members of Parliament and ministers who teased him and in turn were made to smile by the photographer who has been shooting the group photos of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha members since 1967.
“People dress up. It is a special moment. I spoke with Farooq Abdullah and he was asking me when the photo would be ready,” he said.
It was a colorful frame, too.
Arjun Ram Meghwal, an MP from Bikane in Rajasthan, wore a multicolor turban saying he wore it to represent the hues of his state. After all, the photo is an expression of the people, too, and who they chose to represent them, an MP said.
Farooq Abdullah wore a black achkan, and a traditional Karakul topi, to showcase his Kashmiriyat, and Satabdi Roy, All India Trinamool Congress MP from Birbhum in West Bengal, veered away from her traditional churidars and kurtas to a saree for the shoot.
Many young MPs wore Nehru jackets like Varun Gandhi who wore a peach colored one, and Rahul Gandhi, who wore white kurta and pajama with a sombre Nehru jacket.
Among some of the best dressed for the occasion, according to a Parliament official who was present for the session that is done once every five years and for every Lok Sabha composition, were Dinesh Trivedi Trivedi, All India Trinamool Congress MP from Barrackpur in West Bengal who wore a formal bandh gala suit and Supriya Sadanand Sule, Nationalist Congress Party MP from Baramati in Maharashtra who wore a green silk suit.
Shiv Sena MP from Kalyan Anand Prakash Paranjpe chose to wear a suit complete with a tie for the occasion. It was his first photo session, a ritual he was looking forward to. In 2008 when he was elected, he didn't have the “privilege” to stand in the temporary stands, hidden from public view by boards put up in between the enclosures to give the moment the sanctity it deserves.
“I wear suits very often to corporate meetings. It is a really a privilege to be there among the 543 members. Everyone was there. It was a precious moment, everyone was happy, and it was one of the most memorable moments,” he said.
When he arrived at 9:15 a.m., the stands were already full. UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi in a blue and green saree and opposition leader and BJP member Sushma Swaraj in an ochre yellow saree were already seated in the front row meant for the cabinet ministers. There was excitement, buzz, and amity.
“People fight on the floor. But they are friends outside,” he said. “I thought suit was better. I don't wear typical politician dress. To stand in the photo gallery, it is really a privilege.”
There were new faces, too like Putul Devi, wife of Late JDU Leader Digvijay Singh, who contested on her own from Banka in Bihar and is now an elected independent member, one of the eight independents. She took the oath on Thursday and wore a cream saree for the occasion.
But as the photographer downed the shutters of an Eastman Kodak which Anant Ram, who was a photographer to the British officers and Indian royalty, b ought for Rs 100 in 1914 and has used since Nehru asked him to shoot the members in one frame, the members got off the stands, walked to their seats in the house and the scams and differences took over. But then, the moment, a rare one of smiles and handshakes, had been preserved.
Here is the full story.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, December 2, 2010
In the nine rows, as they sat or stood according to their designations, the hundreds of Members of Parliament and the ministers looked like school children posing for a group photo. They giggled, adjusted their clothes and poses, and smiled often.
Only the camaraderie that was infectious at the moment just before the session and the chaos that has been disrupting the work, was fleeting, only captured through the lens of a special camera.
Dressed for the photo shoot, a tradition, a ritual that would capture them in one frame, a visual record to be hung in the inner lobby of the Lok Sabha, the members reached before time, smiled too often, and cracked jokes.
The shoot was scheduled for 9:30 a.m.
No 2G scam was going to come in the way of their smiles as they looked into the camera that rotated, and clicked, capturing the moment for eternity.
For the South Mumbai MP Milind Deora, the session was bitter sweet, a reminder that all of them should take the sense of pride that they felt at the moment when the shutterbugs clicked farther than the stands.
“In a school photo shoot, you have different houses but you still come together for a larger purpose. That was missing. It didn't manifest itself in this session,” Deora said. “Last time, when it was my first photo shoot, it was not in the backdrop of this unproductive session. Why can't this happen everyday, why can't we let our sense of pride in belonging to this institution precede our differences and have constructive debates?”
As newly elected members, one of the first things they see are the photographs, hundreds of representatives smiling out of one frame, the sense of unity superseding the diversity, of the differences of political agendas.
It was the former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who first commissioned the group photo in 1956 and since then it has been a ritual, an institution in itself.
Gopal Krishan Datt, the photographer and son of late Anant Ram Dutt, who Nehru had asked to click the group photo way back in the 1950s, stood on the stone platform and dictated the photo session to the hundreds of ministers and Members of Parliament and ministers who teased him and in turn were made to smile by the photographer who has been shooting the group photos of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha members since 1967.
“People dress up. It is a special moment. I spoke with Farooq Abdullah and he was asking me when the photo would be ready,” he said.
It was a colorful frame, too.
Arjun Ram Meghwal, an MP from Bikane in Rajasthan, wore a multicolor turban saying he wore it to represent the hues of his state. After all, the photo is an expression of the people, too, and who they chose to represent them, an MP said.
Farooq Abdullah wore a black achkan, and a traditional Karakul topi, to showcase his Kashmiriyat, and Satabdi Roy, All India Trinamool Congress MP from Birbhum in West Bengal, veered away from her traditional churidars and kurtas to a saree for the shoot.
Many young MPs wore Nehru jackets like Varun Gandhi who wore a peach colored one, and Rahul Gandhi, who wore white kurta and pajama with a sombre Nehru jacket.
Among some of the best dressed for the occasion, according to a Parliament official who was present for the session that is done once every five years and for every Lok Sabha composition, were Dinesh Trivedi Trivedi, All India Trinamool Congress MP from Barrackpur in West Bengal who wore a formal bandh gala suit and Supriya Sadanand Sule, Nationalist Congress Party MP from Baramati in Maharashtra who wore a green silk suit.
Shiv Sena MP from Kalyan Anand Prakash Paranjpe chose to wear a suit complete with a tie for the occasion. It was his first photo session, a ritual he was looking forward to. In 2008 when he was elected, he didn't have the “privilege” to stand in the temporary stands, hidden from public view by boards put up in between the enclosures to give the moment the sanctity it deserves.
“I wear suits very often to corporate meetings. It is a really a privilege to be there among the 543 members. Everyone was there. It was a precious moment, everyone was happy, and it was one of the most memorable moments,” he said.
When he arrived at 9:15 a.m., the stands were already full. UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi in a blue and green saree and opposition leader and BJP member Sushma Swaraj in an ochre yellow saree were already seated in the front row meant for the cabinet ministers. There was excitement, buzz, and amity.
“People fight on the floor. But they are friends outside,” he said. “I thought suit was better. I don't wear typical politician dress. To stand in the photo gallery, it is really a privilege.”
There were new faces, too like Putul Devi, wife of Late JDU Leader Digvijay Singh, who contested on her own from Banka in Bihar and is now an elected independent member, one of the eight independents. She took the oath on Thursday and wore a cream saree for the occasion.
But as the photographer downed the shutters of an Eastman Kodak which Anant Ram, who was a photographer to the British officers and Indian royalty, b ought for Rs 100 in 1914 and has used since Nehru asked him to shoot the members in one frame, the members got off the stands, walked to their seats in the house and the scams and differences took over. But then, the moment, a rare one of smiles and handshakes, had been preserved.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Of day discotheques and neon lights - my lost decade in my state
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express http://www.indianexpress.com/news/day-discotheques-in-patna/716915/ on November 27, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 26, 2010
That year, Ali wanted to change many things about Patna. He wanted the
boys and girls to dance to the music he would mix on the decks in a
restaurant with revolving neon lights, and a dance floor.
He wanted Patna, reeling under the lack of security for women and men,
to experiment with a day discotheque. Colleges shut at around 4 p.m.
The discotheque would close at 4:30 p.m. so girls and boys could come
in and dance and go home before the sun went down.
That was about a decade ago. Ali had spent a few months in Delhi,
Mumbai, Chandigarh, and wore anti-fit jeans and cool sweat shirts and
knew how to party.
He had rehearsed his role, too. He would play the DJ with headphones
plugged in his ears, a glass of beer on the side, and play his own
funky brand of music.
In those days, under the shadow of Lalu’s reign with his goons roaming
around, kidnapping women, raiding shops at will, we never partied at
clubs. In the evenings, we would sit at home and drink tea, or watch
television.
We all wanted some change, a break from the monotony of our routine
lives, from the oppressive fear that kept us indoors. We were young
and we wanted everything that everyone else in other cities had
access, too.
We wanted a discotheque even if it meant dancing under cheap neon
lights during the daylight hours.
Ali even managed to convince a restaurant owner to let him use the space.
He transported his equipment, huge speakers, a mixer, and headphones,
and we all sneaked out of the political science class, changed into
jeans, applied some cheap mascara and giggled at the prospect of going
to a disco.
I remember many students came. But the magic didn’t last. Towards the
afternoon, Ali could sense trouble was coming his way. The restaurant
owner, he told me, was anxious. This was dangerous. He was excited but
this was courting trouble.
The day discotheque shut.
Patna wasn’t ready for such adventures.
Lalu’s men were on the streets. They were indomitable, fearless, and lawless.
Those were the times I grew up in Patna, under the shadow of fear and
kidnapping. If I didn’t reach home by 4 p.m., my mother would start
calling up my friends’ homes, asking if I was ok.
We didn’t have cell phones then.
News was scary, too.
In July 1999, Shilpi Jain, my senior in Patna Women’s College, was
raped and murdered. They later dismissed it as a suicide. But
politicians were involved. On young politician refused to get his DNA
tested, saying he didn’t want to cooperate.
I had seen her at the coaching institute I attended to crack the MBA
examinations that morning. She was young, beautiful, and had been
crowned as Miss St. Joseph’s Convent at the farewell event.
The next day, the papers were full of tales of her grim, ruthless
murder. Her naked body had been dumped on some highway along with
Gautam Singh, her boyfriend. In 2003, the CBI closed the case terming
it as a suicide case.
But the infamous case had done its damage to our lives. We weren’t
allowed to have boyfriends, go out with friends, wear jeans with short
tops. It is better to be invisible in the strange times that we live
in, my mother had said then.
Fifteen years of my growing up years were filled with the fear of
rape, of being spotted, of desperately trying to get out of Bihar.
Those years were filled with longing, too, to do things that others
could with so much ease.
They used to call it “jungle raj”.
It was anarchy everywhere. Lalu engaged us all with his wit and we
laughed. But we also knew we were missing out on so much. There was
too much corruption. Roads were bumpy, shops downed their shutters by
8 p.m., and my father gave up on driving to Patliputra Colony on the
other side of the town for card parties because one night, he was
stopped by a bunch of men who demanded ransom and said he was on the
hit list.
Brain drain peaked in the state. Those who could get out, chose to
pack up and leave. A friend who had a franchise of Mahindra cars
relocated to Pune after men came and picked up cars from the showrooms
saying it was Lalu’s daughter’s wedding and they needed cars.
Caste barriers were enforced. We felt isolated. My family gave up on
the "Sinha" tag. We started using two first names so our caste doesn't
become our identity in a state that was showing the nation how to
divide and rule. My cousins are all a set of two first names. We were
the last of the "Sinha" surname in our family. A lot happened in those
15 years. Fear, and insecurity ruled all decisions.
I moved out in 2001. My mother would give me a list of instructions
before I took from Delhi or Mumbai to Patna, citing examples. There
were too many of those. A woman was drugged and her body was dumped at
one of the stations.
We never took the Rajdhani train to Delhi. It was packed with party
people, who clanked glasses, got drunk and created mayhem.
At the university, too many strikes became the order of the day. There
were strange men roaming the campus, saying they could do anything. I
went to a convent college, and was relatively safe. But my friends
faced issues. They dressed in plain clothes, tied their hair, anything
to avoid getting noticed.
On August 3, 2001, Pandora's Box, a discotheque, opened its doors.
This was yet another attempt to defy the system. It wasn’t Ali this
time but a young graduate named Aayush Sahay. But this was a day
discotheque. Nobody could risk late night brawls, etc.
But this too shut down. A local journalist told me gunshots were heard
inside the discotheque and it closed down a few months after it dared
to change the status quo.
Patna remained in its cocoon.
When I went home in 2008, after I moved back from the United States,
something had changed. Maybe just a little but it felt a lot easier
just going to the Patna Market on my own.
Then the floating restaurant opened and I went on it with my mother. I
saw many young girls and boys having a good time in the evenings. A
few malls had opened up. A lot more restaurants had opened up. They
looked fresh, full of life unlike the ones that had their waiters wait
it out for hours before people walked in. The fear was gone.
Someone asked me if I feel empowered with this spectacular win. I
don’t know if I feel empowered but I definitely feel safe and at ease
now.
Maybe Ali should come back and play his music now.
Maybe he is on to a banking career now, or maybe something else, like
all of us who just left when our moment came.
We had lost too much. Those 15 years, we felt imprisoned in our own house.
Maybe now is the time to return and reclaim our lost years in our home state.
More from memory ...
Not that everything is perfect in Bihar. But of course roads are
better, and the drive is no longer bumpy. I remember we drove to Ara
to my grandmother's place on weekends. It was a distance of perhaps
just 60 kms but on the potholed roads, it took us 2.5 hours. We
avoided leaving late from Ara and used to leave in the sweltering
afternoons during summers. Now, I hear those roads are nice and wide
and it takes only an hour. In those days, we only Maruti 800s and
Ambassadors, those bulky, heavy vehicles. Now, I see all sorts of
cars. People are not afraid to park more than one car in their
driveways. In those days, you'd be afraid to attarct too much
attention lest you got on the "hit list."
Doctors got kidnapped, young girls were picked up from Dusshera melas.
After a point, we ceased to go out and enjoy the melas through the
night. It became too tight for us to move around. It was like living
in some bubble. You knew your limits.
My mother still complains of the long power cuts in Patna. And people
complain of the power cuts at the crematoriums where half-burnt bodies
languishing in the furnace till the power comes back on, make a
mockery of the state and its upward swing on the development curve.
But I tell her that it is in the little details that we see the
change. In those days, there was only Lee Cooper. Now, we have all
brands. Now jewelry shops don't have an army of security men posted
outside the shop. Now, we go to the movies, the multiplexes and buy
popcorn and watch films without the fear. We had dared to go watch
Fire once at Ashok cinema. It was mad rush, and then they pushed us,
tried to grope us. We had to shout for help.
Once we went to watch DDLJ in a crumbling theatre in Ara. They told
the men to take the other side of the hall, and moved the women to the
other part. It was for security, they said.
In a theatre, in our boxes, once a man came and demanded my friend
accept his proposal. Then he went after her, and created a scene
outside her aprtment. He said he had political connections, and he
could get her picked up. My friend was married off in the next few
months. The family couldn't have dealt with the kidnapping stigma and
the shame.
Such were the times we lived in. We had dreams, too. But those 15
years of that fearful regime crushed those.
So I tell my mother she needs to see the change in little things, in
my smile, in my coffee dates with friends. Change is coming. It may be
slow but it will.
Then, we won't have to migrate, and we won't have to deal with the
hatred spewed upon us by the likes of MNS. Then, we will have our own
opportunities in our own state and the trains won't be so packed with
Biharis, the poor migrants, the rustic fellows, the unwanted,
invisible people, trying to leave a ravaged state to find livelihood
elsewhere.
Give him sometime to undo the damage done in the 15 years, I tell her.
From a sick state with so much to deal with, we are now a state on the
right track with young entrepreneurs willing to come back and invest.
We are going to be fine, I assure her.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 26, 2010
That year, Ali wanted to change many things about Patna. He wanted the
boys and girls to dance to the music he would mix on the decks in a
restaurant with revolving neon lights, and a dance floor.
He wanted Patna, reeling under the lack of security for women and men,
to experiment with a day discotheque. Colleges shut at around 4 p.m.
The discotheque would close at 4:30 p.m. so girls and boys could come
in and dance and go home before the sun went down.
That was about a decade ago. Ali had spent a few months in Delhi,
Mumbai, Chandigarh, and wore anti-fit jeans and cool sweat shirts and
knew how to party.
He had rehearsed his role, too. He would play the DJ with headphones
plugged in his ears, a glass of beer on the side, and play his own
funky brand of music.
In those days, under the shadow of Lalu’s reign with his goons roaming
around, kidnapping women, raiding shops at will, we never partied at
clubs. In the evenings, we would sit at home and drink tea, or watch
television.
We all wanted some change, a break from the monotony of our routine
lives, from the oppressive fear that kept us indoors. We were young
and we wanted everything that everyone else in other cities had
access, too.
We wanted a discotheque even if it meant dancing under cheap neon
lights during the daylight hours.
Ali even managed to convince a restaurant owner to let him use the space.
He transported his equipment, huge speakers, a mixer, and headphones,
and we all sneaked out of the political science class, changed into
jeans, applied some cheap mascara and giggled at the prospect of going
to a disco.
I remember many students came. But the magic didn’t last. Towards the
afternoon, Ali could sense trouble was coming his way. The restaurant
owner, he told me, was anxious. This was dangerous. He was excited but
this was courting trouble.
The day discotheque shut.
Patna wasn’t ready for such adventures.
Lalu’s men were on the streets. They were indomitable, fearless, and lawless.
Those were the times I grew up in Patna, under the shadow of fear and
kidnapping. If I didn’t reach home by 4 p.m., my mother would start
calling up my friends’ homes, asking if I was ok.
We didn’t have cell phones then.
News was scary, too.
In July 1999, Shilpi Jain, my senior in Patna Women’s College, was
raped and murdered. They later dismissed it as a suicide. But
politicians were involved. On young politician refused to get his DNA
tested, saying he didn’t want to cooperate.
I had seen her at the coaching institute I attended to crack the MBA
examinations that morning. She was young, beautiful, and had been
crowned as Miss St. Joseph’s Convent at the farewell event.
The next day, the papers were full of tales of her grim, ruthless
murder. Her naked body had been dumped on some highway along with
Gautam Singh, her boyfriend. In 2003, the CBI closed the case terming
it as a suicide case.
But the infamous case had done its damage to our lives. We weren’t
allowed to have boyfriends, go out with friends, wear jeans with short
tops. It is better to be invisible in the strange times that we live
in, my mother had said then.
Fifteen years of my growing up years were filled with the fear of
rape, of being spotted, of desperately trying to get out of Bihar.
Those years were filled with longing, too, to do things that others
could with so much ease.
They used to call it “jungle raj”.
It was anarchy everywhere. Lalu engaged us all with his wit and we
laughed. But we also knew we were missing out on so much. There was
too much corruption. Roads were bumpy, shops downed their shutters by
8 p.m., and my father gave up on driving to Patliputra Colony on the
other side of the town for card parties because one night, he was
stopped by a bunch of men who demanded ransom and said he was on the
hit list.
Brain drain peaked in the state. Those who could get out, chose to
pack up and leave. A friend who had a franchise of Mahindra cars
relocated to Pune after men came and picked up cars from the showrooms
saying it was Lalu’s daughter’s wedding and they needed cars.
Caste barriers were enforced. We felt isolated. My family gave up on
the "Sinha" tag. We started using two first names so our caste doesn't
become our identity in a state that was showing the nation how to
divide and rule. My cousins are all a set of two first names. We were
the last of the "Sinha" surname in our family. A lot happened in those
15 years. Fear, and insecurity ruled all decisions.
I moved out in 2001. My mother would give me a list of instructions
before I took from Delhi or Mumbai to Patna, citing examples. There
were too many of those. A woman was drugged and her body was dumped at
one of the stations.
We never took the Rajdhani train to Delhi. It was packed with party
people, who clanked glasses, got drunk and created mayhem.
At the university, too many strikes became the order of the day. There
were strange men roaming the campus, saying they could do anything. I
went to a convent college, and was relatively safe. But my friends
faced issues. They dressed in plain clothes, tied their hair, anything
to avoid getting noticed.
On August 3, 2001, Pandora's Box, a discotheque, opened its doors.
This was yet another attempt to defy the system. It wasn’t Ali this
time but a young graduate named Aayush Sahay. But this was a day
discotheque. Nobody could risk late night brawls, etc.
But this too shut down. A local journalist told me gunshots were heard
inside the discotheque and it closed down a few months after it dared
to change the status quo.
Patna remained in its cocoon.
When I went home in 2008, after I moved back from the United States,
something had changed. Maybe just a little but it felt a lot easier
just going to the Patna Market on my own.
Then the floating restaurant opened and I went on it with my mother. I
saw many young girls and boys having a good time in the evenings. A
few malls had opened up. A lot more restaurants had opened up. They
looked fresh, full of life unlike the ones that had their waiters wait
it out for hours before people walked in. The fear was gone.
Someone asked me if I feel empowered with this spectacular win. I
don’t know if I feel empowered but I definitely feel safe and at ease
now.
Maybe Ali should come back and play his music now.
Maybe he is on to a banking career now, or maybe something else, like
all of us who just left when our moment came.
We had lost too much. Those 15 years, we felt imprisoned in our own house.
Maybe now is the time to return and reclaim our lost years in our home state.
More from memory ...
Not that everything is perfect in Bihar. But of course roads are
better, and the drive is no longer bumpy. I remember we drove to Ara
to my grandmother's place on weekends. It was a distance of perhaps
just 60 kms but on the potholed roads, it took us 2.5 hours. We
avoided leaving late from Ara and used to leave in the sweltering
afternoons during summers. Now, I hear those roads are nice and wide
and it takes only an hour. In those days, we only Maruti 800s and
Ambassadors, those bulky, heavy vehicles. Now, I see all sorts of
cars. People are not afraid to park more than one car in their
driveways. In those days, you'd be afraid to attarct too much
attention lest you got on the "hit list."
Doctors got kidnapped, young girls were picked up from Dusshera melas.
After a point, we ceased to go out and enjoy the melas through the
night. It became too tight for us to move around. It was like living
in some bubble. You knew your limits.
My mother still complains of the long power cuts in Patna. And people
complain of the power cuts at the crematoriums where half-burnt bodies
languishing in the furnace till the power comes back on, make a
mockery of the state and its upward swing on the development curve.
But I tell her that it is in the little details that we see the
change. In those days, there was only Lee Cooper. Now, we have all
brands. Now jewelry shops don't have an army of security men posted
outside the shop. Now, we go to the movies, the multiplexes and buy
popcorn and watch films without the fear. We had dared to go watch
Fire once at Ashok cinema. It was mad rush, and then they pushed us,
tried to grope us. We had to shout for help.
Once we went to watch DDLJ in a crumbling theatre in Ara. They told
the men to take the other side of the hall, and moved the women to the
other part. It was for security, they said.
In a theatre, in our boxes, once a man came and demanded my friend
accept his proposal. Then he went after her, and created a scene
outside her aprtment. He said he had political connections, and he
could get her picked up. My friend was married off in the next few
months. The family couldn't have dealt with the kidnapping stigma and
the shame.
Such were the times we lived in. We had dreams, too. But those 15
years of that fearful regime crushed those.
So I tell my mother she needs to see the change in little things, in
my smile, in my coffee dates with friends. Change is coming. It may be
slow but it will.
Then, we won't have to migrate, and we won't have to deal with the
hatred spewed upon us by the likes of MNS. Then, we will have our own
opportunities in our own state and the trains won't be so packed with
Biharis, the poor migrants, the rustic fellows, the unwanted,
invisible people, trying to leave a ravaged state to find livelihood
elsewhere.
Give him sometime to undo the damage done in the 15 years, I tell her.
From a sick state with so much to deal with, we are now a state on the
right track with young entrepreneurs willing to come back and invest.
We are going to be fine, I assure her.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Deft, nimble fingers
The tragedy and its aftermath's spillover continues. As I stood outside the LNJP Hospital, I met this man who was trying to scan the board for more familiar faces. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on November 18, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 17, 2010
The child's deft, nimble fingers had been crushed under the weight of the building.
They didn't show on the photograph pasted on the board, one among the nameless 42 who had perished in the building collapse.
It was only a face, eyes shut, distorted. Blood that dripped from the forehead, or seeped from the bandage, was a shade darker on the gray scale photo.
Majju, 14, was the youngest among a group of young men, who traveled from Dhapra in Katihar a few months ago to barter the speed of their slender fingers that could bead artificial jewelry faster than adults, for a few hundred rupees. They stayed in a group, under the supervision of the contractor who had promised them the moon, or what looked like a first step towards a better bargain at life. They came from the very marginalized families in the village, the poorest of the poor.
Abdul Bari almost missed the crushed face of Majju, ashen and grim, pasted in the third row of the board outside LNJP Hospital where the victims of the Lalita Park mishap had been brought.
He was third in the row. The first was 23-year-old Arshad, who also hailed from Dhapra. But Bari, who works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mehrauli, could not put together a whole face from the crushed features on other photos. He kept scanning the board for familiar faces. Out of the 10, only two were adults and over the age of 18 years, Bari said.
Eight of the ten in the group of mostly minors whose fingers worked for hours threading beads into threads, making jewelry that was exported to foreign countries, had died. Their fingers mangled and reduced to pulp with the disaster that killed more than 67 people, and injured many others.
“The contractor is also injured. We found the bodies here. They are in the mortuary. We will leave tomorrow for Katihar,” Bari said.
It would be a journey spanning hours. Almost 24 hours by train to Katihar, and then local transport till they reach Dhapra, where wailing mothers and sisters are waiting to bid the final farewell, the village mourning its loss and poverty, and its fate.
On the board, the faces of children, innocent even in their painful death, stood out. There were side profiles, and a few captured their faces turned towards the camera.
Of the 67 reported to be dead, 21 are minors, or under the age of 18 years. The youngest to die in the collapse is a one-and-a-half-year-old child. Then there is a three-year-old and a four-year-old, too. Most of the children who died were at home when their mothers had gone to their work at the nearby, more affluent houses. That's when the tragedy struck, and that's when then the dark thumb of fate pressed them to dust and rubble.
Most of who died were under 40 years of age, mostly labourers. Of the 42 that were brought dead to LNJP, only three were above 40 years.
In the drizzle, the mortuary seemed a dark, dreary place. The faces, now on A 4 size paper, were pasted on the wall. Relatives, friends, acquaintances crowded under a parapet, under the photos. They had recognized their dead. No paperwork was required. One just had to get the series of number handwritten on the photos and take those to the mortuary, claim the bodies, and wait it out.
The smell of stale blood filled the passage as a Mithilesh's body emerged from the back, the dark chamber where many such bodies lay. His brother-in-law was pushing the stretcher. Its steel was splattered with blood, the sheets reddened.
At least 29 bodies from the ramshackle building that fell Monday night lay there, waiting to be identified, or taken away. Another 26 were languishing in various departments in the hospital, a few in the ICU even. No more deaths were reported from the hospital on Wednesday.
According to the Medical Superintendent Dr. Amit Banerjee, 20 bodies had been identified by 3 p.m. The hospital had put up photos of the men, women and children because most families that lost their kin were illiterate, could barely make out the letters. Their eyes could only recognize the features, the shape of the familiar faces.
Most children died because of haemorrhage and asphyxiation as they lay crumpled, and crushed under the debris.
“Their families have been informed. Some of their relatives are here. It will be a sad journey, taking bodies of children to their parents who never anticipated this,” he said. “But they were so poor. The contractor would only take children.”
It was all about the deft fingers, the speed at which they wove together the beads. Now, they had been rendered lifeless, a pulpy mix of flesh and blood, and dead.
BOX
The census of India reported 12.66 million working children.
But agencies like The Global March and the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE) estimate that here are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India. Human Rights Watch pegs the number at 100 million.
According to the UN case study of the Delhi garment industry, poor, first generation industrial workers are recruited by contractors known as thekedars from rural areas as migrants do not unionize and can be exploited.
Many of these migrant workers are Muslim boys and young men from Bihar who work in small units in and outside Delhi. They are the invisible links in the in the global supply chain.
The case study also reveals that these children work up to 12 or more hours a day and work all seven days of the week.
They live in “extremely difficult and dangerous conditions”.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 17, 2010
The child's deft, nimble fingers had been crushed under the weight of the building.
They didn't show on the photograph pasted on the board, one among the nameless 42 who had perished in the building collapse.
It was only a face, eyes shut, distorted. Blood that dripped from the forehead, or seeped from the bandage, was a shade darker on the gray scale photo.
Majju, 14, was the youngest among a group of young men, who traveled from Dhapra in Katihar a few months ago to barter the speed of their slender fingers that could bead artificial jewelry faster than adults, for a few hundred rupees. They stayed in a group, under the supervision of the contractor who had promised them the moon, or what looked like a first step towards a better bargain at life. They came from the very marginalized families in the village, the poorest of the poor.
Abdul Bari almost missed the crushed face of Majju, ashen and grim, pasted in the third row of the board outside LNJP Hospital where the victims of the Lalita Park mishap had been brought.
He was third in the row. The first was 23-year-old Arshad, who also hailed from Dhapra. But Bari, who works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mehrauli, could not put together a whole face from the crushed features on other photos. He kept scanning the board for familiar faces. Out of the 10, only two were adults and over the age of 18 years, Bari said.
Eight of the ten in the group of mostly minors whose fingers worked for hours threading beads into threads, making jewelry that was exported to foreign countries, had died. Their fingers mangled and reduced to pulp with the disaster that killed more than 67 people, and injured many others.
“The contractor is also injured. We found the bodies here. They are in the mortuary. We will leave tomorrow for Katihar,” Bari said.
It would be a journey spanning hours. Almost 24 hours by train to Katihar, and then local transport till they reach Dhapra, where wailing mothers and sisters are waiting to bid the final farewell, the village mourning its loss and poverty, and its fate.
On the board, the faces of children, innocent even in their painful death, stood out. There were side profiles, and a few captured their faces turned towards the camera.
Of the 67 reported to be dead, 21 are minors, or under the age of 18 years. The youngest to die in the collapse is a one-and-a-half-year-old child. Then there is a three-year-old and a four-year-old, too. Most of the children who died were at home when their mothers had gone to their work at the nearby, more affluent houses. That's when the tragedy struck, and that's when then the dark thumb of fate pressed them to dust and rubble.
Most of who died were under 40 years of age, mostly labourers. Of the 42 that were brought dead to LNJP, only three were above 40 years.
In the drizzle, the mortuary seemed a dark, dreary place. The faces, now on A 4 size paper, were pasted on the wall. Relatives, friends, acquaintances crowded under a parapet, under the photos. They had recognized their dead. No paperwork was required. One just had to get the series of number handwritten on the photos and take those to the mortuary, claim the bodies, and wait it out.
The smell of stale blood filled the passage as a Mithilesh's body emerged from the back, the dark chamber where many such bodies lay. His brother-in-law was pushing the stretcher. Its steel was splattered with blood, the sheets reddened.
At least 29 bodies from the ramshackle building that fell Monday night lay there, waiting to be identified, or taken away. Another 26 were languishing in various departments in the hospital, a few in the ICU even. No more deaths were reported from the hospital on Wednesday.
According to the Medical Superintendent Dr. Amit Banerjee, 20 bodies had been identified by 3 p.m. The hospital had put up photos of the men, women and children because most families that lost their kin were illiterate, could barely make out the letters. Their eyes could only recognize the features, the shape of the familiar faces.
Most children died because of haemorrhage and asphyxiation as they lay crumpled, and crushed under the debris.
“Their families have been informed. Some of their relatives are here. It will be a sad journey, taking bodies of children to their parents who never anticipated this,” he said. “But they were so poor. The contractor would only take children.”
It was all about the deft fingers, the speed at which they wove together the beads. Now, they had been rendered lifeless, a pulpy mix of flesh and blood, and dead.
BOX
The census of India reported 12.66 million working children.
But agencies like The Global March and the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE) estimate that here are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India. Human Rights Watch pegs the number at 100 million.
According to the UN case study of the Delhi garment industry, poor, first generation industrial workers are recruited by contractors known as thekedars from rural areas as migrants do not unionize and can be exploited.
Many of these migrant workers are Muslim boys and young men from Bihar who work in small units in and outside Delhi. They are the invisible links in the in the global supply chain.
The case study also reveals that these children work up to 12 or more hours a day and work all seven days of the week.
They live in “extremely difficult and dangerous conditions”.
Remnants in the rubble
The building collapsed and we were at the site where I couldn't just walk away from the rubble. Leftovers from lives can tell one so much about people who once owned these. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on November 17, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 16, 2010
A red saree, or what remained of it, fluttered in the breeze. An Amul milk packet, torn, peeped from the chinks in the pile. Too much of everyday life that was consumed in seconds was there. A clock that stopped at the hour when the tragedy struck was among the objects that were slavaged, not by choice, but because they were part of the debris.
Between the tragedy and the resurrection, a pile of rubble lies. It is a connector of sorts, a bridge between the remnants of the past and an uncertain future.
From the bricks the crane spewed on to the playground as the officials cleared the debris on the site of the collapse, emerged details of lives that had been uprooted, lost or left in a limbo. They fell with the bricks just like the five-floor building in the corner did Monday evening.
The pink pillars, measuring only the size of an index finger, had been struck off. But the figurines in the wedding snow ball were intact. The crystal globe with its pink and black hero and heroine dancing lay on a pile of bricks, illuminating the loss. The broken pillars reminded of the immediate event, the tragedy that sent reverberations across the neighborhood.
In the juxtaposition of the joy that was when the snow ball may have occupied a place of pride in the dinghy rooms where men and women slept in dozens, and the present moment where it was a part of the ruins, summed the human tragedy that left more than 65 people dead, and displaced hundreds of others. The tension between what remained, and what was lost played out in the rubble.
In the shattered, mangled remnants, lives had been trapped.
A kettle, lopsided in its tragic placement, was thrown on the side. Next to it, a few plates were strewn. A gas stove, blackened and distorted, also filled the space as rescue workers and police scrambled to get to the actual site. The rubble was on the way, neglected in a corner, a space where such things collected.
A few leaves from an album was found, too. A mother and a son are shot against the backdrop of a fir tree and turquoise skies, and blossoming flowers. A studio in one of the villages they must have hailed from. They said it was Karimpur in Bengal.
The mother is sitting in a red plastic chair. The son is standing, his face tense as he gazed into the camera.
From the rubble, voices also emerged, pleas for help, they said.
The ones under the heap dialled from their cell phones. They were desperate to claim their lives, get rescued before the battery died, or before they died.
The rescue workers talked about a woman who called someone. She was buried. But that was in the morning. After that, she didn't call.
Nobody knew what happened to her. Maybe the rrubble consumed her and she became a remnant of the rubble, too.
Through the afternoon, and the evening, the rubble piled up. More stories, not a coherent whole, but scattered and thrown apart and told through notebooks, passport photos, torn clothes, and distorted kitchen utensils, emerged from the heap of bricks.
Vikram Halder's English notebook was placed on a bed of bricks. It had been arranged carefully, and juxtaposed with the snow ball, and yet another notebook of a Class 12 student of the Govt. Co-ed Senior Secondary School.
A few members of the television crew had arranged them to show the scale of the tragedy, and its toll on aspirations, dreams, opportunities.
In one of the pages, Mukesh, the Class 12 student, had written “Who told you this news? What harm did I do to you?”
A child's innocent drawings, his jibes at his classmates and teachers were now a public spectacle, a photo-op, part of material that could tell a story of someone who either had come out alive, or had perished or maybe was still waiting under debris to be rescued.
On the same page, a lined notebook, oblong, Mukesh wrote “Memoirs of a childhood.”
Under it, he wrote “agony” and then in Hindi, he wrote “Afsos.”
On yet another page, he scribbled “Today when I am not there, then everybody want me.”
Towards evening, nobody had come to claim the notebooks. A passport photo of a young boy was in the pages. But in the confusion of who was and who wasn't, the name and the photo were separate identities, and existed without the other.
He had sketched portraits, pigeons, dogs. He had meticulously translated sentences in Hindi into English. He even had a teacher write “good” on a few pages.
He must have been fumbling for words when he wrote “There are some strangers that cross that river.”
What he was meant to write instead of “strangers” was “fishermen.”
But in that moment, in that confusion of loss, many strangers had crossed the river. Nobody could tell if Mukesh and Vikram were among them, or they had been cast on the shore.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 16, 2010
A red saree, or what remained of it, fluttered in the breeze. An Amul milk packet, torn, peeped from the chinks in the pile. Too much of everyday life that was consumed in seconds was there. A clock that stopped at the hour when the tragedy struck was among the objects that were slavaged, not by choice, but because they were part of the debris.
Between the tragedy and the resurrection, a pile of rubble lies. It is a connector of sorts, a bridge between the remnants of the past and an uncertain future.
From the bricks the crane spewed on to the playground as the officials cleared the debris on the site of the collapse, emerged details of lives that had been uprooted, lost or left in a limbo. They fell with the bricks just like the five-floor building in the corner did Monday evening.
The pink pillars, measuring only the size of an index finger, had been struck off. But the figurines in the wedding snow ball were intact. The crystal globe with its pink and black hero and heroine dancing lay on a pile of bricks, illuminating the loss. The broken pillars reminded of the immediate event, the tragedy that sent reverberations across the neighborhood.
In the juxtaposition of the joy that was when the snow ball may have occupied a place of pride in the dinghy rooms where men and women slept in dozens, and the present moment where it was a part of the ruins, summed the human tragedy that left more than 65 people dead, and displaced hundreds of others. The tension between what remained, and what was lost played out in the rubble.
In the shattered, mangled remnants, lives had been trapped.
A kettle, lopsided in its tragic placement, was thrown on the side. Next to it, a few plates were strewn. A gas stove, blackened and distorted, also filled the space as rescue workers and police scrambled to get to the actual site. The rubble was on the way, neglected in a corner, a space where such things collected.
A few leaves from an album was found, too. A mother and a son are shot against the backdrop of a fir tree and turquoise skies, and blossoming flowers. A studio in one of the villages they must have hailed from. They said it was Karimpur in Bengal.
The mother is sitting in a red plastic chair. The son is standing, his face tense as he gazed into the camera.
From the rubble, voices also emerged, pleas for help, they said.
The ones under the heap dialled from their cell phones. They were desperate to claim their lives, get rescued before the battery died, or before they died.
The rescue workers talked about a woman who called someone. She was buried. But that was in the morning. After that, she didn't call.
Nobody knew what happened to her. Maybe the rrubble consumed her and she became a remnant of the rubble, too.
Through the afternoon, and the evening, the rubble piled up. More stories, not a coherent whole, but scattered and thrown apart and told through notebooks, passport photos, torn clothes, and distorted kitchen utensils, emerged from the heap of bricks.
Vikram Halder's English notebook was placed on a bed of bricks. It had been arranged carefully, and juxtaposed with the snow ball, and yet another notebook of a Class 12 student of the Govt. Co-ed Senior Secondary School.
A few members of the television crew had arranged them to show the scale of the tragedy, and its toll on aspirations, dreams, opportunities.
In one of the pages, Mukesh, the Class 12 student, had written “Who told you this news? What harm did I do to you?”
A child's innocent drawings, his jibes at his classmates and teachers were now a public spectacle, a photo-op, part of material that could tell a story of someone who either had come out alive, or had perished or maybe was still waiting under debris to be rescued.
On the same page, a lined notebook, oblong, Mukesh wrote “Memoirs of a childhood.”
Under it, he wrote “agony” and then in Hindi, he wrote “Afsos.”
On yet another page, he scribbled “Today when I am not there, then everybody want me.”
Towards evening, nobody had come to claim the notebooks. A passport photo of a young boy was in the pages. But in the confusion of who was and who wasn't, the name and the photo were separate identities, and existed without the other.
He had sketched portraits, pigeons, dogs. He had meticulously translated sentences in Hindi into English. He even had a teacher write “good” on a few pages.
He must have been fumbling for words when he wrote “There are some strangers that cross that river.”
What he was meant to write instead of “strangers” was “fishermen.”
But in that moment, in that confusion of loss, many strangers had crossed the river. Nobody could tell if Mukesh and Vikram were among them, or they had been cast on the shore.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Obama's tribute to Gandhi
Went to Rajghat in the morning to se Mr. President. Was whisked away, made to sit under a store parapet, a rifle pointed towards me lest I jump and wave to Barack Obama. Made it to Rajghat later, and saw the signs of his visit.
An edited version appeared in the The Indian Express on November 9, 2010.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/king-memorabilia-for-rajghat-is-tryst-with-his-heroes/708417/
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 8, 2010
In his fluid handwriting, his two sentences sprawled across five rows of the visitor's notebook. A sweeping signature, with its “B” and “O” rising above the other letters, marking their prominence, also cut through five rows. Underneath it, the First Lady Michelle Obama wrote her name.
Four years ago, on March 2, George and Laura Bush had visited the site, a simple black marble platform on the right bank of the river Yamuna with an eternal flame at its back, too. Their two-line tribute was spread across the page. Bush, the former president, Obama's predecessor, had placed Gandhi among the “great leaders” of history for his “contribution to all mankind.”
A decade ago, Bill Clinton paid homage to the slain Father of the Nation with a single sentence “Thank you for keeping this sacred place.”
At around 10:30 am on Monday morning, the president, his wife in tow, entered through the VIP Gate at Rajghat, and walked towards the black stone. The green carpets had been laid out as the protocol for dignitaries required. Two velvet chairs had been placed side by side. The couple sat, removed their shoes, and walked barefoot to the memorial, a white wreath in front. Green tarpaulin sheets hid the world from those who were present in the morning, lending the place a solemn, surreal look, isolating it from the issues that waited outside. This was a personal moment, and the curtains ensured the world didn't spill over.
They stood in silence for a minute, and walked back. Four times, the president uttered “very simple and beautiful memorial.”
For Obama, the man who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to bring about peace, his connection with Gandhi runs deep. This wasn't a head of state marking a visit to a man the world recognizes as a great leader but a man paying his homage to the leader he proclaims has influenced him.
Towards the end of his 20-minute visit to the memorial, Obama sat in the brown velvet upholstered chair, a lone one placed in the foreground of the Mahatma's samadhi, its back facing the black stone covered with flowers and a wreath made of carnations and lilies and tied together with a ribbon of the US flag colors, and scribbled a tribute to the “Great Soul.”
“More than 60 years after his passing, his light continues to inspire the world.”
On Saturday when he landed in Mumbai, Obama had walked into the two-storey building on Laburnum Road, the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, a museum that contains memorabilia and more than 50,000 books. Almost half-a-century ago, Rev. Martin Luther King, yet another world hero for Obama, had spent two days at the building with his wife Coretta King.
In a gold box, with the Eagle emblem of the United States embossed on it, Obama carried a stone from the memorial being built at the National Mall, Washington D.C., and is being funded by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation to revere Martin Luther King, also the first black man and the third non-president to be commemorated with a memorial in the National Mall area. He presented it to Rajnish Kumar, the secretary of Rajghat Samadhi Samiti, who received him in the morning.
“I could see it in his eyes, his admiration for Gandhi. I can read from the expression,” he said. “He is a follower. No guest is small but he is more influenced with Gandhi.”
On behalf of the Samadhi Samiti, the President was gifted with a Charkha procured from Kerala Emporium, a scroll with the seven sins written on them, a bust of Gandhi, and three books – an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi called The Story of My Experiments with Truth, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi 100 Years.
As he sat writing his tribute, Michelle leaned over. According to Rajnish Kumar, the First Lady's excitement was contagious. She had gasped saying “very beautiful” when the marble stone loomed in front of her.
She later sat on the chair her husband had occupied and signed her name.
As the couple walked out, the champa tree that Bill Clinton had planted, and the mango tree that George Bush Senior had planted, flanked the path. These are among the 200 trees planted by various dignitaries.
On Monday, Obama didn't plant ant saplings. They say there is no space. But the stone that he brought combining his love for the two great leaders, bringing the tangible memory of one to the memorial of the other, will be kept in the office. That would be his mark, a testament to his visit to the testament of the life of who he referred to as his “real hero”.
Just when he was about to step in his car, Rajnish Kumar said to the President “In our culture, we always say come again and never say bye.”
Obama laughed.
On the way to Rajghat
As the cavalcade started to move again, life bounced back to its usual chaotic self. A few staff that were confined to the offices during the visit came out. They were packing away the velvet chairs, folding the carpets. A group of European tourists descended on the Samadhi.
“It ain't that speacial,” Vannoten Reno, a Belgian man, said. “I mean, he just visited.”
But for others, it was unusual like the policemen who reported for duty at 5 a.m. or the Rajghat staff that worked through the night decorating the samadhi, hanging the garlands, making the sun logo with white, red and yellow flower petals on the shrine.
From silence, a forced one, cacophony, almost a suppressed shriek that crackles at first, emerged. And then it was all honks, human voices, and usual sounds of life in a metro, and everyone in a hurry.
From behind a park, and underneath the parapets of store fronts near Delhi Gate, a group of men and women rushed to the street. They had been whisked behind the trees, and made to sit without talking, by the Delhi Police officers on duty who panicked about the security.
After all, it was Obama. The nation's promise and pride were at stake. Civilians walking around, scrambling to get to office and avoid the traffic blues, had to be restricted.
At 10:11 a.m. when the cavalcade moved along the deserted, silent streets of Daryaganj and Rajghat areas, a woman stood up.
“Wow, so many cars,” she shouted.
The policeman rattled his gun.
“No, you can't get up. Don't talk,” he said, his face tense.
“This is pandemonium,” Subhashini Rajan, who works at the nearby Oriental Insurance office, said. They say India is on the front page of the US nespapers but I wonder for how long. We have this colonial mentality.”
A harried policeman came running and shouted “shant raho”.
“In a free country, you can't do this,” Bharti Gupta, another woman who waited it out squatting on the sidewalk said. “We should move Rajghat out of Delhi or build a helipad so Obama can directly land there and not get us stranded here like this.”
This was their brush with the President of the United States. At least they walked through the same streets that he wad crisscrossed a few minutes earlier. They didn't need to see him. He was there, and they were witness to it, even though their gaze was interrupted by a rifle.
An edited version appeared in the The Indian Express on November 9, 2010.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/king-memorabilia-for-rajghat-is-tryst-with-his-heroes/708417/
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 8, 2010
In his fluid handwriting, his two sentences sprawled across five rows of the visitor's notebook. A sweeping signature, with its “B” and “O” rising above the other letters, marking their prominence, also cut through five rows. Underneath it, the First Lady Michelle Obama wrote her name.
Four years ago, on March 2, George and Laura Bush had visited the site, a simple black marble platform on the right bank of the river Yamuna with an eternal flame at its back, too. Their two-line tribute was spread across the page. Bush, the former president, Obama's predecessor, had placed Gandhi among the “great leaders” of history for his “contribution to all mankind.”
A decade ago, Bill Clinton paid homage to the slain Father of the Nation with a single sentence “Thank you for keeping this sacred place.”
At around 10:30 am on Monday morning, the president, his wife in tow, entered through the VIP Gate at Rajghat, and walked towards the black stone. The green carpets had been laid out as the protocol for dignitaries required. Two velvet chairs had been placed side by side. The couple sat, removed their shoes, and walked barefoot to the memorial, a white wreath in front. Green tarpaulin sheets hid the world from those who were present in the morning, lending the place a solemn, surreal look, isolating it from the issues that waited outside. This was a personal moment, and the curtains ensured the world didn't spill over.
They stood in silence for a minute, and walked back. Four times, the president uttered “very simple and beautiful memorial.”
For Obama, the man who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to bring about peace, his connection with Gandhi runs deep. This wasn't a head of state marking a visit to a man the world recognizes as a great leader but a man paying his homage to the leader he proclaims has influenced him.
Towards the end of his 20-minute visit to the memorial, Obama sat in the brown velvet upholstered chair, a lone one placed in the foreground of the Mahatma's samadhi, its back facing the black stone covered with flowers and a wreath made of carnations and lilies and tied together with a ribbon of the US flag colors, and scribbled a tribute to the “Great Soul.”
“More than 60 years after his passing, his light continues to inspire the world.”
On Saturday when he landed in Mumbai, Obama had walked into the two-storey building on Laburnum Road, the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, a museum that contains memorabilia and more than 50,000 books. Almost half-a-century ago, Rev. Martin Luther King, yet another world hero for Obama, had spent two days at the building with his wife Coretta King.
In a gold box, with the Eagle emblem of the United States embossed on it, Obama carried a stone from the memorial being built at the National Mall, Washington D.C., and is being funded by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation to revere Martin Luther King, also the first black man and the third non-president to be commemorated with a memorial in the National Mall area. He presented it to Rajnish Kumar, the secretary of Rajghat Samadhi Samiti, who received him in the morning.
“I could see it in his eyes, his admiration for Gandhi. I can read from the expression,” he said. “He is a follower. No guest is small but he is more influenced with Gandhi.”
On behalf of the Samadhi Samiti, the President was gifted with a Charkha procured from Kerala Emporium, a scroll with the seven sins written on them, a bust of Gandhi, and three books – an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi called The Story of My Experiments with Truth, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi 100 Years.
As he sat writing his tribute, Michelle leaned over. According to Rajnish Kumar, the First Lady's excitement was contagious. She had gasped saying “very beautiful” when the marble stone loomed in front of her.
She later sat on the chair her husband had occupied and signed her name.
As the couple walked out, the champa tree that Bill Clinton had planted, and the mango tree that George Bush Senior had planted, flanked the path. These are among the 200 trees planted by various dignitaries.
On Monday, Obama didn't plant ant saplings. They say there is no space. But the stone that he brought combining his love for the two great leaders, bringing the tangible memory of one to the memorial of the other, will be kept in the office. That would be his mark, a testament to his visit to the testament of the life of who he referred to as his “real hero”.
Just when he was about to step in his car, Rajnish Kumar said to the President “In our culture, we always say come again and never say bye.”
Obama laughed.
On the way to Rajghat
As the cavalcade started to move again, life bounced back to its usual chaotic self. A few staff that were confined to the offices during the visit came out. They were packing away the velvet chairs, folding the carpets. A group of European tourists descended on the Samadhi.
“It ain't that speacial,” Vannoten Reno, a Belgian man, said. “I mean, he just visited.”
But for others, it was unusual like the policemen who reported for duty at 5 a.m. or the Rajghat staff that worked through the night decorating the samadhi, hanging the garlands, making the sun logo with white, red and yellow flower petals on the shrine.
From silence, a forced one, cacophony, almost a suppressed shriek that crackles at first, emerged. And then it was all honks, human voices, and usual sounds of life in a metro, and everyone in a hurry.
From behind a park, and underneath the parapets of store fronts near Delhi Gate, a group of men and women rushed to the street. They had been whisked behind the trees, and made to sit without talking, by the Delhi Police officers on duty who panicked about the security.
After all, it was Obama. The nation's promise and pride were at stake. Civilians walking around, scrambling to get to office and avoid the traffic blues, had to be restricted.
At 10:11 a.m. when the cavalcade moved along the deserted, silent streets of Daryaganj and Rajghat areas, a woman stood up.
“Wow, so many cars,” she shouted.
The policeman rattled his gun.
“No, you can't get up. Don't talk,” he said, his face tense.
“This is pandemonium,” Subhashini Rajan, who works at the nearby Oriental Insurance office, said. They say India is on the front page of the US nespapers but I wonder for how long. We have this colonial mentality.”
A harried policeman came running and shouted “shant raho”.
“In a free country, you can't do this,” Bharti Gupta, another woman who waited it out squatting on the sidewalk said. “We should move Rajghat out of Delhi or build a helipad so Obama can directly land there and not get us stranded here like this.”
This was their brush with the President of the United States. At least they walked through the same streets that he wad crisscrossed a few minutes earlier. They didn't need to see him. He was there, and they were witness to it, even though their gaze was interrupted by a rifle.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
As he fell, he rose in stature - India's first BASE Jump
Long ago I had read Tom Junod's The Falling Man and feel the way he describes the descent of the man from the burning Twin Towers is unparalleled. I was asked to write about the jump in this case. It took a few seconds for the man to land on the greens but in those few seconds, a lot happened. An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on October 30, 2010. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Fall-and-rise-of-India-s-first-BASE-jumper/704754/
This one's about the jump, and how he fell from the tower, the way I wrote it and I saw it.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 29, 2010
The tower looked like a needle that shot up to the sky from the earth
– lean, cowering, and intimidating. At 235 meters, everything looked
puny in front of it, including the man who was to jump from the top,
who was reduced to a dot in the context of the looming tower.
On top of it, at the platform 158 meters from the ground where
spectators lined up early morning to see the “fall”, he hesitated for
a mere two minutes. The winds were rough.
On Thursday, Lt. Col. Satyendra Verma, 42, had felt a little nervous.
His BASE jump, the first in India, was part of the centenary
celebrations of the Corps of Signals, Indian Army. He had proposed the
feat, trained for it, and it was a few hours away.
“I had apprehension. I have jumped from Kuala Lumpur KL Tower, which
is more than 900 feet. But the higher the structure, the less the
danger because then you have time to react and plan. Pitampura tower
was a challenge,” he said. “The winds were strong last evening. I
thought if it continues in the morning, I won’t jump.”
He took the elevator to the top of the structure at 5:30 a.m. Friday.
The jump was scheduled at 6:15 a.m.
“The winds were strong,” he said. “I was hoping the winds calm down
even for a few seconds. I would use the window of opportunity.”
It was man against the force of nature. Man on a mission to prove he
is bigger than his creation, in this case, the tower that formed the
backdrop, the focal point of his base jump. He needed to conquer the
fear, the tower, the nature, and the spectators.
At 6:17, he jumped. A tiny bird falling in the sky, vertically.
For a fraction of a second, his feet swerved. He drifted towards the
left where a eleven storey building stood. For a fraction of a second,
in the space of the blink of the eye, nature took over. If he hadn’t
manoeuvred, harnessed his will and the parachute, he could have hit
the walls, brick and mortar.
“The winds were coming from right hand side. The parachute went in the
direction of the wind. So I had to correct,” he said. “You have to
maintain your body position. Once you tumble, it can be dangerous.”
The winds did shake him a bit. But he managed to get vertical again.
And in his fall, he rose in stature.
At about 120 meters from the ground, after about 2 seconds after he
jumped of the platform, Col Satyendra Sharma pushed the button to open
up the parachute. The green and blue parachute gave him wings. The
gravitational pull, another force of nature, was defeated.
He rose, the green and blue fluttering above him, and he fell. The
steep jump transformed into a slow motion gliding almost. If he hadn’t
opened the parachute, it would have taken all of 4 seconds for him to
hit the ground. The wings broke the speed. He drifted for 15-20
seconds before he landed.
Legs down, he drifted in the sky, the tower behind him, despite the
“environment forces”. He was carried by the wind, and then it was an
effortless fall that started with a determined “jump”.
He landed gently, and before his feet touched the ground, cameras had
already surrounded the first man to ever jump from the high rise
tower.
His wings lay collapsed. As he walked towards the “picture frame”, a
board celebrating the centennial of the Signals, he carried the blue
and green wings that looked like a mutilated butterfly. On his helmet,
the Indian tri colour was pronounced. Two cameras too had been fixed
to it to capture what the earth looked to him from his height as he
fell.
It all took a few seconds. Groggy-eyed photographers and reporters
gasped. A few missed the spectacle. He jumped while they were still
walking towards the spot. Cameras secured in their backpacks, they
looked up, and in moments, the spectacle ended.
The tower looked forlorn. Its height, pride had been breached. It had
been subdued by human endeavour and spirit.
On top of the building, men and women had collected to watch him jump.
“It happened like ‘dhurrrr’ and it was done. Maybe 6-7 frames. That’s
all I got. The light wasn’t too good,” a camera person said.
When he jumped, the skies were a dull grey and orange. Minutes after
Verma attempted India’s first BASE jump, the sun came out. And he had
his moment under the sun, with shutterbugs clicking at the speed of
light.
His family – wife Monika and a son, 9, and daughter, four-and-a-half
years – weren’t there to witness his free fall.
“I think she was scared,” Verma said, as he laughed.
Verma has trained in Kuala Lumpur and has performed BASE jumps at KL
Tower in Malaysia and Perrine Bridge in the USA.
Now, he wants to attempt wing flying in the Himalayas next year. He
started training in BASE jumping a year ago but has been involved in
adventure sports for a long time.
“It is adrenaline rush. It is a thrill from conception to planning.
You get a great satisfaction,” he said.
At the lawns of the TV Tower, a few staff from the DD were standing.
For three months they had been roped in to facilitate the event, JR
Arora, station engineer, said..
Cameras had been installed at the ramp on top of the tower on Thursday
night. Each moment of the free fall had to be captured, history had to
be manufactured through the lens.
This one's about the jump, and how he fell from the tower, the way I wrote it and I saw it.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 29, 2010
The tower looked like a needle that shot up to the sky from the earth
– lean, cowering, and intimidating. At 235 meters, everything looked
puny in front of it, including the man who was to jump from the top,
who was reduced to a dot in the context of the looming tower.
On top of it, at the platform 158 meters from the ground where
spectators lined up early morning to see the “fall”, he hesitated for
a mere two minutes. The winds were rough.
On Thursday, Lt. Col. Satyendra Verma, 42, had felt a little nervous.
His BASE jump, the first in India, was part of the centenary
celebrations of the Corps of Signals, Indian Army. He had proposed the
feat, trained for it, and it was a few hours away.
“I had apprehension. I have jumped from Kuala Lumpur KL Tower, which
is more than 900 feet. But the higher the structure, the less the
danger because then you have time to react and plan. Pitampura tower
was a challenge,” he said. “The winds were strong last evening. I
thought if it continues in the morning, I won’t jump.”
He took the elevator to the top of the structure at 5:30 a.m. Friday.
The jump was scheduled at 6:15 a.m.
“The winds were strong,” he said. “I was hoping the winds calm down
even for a few seconds. I would use the window of opportunity.”
It was man against the force of nature. Man on a mission to prove he
is bigger than his creation, in this case, the tower that formed the
backdrop, the focal point of his base jump. He needed to conquer the
fear, the tower, the nature, and the spectators.
At 6:17, he jumped. A tiny bird falling in the sky, vertically.
For a fraction of a second, his feet swerved. He drifted towards the
left where a eleven storey building stood. For a fraction of a second,
in the space of the blink of the eye, nature took over. If he hadn’t
manoeuvred, harnessed his will and the parachute, he could have hit
the walls, brick and mortar.
“The winds were coming from right hand side. The parachute went in the
direction of the wind. So I had to correct,” he said. “You have to
maintain your body position. Once you tumble, it can be dangerous.”
The winds did shake him a bit. But he managed to get vertical again.
And in his fall, he rose in stature.
At about 120 meters from the ground, after about 2 seconds after he
jumped of the platform, Col Satyendra Sharma pushed the button to open
up the parachute. The green and blue parachute gave him wings. The
gravitational pull, another force of nature, was defeated.
He rose, the green and blue fluttering above him, and he fell. The
steep jump transformed into a slow motion gliding almost. If he hadn’t
opened the parachute, it would have taken all of 4 seconds for him to
hit the ground. The wings broke the speed. He drifted for 15-20
seconds before he landed.
Legs down, he drifted in the sky, the tower behind him, despite the
“environment forces”. He was carried by the wind, and then it was an
effortless fall that started with a determined “jump”.
He landed gently, and before his feet touched the ground, cameras had
already surrounded the first man to ever jump from the high rise
tower.
His wings lay collapsed. As he walked towards the “picture frame”, a
board celebrating the centennial of the Signals, he carried the blue
and green wings that looked like a mutilated butterfly. On his helmet,
the Indian tri colour was pronounced. Two cameras too had been fixed
to it to capture what the earth looked to him from his height as he
fell.
It all took a few seconds. Groggy-eyed photographers and reporters
gasped. A few missed the spectacle. He jumped while they were still
walking towards the spot. Cameras secured in their backpacks, they
looked up, and in moments, the spectacle ended.
The tower looked forlorn. Its height, pride had been breached. It had
been subdued by human endeavour and spirit.
On top of the building, men and women had collected to watch him jump.
“It happened like ‘dhurrrr’ and it was done. Maybe 6-7 frames. That’s
all I got. The light wasn’t too good,” a camera person said.
When he jumped, the skies were a dull grey and orange. Minutes after
Verma attempted India’s first BASE jump, the sun came out. And he had
his moment under the sun, with shutterbugs clicking at the speed of
light.
His family – wife Monika and a son, 9, and daughter, four-and-a-half
years – weren’t there to witness his free fall.
“I think she was scared,” Verma said, as he laughed.
Verma has trained in Kuala Lumpur and has performed BASE jumps at KL
Tower in Malaysia and Perrine Bridge in the USA.
Now, he wants to attempt wing flying in the Himalayas next year. He
started training in BASE jumping a year ago but has been involved in
adventure sports for a long time.
“It is adrenaline rush. It is a thrill from conception to planning.
You get a great satisfaction,” he said.
At the lawns of the TV Tower, a few staff from the DD were standing.
For three months they had been roped in to facilitate the event, JR
Arora, station engineer, said..
Cameras had been installed at the ramp on top of the tower on Thursday
night. Each moment of the free fall had to be captured, history had to
be manufactured through the lens.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
In the Ramlila green room - Gods in the making.
I had never watched Ramlila so I went to the Red Fort grounds one evening to watch the epic being enacted. Found my way to the green room and spent time chatting with gods in the making.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 12, 2010
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
Bhaskar Joshi, 23, a management student from Moradabad, was almost in a trance. Once in a while he liked to step into God's shoes. At 23, that was his high. With his lips painted bright red, and mascara loaded eyelashes, he felt beyond the mundane. The Ramlila was his arena. Here, he would weep, sacrifice, kill, forgive, repent, lament, go through all emotions and bring God to the masses.
Last year, the President folded her hands in front of the epic hero of the Ramayan. That was it. Other mortals would fall at his feet, look up at him with moistened eyes brimming with hope, prayer, devotion, everything.
He felt like the avatar. In the green room with its gauzy pink curtains, and tin trunks overflowing with God's garb, he sat with a coterie of friends, including Hanuman,who wore his shades and called him “Prabhu”. Hanuman had no business hanging around in the greenroom. Tonight, it was Manthra-Kaikeyee Samvad, a part of the epic that told the story of how the queen went into her “warth palace” as it was explained in a notebook designed especially for foreigners who the organizers expected would come by the dozen, and Ram's exile.
In the little tent that looked like a square box, fortified against mosquitoes that could spread the Dengue fever, something the foreigners were wary of as they poured into the national capital for the Commonwealth Games, with rectangular glass windows for viewing, a few Indians, mostly the privileged, sat. The Lav Kush Ramlila Committee had put up this little enclave with seating for 50 for the Germans, French, Australians, Kenyans, everyone that was not Indian. This was their commitment to merging the epic tale with yet another epic event – the CWG.
Indians were mostly confined to the grounds with its army of mosquitoes.
“We are habituated to this. We don't mind,” a committee member said. “Yesterday, a couple of Africans were in the tent watching the Ramlila. The notebook has all details of embassies and illustrations and maps. We have worked hard on this.”
Besides Ram and Sita, Shera, the official mascot, was prominent on the posters, on the little coffee mugs they had designed as part of the welcome kit for the people beyond the seas so they could take home the lessons from the epic.
Next to Joshi, Neha Vashisth, a 21-year-old “fresher” from the Uttar Pradesh town, was waiting to get her face painted. Among the various gods and his family, she, who was to play Sita, the wronged goddess who triggered the battle because Ravan, the anti-hero took a fancy for her, was looking too brown, too mortal.
Ram preferred this Sita. The other one who he acted with for the last three years got married. Besides, she looked much older than him. Neha was younger and he thought they looked together.
“He is handsome. He has good personality. I like him as Ram,” she said, blushing. “No, no affair between us.”
“I like this Sita,” Ram said, unabashed by Sita's denial.
Maybe there is an affair. All sorts of things happen when Gods and humans interchange roles. Million possibilities can arise.
For the Ramlila committee too, possibilities have come marching. Now, they are streaming live telecast of the nine parts of the epic on their website www.lavkush.com. Besides, a team of public relations strategists have totally delved into pitching faith to all. Already , 2200 members have joined the Facebook page. Big leap of faith for all.
They aren't twittering yet. In the server room at the back of the giant stage, there are laptops, entangled wires, harried staff.
They are trying to connect, merge the new and the old. Faith needs to be revived, sold in a package with freebies.
With Commonwealth Games consuming the imagination of the young and the faithless, they have a strategy too. Instead of Bollywood stars who the committee called to attract more public, this year they have banners with faces of the known Indian sports persons like Sania Nehelwal, Abhinav Bindra, and Vijendar, the boxer, a pin-up poster boy for the young girls who go gushing over his looks.
“Today, things have changed. Today Ramlila is standing with the country in its glorious moment of hosting the CWG. We are with it. We sent out 5 lakh invitations, we are into technology, everything,” Arjun Kumar Singh, 55, the “permanent” secretary of the committee, said.
For 31 years, he has been involved with promoting the faith, the values that the epic endorses through its characters.
As a kid, he watched the numerous small neighborhood Ramlilas.
“Ramlila is the solution to mankind's problems, to disintegrating families. They only need to learn from Ram and his brothers Bharat and Lakhsman the virtues of sacrifice, how to keep families together,” he said.
Arjun Kumar is in the construction business. Each year, he digs into his wealth like 20 others who are associated with the committee and funds the extravaganza at the Red Fort grounds.
It cost the committee Rs. 1 crore this year.
On the stage, Manthra was convincing the queen Kaikeyee to send Lord Ram into exile so her own son could get to rule Ayodhya. At 9:11 p.m., a power cut froze King Dashrath. At the moment, he was crouching on the floor, overcome with sadness and the price of his promise to his beautiful queen.
Manorama Joshi, who enacted the stepmother, was in her element. For a few seconds, she didn't move. Then she looked around, adjusted her hair, and took in the audience.
In the greenroom before it all started, the start of the 14-year-old exile and the making of the epic, Manthra stood, trying to fit a pillow in her already-bursting velvet bustier. For 32-year-old Sanjay Sharma, who always wanted to be an actor and even spent time lounging outside the filmistan studio in Mumbai hoping that someone would take notice of his acting talent, playing Manthra was a challenge.
For 12 years since he first got on to the stage and felt liberated, he had played the character of Lakshman, Lord Ram's brother, who accompanied him into the exile.
In Lakhman's character, he felt like a Black Cat Commando in his element. Once, the commandos gave him a thumbs up.
“There's anger in me. Lakshman was an angry man. In my life, I have anger too. He was also committed to sacrifice. I wanted to make my father, a railway official, proud of me, but he passed away. There's so much I wished for. But wishes are elusive beings. They never come true,” he said, chewing paan masala, holding his saree while the director fixed his hair.
“You see, I can do roles that no man here can. I can become this scheming Manthra. Why not,” he said.
The Ramlila was not just about faith then. It was also about pent-up frustration, broken dreams, crushed aspirations, and an outlet for the creative, artistic urge that never found a footing the other grand stage, the Bollywood.
Rishi Pal, in his white wig, was counting the beads he held. In his Saint Vashishth role, he felt he was doing great service to the cause of religion that was soon exiting the human mind and soul.
The 55-year-old has been part of the Ramlila for 40 years. The committee pays the artists a lump sum and bear their expenses for the 11 days that they are in Delhi, giving the national capital its tryst with gods.
“Ramlila has changed. Now, we don't wear garish makeup. It is more like Bollywood makeup but then the artist can come out more. The dark makeup hid the expressions,” he said. “Religion is important. I am doing my bit for it.”
Outside, in the barricaded seats, 32-year-old Satish Kumar, a Bihari migrant worker, sat engulfed with an overdose of faith and gods. Each time, Ram came on stage, he would fold his hands, utter small prayers that had remained unfulfilled.
“I come everyday. For me, he is god incarnate,” he said.
As Kaikeyee stomped and kicked and threw her bangles and beads that looked more like the Mardi Gras pink and green beads in her fit to have Dashrath announce her own son as the king, Kumar looked crestfallen. Of course he knew this was coming. But for god to go through all this, it wasn't a nice thing, he said.
On the periphery, there were food stalls. A woman in a bikini smiled from one the advertisemnts. Too many advertisements dotted the Ramlila landscape.
Rahul, a 12-year-old volunteer in his white trousers and shirt, was busy checking passes. For the last four years, he had been part of the Ramlila Committee as a volunteer. This was his service to go for a better life, a job, too.
“We are only sewaks,” he said. “God will give blessings.”
On the stage, Ram was preparing for his ordeal. The audience was “tch tch” on his plight. But the story had to go on. It would go on.
Kaikeyee, in her “warth palace” and in her black saree, had won the round. Dashrath lay slumped on the floor.
Manthra was busy chewing her gutkha inside. He had totally killed it. It was kick-ass, his performance.
Meanwhile, Shera looked a misfit in the battle of the evil and the good.
Going hi-tech, the future of Ramlila
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Eye magazine of The Indian Express. on Oct. 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 19, 2010
Squeezed in between the Yellow Sea and the East Sea, the red dot showing Ramlila viewership seemed an anomaly.
Arjun Kuma Singh, the 55-year-old organizer, looked again. Yes, they were watching online Ramlila in South Korea. Total adrenaline rush.
Singh was kicked. His investment of Rs. 10 lakhs on making one of the oldest Ramlilas in the country, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee, hi-tech by installing a separate server in the backroom, setting up a technical team headed by his son, invading the social networking website www.facebook.com and making Lord Ram a Facebook celebrity too, had paid off.
“Online Ramlila, live telecast is the only alternative to continue the faith. Else, all be lost. South Korea surprised me the most. Imagine, they were watching the live telecast there too,” Singh said.
On Monday, after eleven days of telecasting Ramlila with the help of three cameramen and six others, Singh was sitting with the Tata Communication Server representatives to discuss feedback. More than six lakh hits in 11 days on the committee’s website www.lavkush.com and it was from all over the world. The seas, the mountains, the
enmity, the foreign relations, all of those didn’t come in the way of Lord Ram making way to the thousands of screens worldwide at the click of the mouse.
Viewership spanned America, Dubai, Canada, England, South Asian countries and Gulf countries. Last year, they broadcast live the eleven parts of the grand narrative but it was through broadband and it was a failure like with other Ramlila committees too that were trying to go hi-tech, Arjun Kumar said.
This year, they connected the uudio and video input to a computer complete with a special software to stream the telecast online at Tata Communication Server through high speed internet connection. The streaming is then picked up by several servers located across the globe. Organizers said buffering would be no issue as the telecast can be viewed with as low as 250 kbps speed connection.
But on facebook, several members had issues with the buffering. As the battle between Sri Ram and the demon king Ravan, who abducted the god’s wife Sita, technical glitches as one tried to connect to the online Ramlila in Bhopal caused the sword to be stalled in the air.
Hanuman, the monkey god, was fixated in his antics as he flew in the skies. It was buffering, the epic.
But datacards weren’t capable of handling the war of epic proportions.
Speed was crucial. But of course the organizers are brainstorming on how to make it better next year. Even the effigies are going to be fitted with gadgets and gizmos and special effects so the charm in unparalleled like how Ravan effigy had tears in his eyes and had tape recorders fitted in his mouth for high-strung shrieks that seemed as if the effigy had suddenly turned human with all the attributes.
“You see, we did it for the first time. Now, we will go on twitter, other such sites. We needed to attract youngsters and empty stalls were an issue. We had been researching all through the year. We got calls from London, America asking us to come there and stage the Ramlila. All this was because we decided to go onine in a big way,” Arjun Singh said. “Hi-tech Ramlila is the way. This is the only
alternative.”We are the first ones to sue this separate server technique. There is only a 10-second telecast delay. Others have buffering issues because they are using broadband.”
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that decided to harness the powers and scope of Internet, but others too like the Nav Shree Dharmik Leela Committee that decided to integrate technology with spirituality and are present on Twitter, Orkut and Facebook.
Lord Ram needs networking, a viewer said.
“Facebook is crucial for his status. We need status updates from gods,” he said.
In just about a week, the viewership burgeoned to hundreds, then thousands came on board.
“More than 50,000 are watching every day. We are getting professionals to act in the Ramlila. We have a team of 10 people who are dedicated to make this online Ramlila a hit,” Piyush Agarwal, who is in charge of the technical team, said. “Because of facebook we got connected to 6,000 youth.”
Arjun Singh was already recieving calls from people in Pakistan, Canada, USA thanking him for the live telecast of Ramlila. He was happy. Maybe next year, they'd do more. The empty stalls at the Red Fort grounds didn't dampen his spirits. Server problems were proof that virtual stalls were full of the faithful and the curious. It was all god's grace, he said.
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
The “godliness” had to be applied carefully, keeping in tandem with the changing times. Now, it is more “Bollywood” with glittering, shimmering eyes, defined lips, highlighted cheekbones. Sita looks uber cool in her matted makeup, her lips painted bronze.
To keep up with the times, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee has expanded its space and it is not just the sprawling grounds of the Red Fort that it occupies, but virtual space too. Live telecast through a separate server so the net is cast far and wide, across the seas and mountains, and quite a following on the social networking site
www.facebook.com are how the organizing members of the committee, one of the oldest in the country and established in 1979 in Delhi, ensured the tradition survives. Such traditions can’t be in isolation. They must be integrated with the technology for survival, the members said.
The website, www.lavkush.com, where the live telecast of the epic in 11 parts is being played, has registered more than 6 lakh hits already. On www.facebook.com, there are upwards of 6,000 members who “like” the group.
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that’s into harnessing technology and the worldwide web for expanding its reach to millions of youngsters and others elsewhere in the world, who can’t be present in the stalls to watch the actors playing their parts in the centuries old epic, but hundreds of other such organizations too that are increasingly becoming tech-savvy to ensure the continuity of a tradition that many feel could well become extinct if not promoted on the virtual space. After all, Ramlila isn’t just about tradition but also about one’s moral duty towards faith and its survival despite the distractions of the modern world, members said.
On its facebook page, discussions are on in full swing.
One Sukhbir Soni wrote “I am very happy to see The great Indian role history on line Thanks.” Others too expressed their gratefulness online. This tryst with online Ramlila was way too cool.
This online approach was inclusive, it was all-encompassing. This is where physicals, externals melted and only spiritual remained.
For years, the traditional art form demanded the actors stuck to the morality play rules, apply makeup that also reflected the good or evil in them for this was Ramayan, and not Mahabharat where the hero was a tragic one with redeeming qualities. Here, it was clearly good and evil.
But as with the online crossover, adoption, adaption, other cosmetic changes too have changed the art form. Previously, there were seasoned actors whose faith made them join the moving committees from small towns in India. They traveled, dedicated their lives to the service of Lord Ram, and brought the God to the masses. Now, there are management students, athletes, professionals who feel being part of the committee may give them a break in Bollywood, or bring them closer to faith that
they are so out of sync with.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 12, 2010
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
Bhaskar Joshi, 23, a management student from Moradabad, was almost in a trance. Once in a while he liked to step into God's shoes. At 23, that was his high. With his lips painted bright red, and mascara loaded eyelashes, he felt beyond the mundane. The Ramlila was his arena. Here, he would weep, sacrifice, kill, forgive, repent, lament, go through all emotions and bring God to the masses.
Last year, the President folded her hands in front of the epic hero of the Ramayan. That was it. Other mortals would fall at his feet, look up at him with moistened eyes brimming with hope, prayer, devotion, everything.
He felt like the avatar. In the green room with its gauzy pink curtains, and tin trunks overflowing with God's garb, he sat with a coterie of friends, including Hanuman,who wore his shades and called him “Prabhu”. Hanuman had no business hanging around in the greenroom. Tonight, it was Manthra-Kaikeyee Samvad, a part of the epic that told the story of how the queen went into her “warth palace” as it was explained in a notebook designed especially for foreigners who the organizers expected would come by the dozen, and Ram's exile.
In the little tent that looked like a square box, fortified against mosquitoes that could spread the Dengue fever, something the foreigners were wary of as they poured into the national capital for the Commonwealth Games, with rectangular glass windows for viewing, a few Indians, mostly the privileged, sat. The Lav Kush Ramlila Committee had put up this little enclave with seating for 50 for the Germans, French, Australians, Kenyans, everyone that was not Indian. This was their commitment to merging the epic tale with yet another epic event – the CWG.
Indians were mostly confined to the grounds with its army of mosquitoes.
“We are habituated to this. We don't mind,” a committee member said. “Yesterday, a couple of Africans were in the tent watching the Ramlila. The notebook has all details of embassies and illustrations and maps. We have worked hard on this.”
Besides Ram and Sita, Shera, the official mascot, was prominent on the posters, on the little coffee mugs they had designed as part of the welcome kit for the people beyond the seas so they could take home the lessons from the epic.
Next to Joshi, Neha Vashisth, a 21-year-old “fresher” from the Uttar Pradesh town, was waiting to get her face painted. Among the various gods and his family, she, who was to play Sita, the wronged goddess who triggered the battle because Ravan, the anti-hero took a fancy for her, was looking too brown, too mortal.
Ram preferred this Sita. The other one who he acted with for the last three years got married. Besides, she looked much older than him. Neha was younger and he thought they looked together.
“He is handsome. He has good personality. I like him as Ram,” she said, blushing. “No, no affair between us.”
“I like this Sita,” Ram said, unabashed by Sita's denial.
Maybe there is an affair. All sorts of things happen when Gods and humans interchange roles. Million possibilities can arise.
For the Ramlila committee too, possibilities have come marching. Now, they are streaming live telecast of the nine parts of the epic on their website www.lavkush.com. Besides, a team of public relations strategists have totally delved into pitching faith to all. Already , 2200 members have joined the Facebook page. Big leap of faith for all.
They aren't twittering yet. In the server room at the back of the giant stage, there are laptops, entangled wires, harried staff.
They are trying to connect, merge the new and the old. Faith needs to be revived, sold in a package with freebies.
With Commonwealth Games consuming the imagination of the young and the faithless, they have a strategy too. Instead of Bollywood stars who the committee called to attract more public, this year they have banners with faces of the known Indian sports persons like Sania Nehelwal, Abhinav Bindra, and Vijendar, the boxer, a pin-up poster boy for the young girls who go gushing over his looks.
“Today, things have changed. Today Ramlila is standing with the country in its glorious moment of hosting the CWG. We are with it. We sent out 5 lakh invitations, we are into technology, everything,” Arjun Kumar Singh, 55, the “permanent” secretary of the committee, said.
For 31 years, he has been involved with promoting the faith, the values that the epic endorses through its characters.
As a kid, he watched the numerous small neighborhood Ramlilas.
“Ramlila is the solution to mankind's problems, to disintegrating families. They only need to learn from Ram and his brothers Bharat and Lakhsman the virtues of sacrifice, how to keep families together,” he said.
Arjun Kumar is in the construction business. Each year, he digs into his wealth like 20 others who are associated with the committee and funds the extravaganza at the Red Fort grounds.
It cost the committee Rs. 1 crore this year.
On the stage, Manthra was convincing the queen Kaikeyee to send Lord Ram into exile so her own son could get to rule Ayodhya. At 9:11 p.m., a power cut froze King Dashrath. At the moment, he was crouching on the floor, overcome with sadness and the price of his promise to his beautiful queen.
Manorama Joshi, who enacted the stepmother, was in her element. For a few seconds, she didn't move. Then she looked around, adjusted her hair, and took in the audience.
In the greenroom before it all started, the start of the 14-year-old exile and the making of the epic, Manthra stood, trying to fit a pillow in her already-bursting velvet bustier. For 32-year-old Sanjay Sharma, who always wanted to be an actor and even spent time lounging outside the filmistan studio in Mumbai hoping that someone would take notice of his acting talent, playing Manthra was a challenge.
For 12 years since he first got on to the stage and felt liberated, he had played the character of Lakshman, Lord Ram's brother, who accompanied him into the exile.
In Lakhman's character, he felt like a Black Cat Commando in his element. Once, the commandos gave him a thumbs up.
“There's anger in me. Lakshman was an angry man. In my life, I have anger too. He was also committed to sacrifice. I wanted to make my father, a railway official, proud of me, but he passed away. There's so much I wished for. But wishes are elusive beings. They never come true,” he said, chewing paan masala, holding his saree while the director fixed his hair.
“You see, I can do roles that no man here can. I can become this scheming Manthra. Why not,” he said.
The Ramlila was not just about faith then. It was also about pent-up frustration, broken dreams, crushed aspirations, and an outlet for the creative, artistic urge that never found a footing the other grand stage, the Bollywood.
Rishi Pal, in his white wig, was counting the beads he held. In his Saint Vashishth role, he felt he was doing great service to the cause of religion that was soon exiting the human mind and soul.
The 55-year-old has been part of the Ramlila for 40 years. The committee pays the artists a lump sum and bear their expenses for the 11 days that they are in Delhi, giving the national capital its tryst with gods.
“Ramlila has changed. Now, we don't wear garish makeup. It is more like Bollywood makeup but then the artist can come out more. The dark makeup hid the expressions,” he said. “Religion is important. I am doing my bit for it.”
Outside, in the barricaded seats, 32-year-old Satish Kumar, a Bihari migrant worker, sat engulfed with an overdose of faith and gods. Each time, Ram came on stage, he would fold his hands, utter small prayers that had remained unfulfilled.
“I come everyday. For me, he is god incarnate,” he said.
As Kaikeyee stomped and kicked and threw her bangles and beads that looked more like the Mardi Gras pink and green beads in her fit to have Dashrath announce her own son as the king, Kumar looked crestfallen. Of course he knew this was coming. But for god to go through all this, it wasn't a nice thing, he said.
On the periphery, there were food stalls. A woman in a bikini smiled from one the advertisemnts. Too many advertisements dotted the Ramlila landscape.
Rahul, a 12-year-old volunteer in his white trousers and shirt, was busy checking passes. For the last four years, he had been part of the Ramlila Committee as a volunteer. This was his service to go for a better life, a job, too.
“We are only sewaks,” he said. “God will give blessings.”
On the stage, Ram was preparing for his ordeal. The audience was “tch tch” on his plight. But the story had to go on. It would go on.
Kaikeyee, in her “warth palace” and in her black saree, had won the round. Dashrath lay slumped on the floor.
Manthra was busy chewing her gutkha inside. He had totally killed it. It was kick-ass, his performance.
Meanwhile, Shera looked a misfit in the battle of the evil and the good.
Going hi-tech, the future of Ramlila
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Eye magazine of The Indian Express. on Oct. 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 19, 2010
Squeezed in between the Yellow Sea and the East Sea, the red dot showing Ramlila viewership seemed an anomaly.
Arjun Kuma Singh, the 55-year-old organizer, looked again. Yes, they were watching online Ramlila in South Korea. Total adrenaline rush.
Singh was kicked. His investment of Rs. 10 lakhs on making one of the oldest Ramlilas in the country, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee, hi-tech by installing a separate server in the backroom, setting up a technical team headed by his son, invading the social networking website www.facebook.com and making Lord Ram a Facebook celebrity too, had paid off.
“Online Ramlila, live telecast is the only alternative to continue the faith. Else, all be lost. South Korea surprised me the most. Imagine, they were watching the live telecast there too,” Singh said.
On Monday, after eleven days of telecasting Ramlila with the help of three cameramen and six others, Singh was sitting with the Tata Communication Server representatives to discuss feedback. More than six lakh hits in 11 days on the committee’s website www.lavkush.com and it was from all over the world. The seas, the mountains, the
enmity, the foreign relations, all of those didn’t come in the way of Lord Ram making way to the thousands of screens worldwide at the click of the mouse.
Viewership spanned America, Dubai, Canada, England, South Asian countries and Gulf countries. Last year, they broadcast live the eleven parts of the grand narrative but it was through broadband and it was a failure like with other Ramlila committees too that were trying to go hi-tech, Arjun Kumar said.
This year, they connected the uudio and video input to a computer complete with a special software to stream the telecast online at Tata Communication Server through high speed internet connection. The streaming is then picked up by several servers located across the globe. Organizers said buffering would be no issue as the telecast can be viewed with as low as 250 kbps speed connection.
But on facebook, several members had issues with the buffering. As the battle between Sri Ram and the demon king Ravan, who abducted the god’s wife Sita, technical glitches as one tried to connect to the online Ramlila in Bhopal caused the sword to be stalled in the air.
Hanuman, the monkey god, was fixated in his antics as he flew in the skies. It was buffering, the epic.
But datacards weren’t capable of handling the war of epic proportions.
Speed was crucial. But of course the organizers are brainstorming on how to make it better next year. Even the effigies are going to be fitted with gadgets and gizmos and special effects so the charm in unparalleled like how Ravan effigy had tears in his eyes and had tape recorders fitted in his mouth for high-strung shrieks that seemed as if the effigy had suddenly turned human with all the attributes.
“You see, we did it for the first time. Now, we will go on twitter, other such sites. We needed to attract youngsters and empty stalls were an issue. We had been researching all through the year. We got calls from London, America asking us to come there and stage the Ramlila. All this was because we decided to go onine in a big way,” Arjun Singh said. “Hi-tech Ramlila is the way. This is the only
alternative.”We are the first ones to sue this separate server technique. There is only a 10-second telecast delay. Others have buffering issues because they are using broadband.”
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that decided to harness the powers and scope of Internet, but others too like the Nav Shree Dharmik Leela Committee that decided to integrate technology with spirituality and are present on Twitter, Orkut and Facebook.
Lord Ram needs networking, a viewer said.
“Facebook is crucial for his status. We need status updates from gods,” he said.
In just about a week, the viewership burgeoned to hundreds, then thousands came on board.
“More than 50,000 are watching every day. We are getting professionals to act in the Ramlila. We have a team of 10 people who are dedicated to make this online Ramlila a hit,” Piyush Agarwal, who is in charge of the technical team, said. “Because of facebook we got connected to 6,000 youth.”
Arjun Singh was already recieving calls from people in Pakistan, Canada, USA thanking him for the live telecast of Ramlila. He was happy. Maybe next year, they'd do more. The empty stalls at the Red Fort grounds didn't dampen his spirits. Server problems were proof that virtual stalls were full of the faithful and the curious. It was all god's grace, he said.
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
The “godliness” had to be applied carefully, keeping in tandem with the changing times. Now, it is more “Bollywood” with glittering, shimmering eyes, defined lips, highlighted cheekbones. Sita looks uber cool in her matted makeup, her lips painted bronze.
To keep up with the times, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee has expanded its space and it is not just the sprawling grounds of the Red Fort that it occupies, but virtual space too. Live telecast through a separate server so the net is cast far and wide, across the seas and mountains, and quite a following on the social networking site
www.facebook.com are how the organizing members of the committee, one of the oldest in the country and established in 1979 in Delhi, ensured the tradition survives. Such traditions can’t be in isolation. They must be integrated with the technology for survival, the members said.
The website, www.lavkush.com, where the live telecast of the epic in 11 parts is being played, has registered more than 6 lakh hits already. On www.facebook.com, there are upwards of 6,000 members who “like” the group.
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that’s into harnessing technology and the worldwide web for expanding its reach to millions of youngsters and others elsewhere in the world, who can’t be present in the stalls to watch the actors playing their parts in the centuries old epic, but hundreds of other such organizations too that are increasingly becoming tech-savvy to ensure the continuity of a tradition that many feel could well become extinct if not promoted on the virtual space. After all, Ramlila isn’t just about tradition but also about one’s moral duty towards faith and its survival despite the distractions of the modern world, members said.
On its facebook page, discussions are on in full swing.
One Sukhbir Soni wrote “I am very happy to see The great Indian role history on line Thanks.” Others too expressed their gratefulness online. This tryst with online Ramlila was way too cool.
This online approach was inclusive, it was all-encompassing. This is where physicals, externals melted and only spiritual remained.
For years, the traditional art form demanded the actors stuck to the morality play rules, apply makeup that also reflected the good or evil in them for this was Ramayan, and not Mahabharat where the hero was a tragic one with redeeming qualities. Here, it was clearly good and evil.
But as with the online crossover, adoption, adaption, other cosmetic changes too have changed the art form. Previously, there were seasoned actors whose faith made them join the moving committees from small towns in India. They traveled, dedicated their lives to the service of Lord Ram, and brought the God to the masses. Now, there are management students, athletes, professionals who feel being part of the committee may give them a break in Bollywood, or bring them closer to faith that
they are so out of sync with.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Election Commission, UIDAI recognize third gender ...
This is for Frances Mary Fischer, the transgender woman I met in New York.
An edited version appeared in The Indian Express on October 12, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 11, 2010
It was a fight for a column, a space where the numerous transgender could affirm their identity and not be compartmentalized into either male or female.
With Bihar becoming the first state to implement the Election Commission's mandate to have a separate column “Other” in the voter enrolment and registration, Dr. SE Huda, a Bareilly-based doctor who had approached the apex body that conducts elections in 2009 asking them to recognize the third gender, feels vindicated.
It is not just the Election Commission that took the lead so “others could follow suit” as per the Chief Election Commissioner SY Quershi, now the UIDAI, a Planning Commission initiative to accord identity to all Indian residents, has also extended the gender identity and inclusion to “Transgender” on their enrolment forms and their database.
The UIDAI enrolment form will now have “M”, “F” and “T” so the one million eunuchs can register as themselves.“It was a legitimate demand and we said let others follow out example. It is a good thing that the UIDAI is doing it. In the voter enrolment, the officials refused to register them as females because of their male voice so we decided to do this,” Chief Election Commissioner SY Quershi said.
“There was some representation to Navin Chawla and we immediately decided to do it. It is an all India instruction but starts with Bihar in the upcoming elections.”In February 2010 the election commission of India allowed intersex and transsexuals the right to register as voters with “Other”.
This was what Bareilly-based Dr. SE Huda, secretary of Syed Shah Farzand Ali Educational & Social Foundation of India, which has offices in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi where they work with women, children and eunuchs, fought for. At a conference for third gender equality in Bareilly in April 2009, his organization had decided they would take this up with the Election Commission, with the Census, and with the UIDAI, so the right identity is accorded and statistical data on the number of transgender in the country becomes available. Dr. Huda was also called to Delhi by former chief election commissioner Navin Chawla to discuss his work with the community and how to reach out this segment of voters with a low voting rate.
In August, the UIDAI wrote back to Barielly-based doctor Huda that the authority had already provided a third option – transgender – on their enrolment form and in the database. The 30-year-old doctor had asked the Planning Commission to include the “third sex” to accord them their rightful identity so they could access various government welfare schemes like the Tamil Nadu government's scheme of a welfare board and free sex reassignment surgeries at the government hospitals for the transgenders and the Karnataka's government pension scheme for the members of the community. For the UIDAI Huda's letter was an endorsement of sorts, and a reassurance that they were in the right direction with the marginalized community, UIDAI Deputy Director General K. Ganga said.
Ganga had responded to Dr. Huda's RTI application and she told Indian Express that the Demographic Data Standard and Verification Procedure Committee had already decided to capture the information whether a person was transgender though it wasn't their mandate to collect statistical data on eunuchs way back in December 2009, something that Dr. Huda wanted. "We had received this letter and I was the one who had responded," Ganga said. "We wrote to the President office who Huda had also written to telling them we could capture the gender but that would not be for statistical purpose. For us, it was an endorsement of our plans." In future, the UIDAI may also partner with groups and organizations that work with the transgender community.
Around five years ago, a transgender person had asked for an appointment at a hospital in Barielly but at 10 in the morning she didn't turn up at the hospital. She came later in the evening and Dr. Huda, a 30-year-old doctor who wrote to the UIDAI earlier this year to ask them to include the third sex on their enrollment form, asked her why she didn't come earlier.
She was in pain as she was suffering with cervical spondylitis and pain was radiating towards her heart and her limbs had become numb. But even acute pain couldn't bring her to go to the hospital earlier.
She asked if he wanted her to go through yet another round of humiliation in a crowded general OPD ward. Dr. Huda recalled he didn't know what to say.
“She asked me if I had the courage to diagnose her in front of everyone,” Dr. Huda said. “That led me to work towards the inclusion of the transgender in the mainstream society. I had followed it up. It is good that they did it."
An edited version appeared in The Indian Express on October 12, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 11, 2010
It was a fight for a column, a space where the numerous transgender could affirm their identity and not be compartmentalized into either male or female.
With Bihar becoming the first state to implement the Election Commission's mandate to have a separate column “Other” in the voter enrolment and registration, Dr. SE Huda, a Bareilly-based doctor who had approached the apex body that conducts elections in 2009 asking them to recognize the third gender, feels vindicated.
It is not just the Election Commission that took the lead so “others could follow suit” as per the Chief Election Commissioner SY Quershi, now the UIDAI, a Planning Commission initiative to accord identity to all Indian residents, has also extended the gender identity and inclusion to “Transgender” on their enrolment forms and their database.
The UIDAI enrolment form will now have “M”, “F” and “T” so the one million eunuchs can register as themselves.“It was a legitimate demand and we said let others follow out example. It is a good thing that the UIDAI is doing it. In the voter enrolment, the officials refused to register them as females because of their male voice so we decided to do this,” Chief Election Commissioner SY Quershi said.
“There was some representation to Navin Chawla and we immediately decided to do it. It is an all India instruction but starts with Bihar in the upcoming elections.”In February 2010 the election commission of India allowed intersex and transsexuals the right to register as voters with “Other”.
This was what Bareilly-based Dr. SE Huda, secretary of Syed Shah Farzand Ali Educational & Social Foundation of India, which has offices in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi where they work with women, children and eunuchs, fought for. At a conference for third gender equality in Bareilly in April 2009, his organization had decided they would take this up with the Election Commission, with the Census, and with the UIDAI, so the right identity is accorded and statistical data on the number of transgender in the country becomes available. Dr. Huda was also called to Delhi by former chief election commissioner Navin Chawla to discuss his work with the community and how to reach out this segment of voters with a low voting rate.
In August, the UIDAI wrote back to Barielly-based doctor Huda that the authority had already provided a third option – transgender – on their enrolment form and in the database. The 30-year-old doctor had asked the Planning Commission to include the “third sex” to accord them their rightful identity so they could access various government welfare schemes like the Tamil Nadu government's scheme of a welfare board and free sex reassignment surgeries at the government hospitals for the transgenders and the Karnataka's government pension scheme for the members of the community. For the UIDAI Huda's letter was an endorsement of sorts, and a reassurance that they were in the right direction with the marginalized community, UIDAI Deputy Director General K. Ganga said.
Ganga had responded to Dr. Huda's RTI application and she told Indian Express that the Demographic Data Standard and Verification Procedure Committee had already decided to capture the information whether a person was transgender though it wasn't their mandate to collect statistical data on eunuchs way back in December 2009, something that Dr. Huda wanted. "We had received this letter and I was the one who had responded," Ganga said. "We wrote to the President office who Huda had also written to telling them we could capture the gender but that would not be for statistical purpose. For us, it was an endorsement of our plans." In future, the UIDAI may also partner with groups and organizations that work with the transgender community.
Around five years ago, a transgender person had asked for an appointment at a hospital in Barielly but at 10 in the morning she didn't turn up at the hospital. She came later in the evening and Dr. Huda, a 30-year-old doctor who wrote to the UIDAI earlier this year to ask them to include the third sex on their enrollment form, asked her why she didn't come earlier.
She was in pain as she was suffering with cervical spondylitis and pain was radiating towards her heart and her limbs had become numb. But even acute pain couldn't bring her to go to the hospital earlier.
She asked if he wanted her to go through yet another round of humiliation in a crowded general OPD ward. Dr. Huda recalled he didn't know what to say.
“She asked me if I had the courage to diagnose her in front of everyone,” Dr. Huda said. “That led me to work towards the inclusion of the transgender in the mainstream society. I had followed it up. It is good that they did it."
Monday, October 04, 2010
Living behind the CWG posters
An edited version appeard in The Indian Express Real Page 3 on October 3, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 1, 2010
There is a hole in everything. And through that whatever it was that
they were trying to hide comes pouring out. In this case, a little
child, in his rags, who stood in the hole, or where the Commonwealth
Games posters let the world seep in, or the poverty peep out, was
crying, mostly sobbing for his mother who had gone off to the other
side, across the road to fetch water.
At the Cooli Camp in Vasant Vihar, under the shadow of the Vasant
Continental Hotel, this hill, rendered blue with the brightly painted
walls of the jhuggis, the posters that the city administration has put
up everywhere they thought poverty was at its best in its drive to
deck up the city and hide its truth, the bitter sad truths of poverty
hunger and marginalised lives in the middle of luxury and brands, they
came Monday evening and put up the bright blue posters, enough to hide
the squalor at the ground level. But the rise of poverty, its
placement on the hill, defied the efforts. From atop the hill, the
poverty, naked, stark and in-your-face, came tumbling down like little
secrets of a child, too flimsy, and vaporous yet too large to be
contained in a box, into a sea of shining roads, luxury malls and
luxury cars and denial.
The bright blue with Shera, the official mascot for the CWG,
contrasted with the other blue, that of peeling paint, and the
shabbiness of it. The MCD staff came at 6:30 p.m. Monday evening and
the whole slum of about 1,000 people, watched as the posters
barricaded them in. They didn’t protest. They were too overwhelmed.
The games were coming. They had to be shut out from the view.
“ Even the wind stopped coming. It is a strange feeling when you live
behind these huge posters. You know they are trying to hide you
because you are what they call shame on the city’s image. Not that I
mind. But it feels as if we have been imprisoned,” Usha, a 15-year-old
girl who lives on one of the little shanties on top of the little hill
said.
The posters, their brightness and their message is turned towards the
city and its visitors. On the other side, the side that Usha and
others confront everyday, is a dreary grey colour, no variations to
it. Plain, dreadful, dark and grumpy grey. Even the sun doesn’t make
it come alive.
In the evenings when their cooking, cleaning and other such chores
were done, Usha and her sister-in-law would squat outside their little
huts, too small to contain them all, its low roof hanging oppressively
on their minds, and watch the cars and people. The bikers were Usha’s
favourite.
With the posters, there’s only a dull grey that lines their vision.
“This is the first time they have done this. I have lived here for 10
years. It feels a little strange. Down there, they have problems with
light. They blocked the sun,” she said.
Women in the slum now have to circle the whole area to get out to
fetch water from the other side. Children have to squeeze themselves
in and out through the chinks to be able to avoid the longer, new
route.
Dhiraj, 8, and Niraj, 7, were on their way back from their MCD school
in Sector 5, Monday evening when they encountered the mascot who
covered their homes. They climbed up, and then looked down. The view
wasn’t quite right.
“This is dirty. That’s why they have done it. Maybe some important
person is coming. They say some games are happening,” Dhiraj said.
While the posters come in the way of the view from the top, their grey
forming an ugly line, from the street below, the poverty rises above
the posters, and seems to mock the effort. Yes, everything has a hole.
The posters, too.
The Delhi government has come under fire for its drive against the
poor and the homeless in the city as news of beggars and other people
who don’t have an identity card being driven out of the city’s borders
by the police. It has also done what other global cities have done in
their moments of hosting such mega events. Put up walls, posters,
everything to hide what is perhaps the underlying truth of all urban
cities – its rampant, ugly poverty.
But then these can only hide so much. In Safdarjung Enclave, the
garbage containers have been swished behind two huge posters. But then
the stink knows no walls.
In Nizamuddin, where thousands of homeless slept on the pavements and
lived their lives in full public view, the posters have replaced the
humanity. Nobody knows where these people have gone. Maybe they will
return, they say.
A few peeped out from the hole, the point where one poster is joined
with the other, as they sat there, hunched against the grey.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 1, 2010
There is a hole in everything. And through that whatever it was that
they were trying to hide comes pouring out. In this case, a little
child, in his rags, who stood in the hole, or where the Commonwealth
Games posters let the world seep in, or the poverty peep out, was
crying, mostly sobbing for his mother who had gone off to the other
side, across the road to fetch water.
At the Cooli Camp in Vasant Vihar, under the shadow of the Vasant
Continental Hotel, this hill, rendered blue with the brightly painted
walls of the jhuggis, the posters that the city administration has put
up everywhere they thought poverty was at its best in its drive to
deck up the city and hide its truth, the bitter sad truths of poverty
hunger and marginalised lives in the middle of luxury and brands, they
came Monday evening and put up the bright blue posters, enough to hide
the squalor at the ground level. But the rise of poverty, its
placement on the hill, defied the efforts. From atop the hill, the
poverty, naked, stark and in-your-face, came tumbling down like little
secrets of a child, too flimsy, and vaporous yet too large to be
contained in a box, into a sea of shining roads, luxury malls and
luxury cars and denial.
The bright blue with Shera, the official mascot for the CWG,
contrasted with the other blue, that of peeling paint, and the
shabbiness of it. The MCD staff came at 6:30 p.m. Monday evening and
the whole slum of about 1,000 people, watched as the posters
barricaded them in. They didn’t protest. They were too overwhelmed.
The games were coming. They had to be shut out from the view.
“ Even the wind stopped coming. It is a strange feeling when you live
behind these huge posters. You know they are trying to hide you
because you are what they call shame on the city’s image. Not that I
mind. But it feels as if we have been imprisoned,” Usha, a 15-year-old
girl who lives on one of the little shanties on top of the little hill
said.
The posters, their brightness and their message is turned towards the
city and its visitors. On the other side, the side that Usha and
others confront everyday, is a dreary grey colour, no variations to
it. Plain, dreadful, dark and grumpy grey. Even the sun doesn’t make
it come alive.
In the evenings when their cooking, cleaning and other such chores
were done, Usha and her sister-in-law would squat outside their little
huts, too small to contain them all, its low roof hanging oppressively
on their minds, and watch the cars and people. The bikers were Usha’s
favourite.
With the posters, there’s only a dull grey that lines their vision.
“This is the first time they have done this. I have lived here for 10
years. It feels a little strange. Down there, they have problems with
light. They blocked the sun,” she said.
Women in the slum now have to circle the whole area to get out to
fetch water from the other side. Children have to squeeze themselves
in and out through the chinks to be able to avoid the longer, new
route.
Dhiraj, 8, and Niraj, 7, were on their way back from their MCD school
in Sector 5, Monday evening when they encountered the mascot who
covered their homes. They climbed up, and then looked down. The view
wasn’t quite right.
“This is dirty. That’s why they have done it. Maybe some important
person is coming. They say some games are happening,” Dhiraj said.
While the posters come in the way of the view from the top, their grey
forming an ugly line, from the street below, the poverty rises above
the posters, and seems to mock the effort. Yes, everything has a hole.
The posters, too.
The Delhi government has come under fire for its drive against the
poor and the homeless in the city as news of beggars and other people
who don’t have an identity card being driven out of the city’s borders
by the police. It has also done what other global cities have done in
their moments of hosting such mega events. Put up walls, posters,
everything to hide what is perhaps the underlying truth of all urban
cities – its rampant, ugly poverty.
But then these can only hide so much. In Safdarjung Enclave, the
garbage containers have been swished behind two huge posters. But then
the stink knows no walls.
In Nizamuddin, where thousands of homeless slept on the pavements and
lived their lives in full public view, the posters have replaced the
humanity. Nobody knows where these people have gone. Maybe they will
return, they say.
A few peeped out from the hole, the point where one poster is joined
with the other, as they sat there, hunched against the grey.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Along the Yamuna Expressway ...
When we traveled on the Yamuna Expressway last year in December for a story on the project, we stopped in many villages to talk to farmers who said they felt they had been cheated. A protest had been brewing then. Since I write 20,000 words on an average for a story, these are some of the leftovers from the piece.
Link to the original article Link to the http://www.indianexpress.com/news/on-the-highway-to-agra/562621/0
The Highway Road
Rajmal Singh hopes the road doesn’t come. But he knows it will. Because from his village, he can see the massive pillars, and the noise of the machines keep him awake through the nights. During these long nights, he fears for his future. When they came to acquire the farmland in Salarpur, a village on the outskirts of Noida, Singh became a millionaire overnight. But he doesn’t know what he will do with the Rs. 2 crores that he got for his land. He has bought some land in Mathura. But this is where he was born, and the road full of promises has nothing for him.
And When the road comes, he won’t be here. He would be gone like many others in his village to look for work elsewhere, and learn to live with loss of his past.
He almost wishes the road project is disbanded, the workers are sent home, and then they can reclaim their lands and grow wheat as they once did. Because the money won’t last forever. That’s the truth of it.
“We are not educated. Where can we find jobs?,” he said. “We feel betrayed. They promised us jobs but we have heard nothing so far.”
But Jaypee officials said Abadi Scheme was proposed for those who lost their houses to the project and the company would ensure they were rehabilitated.
“See, some issues were there but we agreed to the compensation that the government set and in many cases we negotiated. We have given handsome compensation but all dreams can’t be fulfilled,” Samir Gaur said. “With progress and development, changes come. But we have schemes for villagers and there are abundant of opportunities. We are coming up with Abadi villages near the residential plots.”
Salarpur’s fate was sealed when the project was conceived around six years ago. Squeezed in between the Formula 1 racing track and the Yamuna Expressway, almost the entire village falls under what the villagers term “acquirement.” Only three houses will be spared because the road that split their lands, and now threatens their homes, is a hungry road with a voracious appetite.
Most of the land acquisition process is over and only in some cases, physical possession of the lands is remaining.
The Allahabad High Court in December 2009 dismissed a bunch of writ petitions challenging acquisition of land by the state government.
But the village itself is in a limbo, waiting, hoping, and yet it knows it doesn’t have options.
Along the “highway road”, hopes ran high once. Dreams came floating on the road.
In Salarpur, they thought they would set up shops along the way, and the exodus wouldn’t have to take place.
But then, all the land is earmarked for development. A sports city is being built; an airport is on the cards, residential plots are already being advertised and sold.
In the evenings, the skies turn pink. It is what they call the steelworks sunset. Pink and blurred. Something to do with welding, smelting, or fixing. But it is no longer how the sunsets were before the road snaked through the farms. In time, more things will change. Just like the sunset, they too come under the spell of the road, charmed, yet slave to it.
Rajmal Singh knows this well. Already he can see the signs of evil. He feels the road is the wreckage of everything, of the past, of the future, of their existence.
“Some bought plots. But that’s just a few of us. Some bought cars, some will drink away the money,” he said. “The road has only brought misery to us.”
The liquor shops are stocked and villagers queue up, angry, frustrated, dejected.
“We didn’t want to sell but we had to. We will die of hunger. They didn’t give us any jobs,” Inderpal Singh, another farmer said. “Now, all we do is play cards and drink. We are just ruining ourselves. Perhaps, when all is over, we will go to Delhi and find construction jobs.”
Inderpal owned just under a bigha of land. He got Rs. 5 lakhs.
The villagers had tried to hold on to their lands. They approached the Bharitya Kisan Union, protested, marched, but now the fervour is sort of dying.
The young are angry still like Sarjit Singh, who is pursuing his computer science degree from a Greater Noida Institute.
“It is a betrayal. They took the land. They should let us keep the house,” he said.
Like his father Rajmal Singh, he can’t resign himself to the inevitable.
Then there are others who don’t know if they should be angry or cry over their fate.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanti Devi came to Salarpur half a century ago as a young bride. They didn’t own land but reared cattle. The expressway authority has quoted Rs. 6.75 lakhs for their house that falls in the zone earmarked for development alongside Yamuna Expressway. With two buffaloes and a bit of money, the family is at a loss for options.
“I will not leave. My son is weak. Where will we go? This is my silent protest. I will die in my house,” she said.
Salarpur and six other villages have been notified. Where they stand, residential plots, the racing track and a university will come up.
The expressway is facing opposition from farmers’ groups. Many of them are openly rebelling against land acquisition saying the compensation is not at par with the market rate. Some are not ready for negotiations even. Last year in August, one farmer was shot in police firing on farmers protesting against inadequate compensation for land being acquired for the expressway. In Mathura, the protests intensified after farmers burnt down the police chowki and the post office in Bajna, Mathura. For five days, the village had shut down.
Risal Singh, a local, said the road divides their village and although they parted with their land, they can’t sit back and let the authority occupy more land. The state government notified more than 1100 villages when the project commenced leaving thousands of farmers in a state of insecurity and fear.
So, a protest is again brewing, and farmers organize meetings frequently. In at least 400 villages in the area, the agitators are distributing leaflets, organizing and mobilizing more farmers to stage dharnas if the authority tries to acquire more land. They have been notified but they were told that the more land would be acquired only if the need arises.
Rajendra Singh, who was shot on the day of the protest, lived in Avalkhera village. Since his death, his widow and his children have left the village. But his death has left the village in a state of shock, including Mukesh Nauhar, 30, who still has to limp. After a bullet hit him in the leg on the day of the protest, he has been “useless”.
“I can’t work on the fields. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “That day there were so many people. Then police came. I thought something hit me and then I saw blood. I still can’t walk properly. My leg has become numb.”
The addiction to growth is catching up, infecting all, permeating to the little corners that could only be accessed through narrow lanes running through the farms.
Finally, the road and development was going to come to them. Land prices have shot up like in Kuberpur where the interchange is under construction at the Agra end for the expressway.
But against the backdrop of development and all its promises, there’s discontent and a sense of loss, of betrayal.
From her primary school in Vas Agaria, Chandni can see the “highway road” and she speaks of her fears. In the village, they talk about the vices that will travel on the road when it is built.
“They say it is bad. It will bring damage. People can go and jump off the road and die. We will become like the city. There will no fresh air,” she said. “We will no longer remain innocent.”
That’s what she heard her parents say about the road.
But until they put in the iron fences, and the set up the tollbooths along the Yamuna Expressway, the mud and fly ash road is their playground. Young boys climb on to the road with their cricket gear and make the dusty road their pitch.
Further up on the road, a yellow truck carrying mud and ash rolls by. On its rear “Global Truck” is painted in black.
On the side of the road, the village waits its turn to be globalized, for malls, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and displacement.
About the Expressway
* Jaypee Group has also been awarded a concession to develop a 1,047 km long eight-lane access-controlled Ganga expressway between Greater Noida and Ghazipur-Ballia, the largest private sector infrastructure investment in India. Yet another
expressway is being planned in the state called the Hindon Expressway named after
yet another river in the state like the other two projects. The 250-km-long Hindon Expressway will pass through Ghaziabad and
Saharanpur up to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
* The Jaypee Group is also building an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring
Road in Agra at a cost of around Rs. 1,100 crores. This will be built
on Design-Finance-Operate and Transfer (DFOT) basis.
* The Yamuna Expressway is planned to be a dual carriageway initially consisting of three 3.75-meter wide lanes in each direction.
* Planned expressway facilities (some of which will involve third-party service providers) include rest areas with parking, shelters and toilets; roadside facilities with fuel stations and coffee shops, restaurants, motels and various other facilities; and plantation and landscaping for environmental, safety and aesthetic purposes.
* Around 9,000 families are allegedly affected by the expressway. Around
Rs 460 crore have been disbursed as compensation.
* Motorists can drive at a speed of up to 120 kmph on the expressway
drastically cutting down on the travel time from Noida to Agra. The
expressway will have no speed breakers.
A look at the compensation rates given to farmers for their land.
*Compensation rates*
* NOIDA: Rs 800 per sqm
* Aligarh : Rs 390 per sqm
* Mathura : Rs 350 per sqm
* Hathras: Rs 350 per sqm
* Agra : Rs 400 per sqm
The Expressway to be developed in Three Phases:-
1. Phase I: Expressway Stretch between Greater Noida and Taj
International Airport.
2. Phase-II: Expressway Stretch between Taj International Airport and
an intermediate destination between Taj International Airport and Agra
3. Phase III: Expressway Stretch between intermediate destination and Agra.
Deadline – Commonwealth Games, 2010.
Quick Facts
Length 165.537 Km
Right of Way 100m
Number of Lane 6 Lanes extendable to 8 lanes
Jaypee Infratech Limited an Indian infrastructure development company engaged in the development of the Yamuna Expressway and related real estate projects. JIL part of the Jaypee Group, was incorporated on April 5, 2007 as a special purpose company to develop, operate and maintain the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, connecting Noida and Agra.
Link to the original article Link to the http://www.indianexpress.com/news/on-the-highway-to-agra/562621/0
The Highway Road
Rajmal Singh hopes the road doesn’t come. But he knows it will. Because from his village, he can see the massive pillars, and the noise of the machines keep him awake through the nights. During these long nights, he fears for his future. When they came to acquire the farmland in Salarpur, a village on the outskirts of Noida, Singh became a millionaire overnight. But he doesn’t know what he will do with the Rs. 2 crores that he got for his land. He has bought some land in Mathura. But this is where he was born, and the road full of promises has nothing for him.
And When the road comes, he won’t be here. He would be gone like many others in his village to look for work elsewhere, and learn to live with loss of his past.
He almost wishes the road project is disbanded, the workers are sent home, and then they can reclaim their lands and grow wheat as they once did. Because the money won’t last forever. That’s the truth of it.
“We are not educated. Where can we find jobs?,” he said. “We feel betrayed. They promised us jobs but we have heard nothing so far.”
But Jaypee officials said Abadi Scheme was proposed for those who lost their houses to the project and the company would ensure they were rehabilitated.
“See, some issues were there but we agreed to the compensation that the government set and in many cases we negotiated. We have given handsome compensation but all dreams can’t be fulfilled,” Samir Gaur said. “With progress and development, changes come. But we have schemes for villagers and there are abundant of opportunities. We are coming up with Abadi villages near the residential plots.”
Salarpur’s fate was sealed when the project was conceived around six years ago. Squeezed in between the Formula 1 racing track and the Yamuna Expressway, almost the entire village falls under what the villagers term “acquirement.” Only three houses will be spared because the road that split their lands, and now threatens their homes, is a hungry road with a voracious appetite.
Most of the land acquisition process is over and only in some cases, physical possession of the lands is remaining.
The Allahabad High Court in December 2009 dismissed a bunch of writ petitions challenging acquisition of land by the state government.
But the village itself is in a limbo, waiting, hoping, and yet it knows it doesn’t have options.
Along the “highway road”, hopes ran high once. Dreams came floating on the road.
In Salarpur, they thought they would set up shops along the way, and the exodus wouldn’t have to take place.
But then, all the land is earmarked for development. A sports city is being built; an airport is on the cards, residential plots are already being advertised and sold.
In the evenings, the skies turn pink. It is what they call the steelworks sunset. Pink and blurred. Something to do with welding, smelting, or fixing. But it is no longer how the sunsets were before the road snaked through the farms. In time, more things will change. Just like the sunset, they too come under the spell of the road, charmed, yet slave to it.
Rajmal Singh knows this well. Already he can see the signs of evil. He feels the road is the wreckage of everything, of the past, of the future, of their existence.
“Some bought plots. But that’s just a few of us. Some bought cars, some will drink away the money,” he said. “The road has only brought misery to us.”
The liquor shops are stocked and villagers queue up, angry, frustrated, dejected.
“We didn’t want to sell but we had to. We will die of hunger. They didn’t give us any jobs,” Inderpal Singh, another farmer said. “Now, all we do is play cards and drink. We are just ruining ourselves. Perhaps, when all is over, we will go to Delhi and find construction jobs.”
Inderpal owned just under a bigha of land. He got Rs. 5 lakhs.
The villagers had tried to hold on to their lands. They approached the Bharitya Kisan Union, protested, marched, but now the fervour is sort of dying.
The young are angry still like Sarjit Singh, who is pursuing his computer science degree from a Greater Noida Institute.
“It is a betrayal. They took the land. They should let us keep the house,” he said.
Like his father Rajmal Singh, he can’t resign himself to the inevitable.
Then there are others who don’t know if they should be angry or cry over their fate.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanti Devi came to Salarpur half a century ago as a young bride. They didn’t own land but reared cattle. The expressway authority has quoted Rs. 6.75 lakhs for their house that falls in the zone earmarked for development alongside Yamuna Expressway. With two buffaloes and a bit of money, the family is at a loss for options.
“I will not leave. My son is weak. Where will we go? This is my silent protest. I will die in my house,” she said.
Salarpur and six other villages have been notified. Where they stand, residential plots, the racing track and a university will come up.
The expressway is facing opposition from farmers’ groups. Many of them are openly rebelling against land acquisition saying the compensation is not at par with the market rate. Some are not ready for negotiations even. Last year in August, one farmer was shot in police firing on farmers protesting against inadequate compensation for land being acquired for the expressway. In Mathura, the protests intensified after farmers burnt down the police chowki and the post office in Bajna, Mathura. For five days, the village had shut down.
Risal Singh, a local, said the road divides their village and although they parted with their land, they can’t sit back and let the authority occupy more land. The state government notified more than 1100 villages when the project commenced leaving thousands of farmers in a state of insecurity and fear.
So, a protest is again brewing, and farmers organize meetings frequently. In at least 400 villages in the area, the agitators are distributing leaflets, organizing and mobilizing more farmers to stage dharnas if the authority tries to acquire more land. They have been notified but they were told that the more land would be acquired only if the need arises.
Rajendra Singh, who was shot on the day of the protest, lived in Avalkhera village. Since his death, his widow and his children have left the village. But his death has left the village in a state of shock, including Mukesh Nauhar, 30, who still has to limp. After a bullet hit him in the leg on the day of the protest, he has been “useless”.
“I can’t work on the fields. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “That day there were so many people. Then police came. I thought something hit me and then I saw blood. I still can’t walk properly. My leg has become numb.”
The addiction to growth is catching up, infecting all, permeating to the little corners that could only be accessed through narrow lanes running through the farms.
Finally, the road and development was going to come to them. Land prices have shot up like in Kuberpur where the interchange is under construction at the Agra end for the expressway.
But against the backdrop of development and all its promises, there’s discontent and a sense of loss, of betrayal.
From her primary school in Vas Agaria, Chandni can see the “highway road” and she speaks of her fears. In the village, they talk about the vices that will travel on the road when it is built.
“They say it is bad. It will bring damage. People can go and jump off the road and die. We will become like the city. There will no fresh air,” she said. “We will no longer remain innocent.”
That’s what she heard her parents say about the road.
But until they put in the iron fences, and the set up the tollbooths along the Yamuna Expressway, the mud and fly ash road is their playground. Young boys climb on to the road with their cricket gear and make the dusty road their pitch.
Further up on the road, a yellow truck carrying mud and ash rolls by. On its rear “Global Truck” is painted in black.
On the side of the road, the village waits its turn to be globalized, for malls, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and displacement.
About the Expressway
* Jaypee Group has also been awarded a concession to develop a 1,047 km long eight-lane access-controlled Ganga expressway between Greater Noida and Ghazipur-Ballia, the largest private sector infrastructure investment in India. Yet another
expressway is being planned in the state called the Hindon Expressway named after
yet another river in the state like the other two projects. The 250-km-long Hindon Expressway will pass through Ghaziabad and
Saharanpur up to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
* The Jaypee Group is also building an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring
Road in Agra at a cost of around Rs. 1,100 crores. This will be built
on Design-Finance-Operate and Transfer (DFOT) basis.
* The Yamuna Expressway is planned to be a dual carriageway initially consisting of three 3.75-meter wide lanes in each direction.
* Planned expressway facilities (some of which will involve third-party service providers) include rest areas with parking, shelters and toilets; roadside facilities with fuel stations and coffee shops, restaurants, motels and various other facilities; and plantation and landscaping for environmental, safety and aesthetic purposes.
* Around 9,000 families are allegedly affected by the expressway. Around
Rs 460 crore have been disbursed as compensation.
* Motorists can drive at a speed of up to 120 kmph on the expressway
drastically cutting down on the travel time from Noida to Agra. The
expressway will have no speed breakers.
A look at the compensation rates given to farmers for their land.
*Compensation rates*
* NOIDA: Rs 800 per sqm
* Aligarh : Rs 390 per sqm
* Mathura : Rs 350 per sqm
* Hathras: Rs 350 per sqm
* Agra : Rs 400 per sqm
The Expressway to be developed in Three Phases:-
1. Phase I: Expressway Stretch between Greater Noida and Taj
International Airport.
2. Phase-II: Expressway Stretch between Taj International Airport and
an intermediate destination between Taj International Airport and Agra
3. Phase III: Expressway Stretch between intermediate destination and Agra.
Deadline – Commonwealth Games, 2010.
Quick Facts
Length 165.537 Km
Right of Way 100m
Number of Lane 6 Lanes extendable to 8 lanes
Jaypee Infratech Limited an Indian infrastructure development company engaged in the development of the Yamuna Expressway and related real estate projects. JIL part of the Jaypee Group, was incorporated on April 5, 2007 as a special purpose company to develop, operate and maintain the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, connecting Noida and Agra.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
The clash of cultures - the village in the city
For a couple of days we tried going into Delhi's urban villages trying to locate the conflict between the city and the villages that have existed for years. In the end, we visited Wazirpur and that's when we convinced the father to show us his daughter's diary. The diary told her story and that's what we narrated, too.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday section of The Indian Express on August 8, 2010.
The battle of identities
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi
Under a picture of Katrina Kaif cut carefully from a glossy magazine cover, Khushboo Nagar wrote her name in blue on the first page of her diary. They said she resembled the Bollywood actress. Her hair was styled like hers, too, streaked and cut in layers, framing her face. She believed in the comparison but the 18-year-old Gujjar girl wanted to go beyond just the resemblance. She wanted to be the cover girl herself.
On the next page, she scribbled “Height – 5.5, Weight- 50 kgs, Age – 18 years”.
Flip through the pages and there are cuttings from newspapers – mostly beauty tips on how to make lips softer, how to improve complexion. In those pages, floating in between the handwriting, and the astrology predictions that she meticulously pasted on the pages trying to score a perfect future, there is an undercurrent of the conflict between modernity and tradition that her life had come to embody.
Khushboo, a Gujjar girl in Wazirpur, an urban village, one of the many in Delhi, near Ashok Vihar in Delhi, dared to dream past the village’s boundaries. That’s where the waves broke and rolled back for others. They could go into the city but when they returned, the “cityness” had to be abandoned at the village threshold.
Not for her. Khushboo wanted to be a model, fell in love with a model coordinator, and eloped with him. She crossed into what they call the ugliness of the other side. But no thresholds had ever beaten Khushboo. Not when she scribbled those aspirations in her diary. Not when she wore what they called “outrageous” clothes, not when she ran away from home in May.
It's been more than two months since Khusboo has been missing from her Wazirpur house. And while they were searching for her, Khushboo's cousin Monica and her sister Shobha were killed in cold blood by the family for defying the unspoken rules of the village, of their community that's struggling to hold on to their tradition in the midst of a city that is lurching forward in its obsession with modernity and with being a world class city where cultures intersect, melt, and everything becomes a fluid identity. At least that's the dream. But on the road from inception and fulfillment of the melting pot dream, there’s a lot of distance to be covered. They were the first casualties in the battle of identities between the village and its wayward child – the city. This was the battle between the core and the periphery.
In the heartland of this city, the national capital that they will showcase this October to the world during the commonwealth Games for which infrastructure projects are being completed at a fast pace, beyond the front row of houses that seem to uphold the melting pot identity, there are urban villages in and around the city that are unwilling to give up on their customs.
The national capital has around 135 urban villages, so called because they are no longer surrounded by farmland. Instead they are in the midst of untamed development.
These are spaces where municipal planning rules do not apply. Basic municipal services like roads, water supply and drainage have not reached them. But cars, amenities, and other such luxuries have.
A spate of honour killings have rocked Delhi and the NCR region. Sangeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl and her boyfriend were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in north Delhi.
According to police, number of couples seeking protection has gone up in the city. Nidhi and Kulbhushan, who married at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi, approached the Delhi Commission for Women seeking protection after the girl stared receiving threat calls from her family.
At the DCW, officials say they now receive one or two letters seeking protection against honour killing daily and at least two couples drop by personally demanding the same.
“After the khap panchayats in Haryana that ordered such killings, we have got at least 20 such complaints from Delhi. Most couples were educated and parents were harassing them. We summon the parents and we do counseling. They usually work. We used to get cases before also. But after the killings in Delhi, the couples are more scared,” a DCW official says.
Such gruesome killings have also been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana where the khap panchayats have openly dictated that such errant youth must be killed in order to preserve their culture and to set an example.
Recently, a youth was stabbed was stabbed to death in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district allegedly by the father and brother of a girl who he was having an affair with.
Lal Singh, Anju's father, has been arrested along with his son Rinku, after they admitted to killing Mithun, 20, a graduation student to protect their family's honour.
As urban way of living becomes more attractive, it also destroys traditional cultures. Anthropologists have pointed out that a city is a social context very different from peasant communities. Robert Redfield, who focused on contrasts between rural and urban life, cities are the centres through which cultural innovations spread to rural areas.
His body was found is Kajipura village in Uttar Pradesh.
The police says they can only take action after the crime has been committed but in most cases, the killings are hailed by the family and the villages as the right thing.
People tend to judge their surrounding world according to their space grounded in ethnicity, gender roles and norms, and that helps them differentiate from right from wrong, good from bad. It is a question between collectivism and individualism, anthropologists say.
In these villages, the individual obeys the tradition. If anyone fails to meet those expectations, or to conform to the “identity” they are taken to be endangering the order of the society, of upsetting the apple cart. That leads to the emergence of urban-rural conflicts and individual freedom. In Villages, everyone is connected. Everyone knows everyone and that knowledge functions as social control.
Therefore urban and rural function as different social systems.
However, cultural diffusion does happen and then caught between two or more social groups, people usually experience an identity crisis, researchers say.
That's what happened to Monica, Shobha, and Khushboo.
Monica married a Rajput boy from the village around five years ago. And Shobha was having an affair with a Muslim boy called Nawab Raja who ran dance classes in Ashok Vihar area.
Five years ago Monica, a Gujjar girl and Khushboo's cousin, married a Rajput boy from the same village. As per the village's worldview, that was a sin. In the 400-year-old history of the village, no girl had dared to do this. Butthey looked the other way. Monica left the village. They were outcasts.
When Monica's cousin sisters – Shobha and Khushboo – dared to cross over to the other side, so they could merge with the city, its diversity, marry it with their own fluid identity, the one they thought came with wearing jeans and shirts at their elder sister's marriage, they had clearly upset the cart. Girls in the village were going astray. They had to be reined in. With the killing they made a statement. A message was sent out. There were no victims. Only heroes that were to be venerated.
Memories of the past, of Monica's marriage came tumbling out of the closet, and during conversations, Mandeep, Khushboo's brother, taunted Ankit that he wasn't able to stop his sister Monica from marrying outside her community. Ankit retorted saying Mandeep too was not able to rein in his sisters. That's when the killings happened. Three in a day, within minutes of each other. Monica, her husband Kuldeep and Shobha whose body was only discovered a couple of days later from a car parked in the locality and only after the stench from the decomposing body gave her away. All of them shot at point blank range in the head by their brothers.
***
Not that these murders are a recent phenomenon. Choudhary Charan Singh Lohmod, a member of the Ghitorni village panchayat in Delhi, recalls an incident in his own village, a village that is teeming with millionaires because of the real estate boom and with teenagers sporting designer wear and driving expensive cars.
More than 15 years ago, the village witnessed its first honour killing. A Gujjar girl was strangulated for marrying a boy from the barber community. No police report was filed. The body was cremated and it was reported as a suicide case.
“The whole village knows about the killing. We couldn't do anything. We didn't interfere,” Charan Singh says.
There was yet another case of honour killing in Dayal Pur village in East Delhi around 17 years ago. That was a marriage within the Dedha gotra, a sin equal to incest because in the village everyone is part of the bhaichara and hence are brothers and sisters. There are scientific reasons behind our tradition of not marrying within the gotra, he adds, a rhetoric oft repeated by the custodians of the village culture.
“They had killed the boy. I don't know what happened to the girl. A panchayat was called, the khap dictated the family must be boycotted. The girl had left the village after marriage but then they found the boy and killed him,” Charan Singh says. “Today the world is changing. Although I don't approve of inter gotra marriages, a murder can't be condoned.”
Charan Singh can see the change. He has been around for long. With urbanization and development, views are changing. Young and educated people don't care much about the tradition, he says.
“In a few years, all of this will crumble and break. In all these killings, there's a desperation to hold on to something that we are losing. Delhi will first witness the dilution of the caste barriers, the gotra barriers because we are living in the city. We have a few girls in the village who married outside caste. The families have severed ties with them but they didn't kill them. The girls have left the village,” Charan Singh says. “Systems are changing. Education has changed a lot of things. We must be ready for the change. All this tradition, codes will break, melt. There are signs. The city has changed us in so many ways,” he says.
Already the villagers, astounded with what the city can do to their structure by its proximity, are blaming the Delhi government for its soft stand on migrants. The population has soared. That’s how the
corrupting winds of change started to howl in their ears. More men and women, those who didn’t cater to their prescribed rules, the ones that have been intact through generations, entered their space, claiming their share, paying rent that the villagers needed to sustain themselves in an inflation-ridden metropolis, but bringing ideas that struck at their very core.
“This has to stop. Crime has increased because of this,” his brother Samay Singh says. “We are traditional people. We have bhaichara in our villages. Villages have rules. The government must stop this infiltration.”
***
Long ago, when the real estate boom took over the city whose boundaries expanded into the farmlands and into the cultures that surrounded the city as demand for space went up, the Gujjars and the Jats, the two communities that had their villages in and around Delhi, experienced the rush, the high that comes with wealth, the transition that it promises.
In Wazirpur in North Delhi, farmers sold their land to the government in the 1960s, built multistory buildings that jostle with each other for space, jutting their necks out for visibility, to show they too are among the “rich.” There was an influx of migrants soon after. But here in this village where the differences between the two communities are starkly visible, the tenants subscribe to the village rules.
There is a wall of silence between them.
They won’t talk about the murders in the village. They won’t disapprove of it. Nor will they approve. They are suspended in silence.
“We have no opinion, no advice, no memory of it,” one young man, who refused to disclose his name, says.
While the Gujjar community says they don’t have Khap panchayats like the Jats, the other predominant community that have followed the same trajectory in terms of social-economic status, they have village elders whose diktat is as good as the word of law. Even on the matrimonial websites like www.Jeevansathi.com , most Gujjar girls, including doctors and MBAs, have listed their gotras in their profiles.
Like hundreds of other urban villages clustered in the heart of the national capital, Wazirpur would have remained an obscure village trying to insulate itself against the city's overtures had it not been for the “folly” of three Gujjar girls from the village who dared to overstep the boundaries their culture imposed.
Cars can't navigate the narrow lanes of the urban village that is not very far from the city's glass and steel structures, the glittering malls, and the Metro. Electric wires hang from the poles, and the drains are overflowing.
A young girl stood in the balcony of her second floor home of a multistory house in Wazirpur. Behind her a older woman stood as if on guard, craning her neck to follow the girls' eyes. About 200 meters on her left stands the house where the two “disgraced” girls lived.
Khushboo left the house on May 25. The family waited until June 3 to file a complaint at the Ashok Vihar police station. Every morning, the family sent out two cars to look for the youngest daughter of the house who had brought shame to the family, to the village and to the community.
But they didn't find her.
The father Jai Singh Nagar shrugs off the death of his other daughter Shobha.
“What's done can't be undone. Those who have died have gone. But I want to know where Khushboo is. Her marriage was a fraud one. This Arya Samaj marriage must be banned,” he says.
He is waiting for his daughter, the one who had long legs, and who danced and loved dressing up, and who he says was misled by an advertisement in the local paper about this modeling agency.
She fled her house on May 25 to marry Ravi, a model coordinator from Bhajanpura.
It's her sister's death and her defiance of the rules that dictate the address to their house. Jai Singh Nagar sits in his grocery store on the ground floor as if nothing ever happened. But what was he to do.
It was the city that corrupted them. How could he, placed as he was in such a setting, the metropolis surrounding him, its evils eroding the layers of tradition, stop it from happening.
He was a doting father, he says. There's an old family picture, one of those black and white framed pictures shot in a studio with the fake backdrop of mountains and blossoming tress years ago that still acquires a place of pride in the family's living room.
There Khushboo sits in her father's lap, the youngest of six siblings – four girls and two boys. Shobha is in the frame, too. They were beautiful girls, the father says.
In the wedding album of their eldest sister Rajni who was married within the community but outside their gotra in December 2008, Shobha and Khushboo wore jeans and sateen shirts. They danced and sang through the night. They were wild, but innocent, he says.
He is a father. He puts up a strong front.
No, they won’t kill Khushboo, the runaway child who doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. He just wants to make sure she is fine.
But Khushboo, the aspiring model, is under police protection at an undisclosed location. The police says she is doing well and is happily married with Ravi, who her family alleges is a tout.
On June 20, the brothers had planned to kill her too. But Khushboo didn’t call. She was spared the fury that raged within the men.
There’s an eerie silence at the family’s house. Rajni, who is here for a few days, doesn’t know how to react to the mention of her two “wayward” sisters. She steps back, and murmurs she misses them. A tear falls. She turns away.
In this space, it is hard to say who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. That distinction is blurred.
“I don’t know where I went wrong. I was the sort of man that chased away men from the corners of the streets,” he says. “The police says she is fine but at least show her to us even on television, let us see that she is not involved with the wrong sort of a man. I don’t want her to tell me later that I failed her as a father.”
But for a few in the village, he failed Shobha.
But Jai Singh is the product of the village’s social dilemmas, its bid to try to retain its heritage.
"I think we have lost control. I had two lavish weddings for my daughters Rajni and Kajal. I allowed them every freedom. They wore western clothes. But we didn’t see this coming,” he says. “We won’t kill our daughter.”
But daughters had been slaughtered. In the village, and in the city.
Khushboo escaped, The village’s ugliness caught up with Shobha whose body wasn’t even brought to Wazirpur. Her cremation was a rushed affair.
In the following days, the family erased Shobha from their lives. They gave away her clothes, her shoes. No traces, no memories to remind them of the shame.
On the internet, many Gujjar community members have hailed the killings as an act of courage.
“Everything comes with a price tag. Same is the case with development.
The negative change in the new generation is the price we Gujjars are paying as the cost of this development,” a member who identified himself as Gurjar Krishan Kumar wrote on www.ashokharsana.proboards.com, an interactive web portal for the Gujjar community set up by Ashok Harsana a few years ago to discuss the community and its issues.
Others acquiesced. They said it was a classic case of “disruptive urbanization” that upset the social structure of the urban villages, threatening its values as other population marched into their space bringing with them the ills, the sexual liberties, the free mixing between sexes, part of the city's culture with them.
Yet another man posted that the Delhi-based Gurjars had a bad reputation elsewhere because news of Gujjar girls eloping with boys from other communities were far too frequent.
“Very often there is news that some Gujjar boy has done love marriage or yet another Gujjar girl has run away with a boy and Gujjars outside Delhi say that we are not real Gujjars because we can't save the honour of our families,” said someone who called himself 'Hardcore Gurjar.'
The virtual space is rife with such commentary barring a few that cautiously denounce the killings.
Mandeep and Ankit, the killers who are serving time in jail, have been compared to Lord Rama, the mythical hero who abdicated Sita after she returned from Raavan’s entrapment.
“That Rama, the Lord is still worship by the people. If the same thing done by our brother then how it can be termed as crime,” Ravi Kasana wrote in the ongoing thread. “I strongly termed Ankit and Mandeep to be Kalyugi Ram and Krishna and salute them for showing this world that pride is more important than life for Gurjars. Murder is wrong but this (killing) is socially the best thing that has been done.”
Such killings happened earlier too. But they didn’t hit the headlines. Those were hushed killings. The death of a daughter or a sister gone astray would be termed as an accident or a suicide. Penetrating the layers of the village to investigate the deaths would often be a futile chase, a Jat community member said.
Kanwar Singh Tanwar, the former Bahujan Samaj Party member who has now joined Congress and is a heavy weight Gujjar leader in South Delhi, says he is in favour of such panchayats.
“Gotra this is our history. Yes, inter caste marriages have caught up and culture has changed. Now more and more Gujjars and Jats are sending their daughters and sons to schools and colleges. We have doctors, engineers, and not just bouncers,” he says. “Aajkal ke gaon mein ladkiyan hi-fi hai. We have a system. We can’t let go.”
In the battle, the new recruits are a few Gujjar youth who have taken it upon themselves to preserve their culture.
Pramod Mavi, an engineer who set up the Youth Gurjar Federation last year to reach out to the community and focus on education, travels to Delhi’s urban villages on weekends and talks to the youth about their culture, the gotra system and the temptations like smoking and drinking they must resist.
With a group of young people, he is also collecting material for a book on Gujjar culture and tradition listing all the gotras in the Gujjar villages across India.
“We are working on it. We have state level people going into Gujjar villages and taking to sarpanchs asking them about gotras in their villages,” he says. “But it is at preliminary stages. We plan to distribute it free of cost to the youth. I am against honour killings but we are bound by our tradition.”
Ram Niwas Gujjar, of the same organization, says they have been holding meetings in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan regularly to educate youngsters about the Gujjar tradition.
"Money has gone to their head. We tell them that you need to hold on to the tradition,” he says. “We are against inter caste marriages, and those within the gotra system. This is to counter honour killing so people don't have to resort to such things.”
***
At the point where Ghitorni, another urban village with a predominantly Gujjar population, opens up to the metropolis, a car showroom has set shop.
On display is the dream car – a two-door red Mercedes sports car. Its doors open out in the sky just like giant wings.
Outside, contradictions abound.
Of the around 140 Gujjar villages in the city, Ghitorni is among the ones where money knows no limits. The farmers sold off the prized land to the private builders, to the very rich who went shopping for sprawling farmhouses. Resto bars have come up on the sides of the road.
The blazing red car has already 80 suitors on its list. Many are from the nearby urban villages where roads are not yet concretized, and are riddled with encroachments and potholes.
That itself is proof of the transformation of the urban villages that are still steeped in tradition, in the rigidity of its dos and don’ts but are finding it hard to wrestle the changes that have crept in.
The money that once brought the adrenaline rushing to their brains, the sorts where you feel nothing can escape your fancy, where dreams are one with reality, is now making them realize that money can also make you lose control just like the drugs.
So they are in denial of the mess that money has made their lives.
Youth, with their pumped-up muscles from working out for hours in the local gyms that dot the village landscape, roam around the locality, whiling away time at the property dealers’ outlets. Many sport thick gold chains and tight T shirts accentuating their biceps.
In the evenings, they pack themselves in swanky cars, and ride through the village’s crumbling roads, loud trance and techno music playing, and go to city’s numerous pubs.
Elders say the villages have no rape cases in the village. That’s because boys and girls know that the rules prohibit them to marry within village. So they are all brothers and sisters.
A group of young men turned away when a bunch of young girls from the village passed.
In Wazirpur, at the Natraj photo studio, a young man said village girls came to get their pictures clicked for marriage purpose. But no, they were all sisters. What if fell for one? No, that’s not going to happen.
“You don’t know the rules of the village. I think you are not from here,” he says.
The Pradhan of Wazirpur Choudhury Subhash Kahri says it is the loss of the land that anchored the village people to a lifestyle is the core issue. All of that is gone and has been replaced by inflated bank accounts. They have been rendered rootless, aimless and with a thick wad of crisp notes, they have no option but to indulge.
But this money is not going to last, Tanwar says.
Not many of them have invested in other properties. So, the young people are torn between the lifestyle of the rich, lured and tempted by the freedom of choice, and the unwritten codes of the village.
Riya Lohia, a 12-year-old, studies at the Poorna Prajna Public School, is a product of that conflict. At her age, she knows she has to live within an invisible boundary.
Her friends from school hang out, stay over at each others’ house, but Riya is chaperoned if she has to attend anything outside school.
“They can go out. We can’t go alone for outings alone. So we have different lives,” she says.
Her uncle Kiran Kumar Lohia lives with his four brothers – a joint family setup that the community has not relinquished yet.
Five cars are parked in the courtyard where she sat with her uncles.
“We have women doctors and teachers in the house. We are for education but we can’t let go of our culture,” Kiran Kumar says. “No, we don’t mind inter caste marriages. The only issue that threatens our society is the population growth. Our youth are getting affected. But it is up to us to tell them what is within bounds and what is wrong.”
Riya silently walked back to the house.
The Dishonoured
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl Asha and her 21-year-old lover Yogesh were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in North Delhi. Before they were killed, they were flogged with steel rods for hours.
Sanjeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
In the last four months, in yet another instance of honour killing a newlywed man Rajesh Negi was burnt by his in-laws as he married outside his caste in Kichripur in Mayur Vihar. The entire family of the bride Bhavna Pal has gone into hiding. The two married secretly in January but when the bride's family came to know, they allegedly threatened the couple.
Then, in June again, the Wazirpur killings happened. Monica, her husband Kuldeep, a Rajput man, and Shobha who was seeing a Mulsim man named Nawab Raja were killed din cold blood by the family on June 20. Ankit and Mandeep, who are in jail for the murders, also tried to kill Khushboo, the third sister, but she had gone into hiding.
In Daula-Razpura village in Greater Noida, a khap panchayat sent out a diktat that daughters of all Dalit families will be abducted last month after an upper caste girl from a neighboring village Mandiya Priyanka eloped with Suraj Jatav, a scheduled caste boy from Daula. The panchayat also issued shoot-at-sight orders for the couple who fell in love in college in Dadri. The couple is still absconding.
While NGOs have sprung into action including a group called Love Commandos headed by Sanjoy Sachdev to help the couples that face such threats, a bill on honour killing is yet to be approved. On Thursday, Home Minister P Chidambaram said the government plans to introduce a bill on honour killings in this session of parliament. He said all state governments are being asked for their views and the “murders” must not be condoned but punished with severity. Khap panchayats have protested against the bill and have been asking for amendments in the marriage act to ban marriages within the same gotra.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday section of The Indian Express on August 8, 2010.
The battle of identities
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi
Under a picture of Katrina Kaif cut carefully from a glossy magazine cover, Khushboo Nagar wrote her name in blue on the first page of her diary. They said she resembled the Bollywood actress. Her hair was styled like hers, too, streaked and cut in layers, framing her face. She believed in the comparison but the 18-year-old Gujjar girl wanted to go beyond just the resemblance. She wanted to be the cover girl herself.
On the next page, she scribbled “Height – 5.5, Weight- 50 kgs, Age – 18 years”.
Flip through the pages and there are cuttings from newspapers – mostly beauty tips on how to make lips softer, how to improve complexion. In those pages, floating in between the handwriting, and the astrology predictions that she meticulously pasted on the pages trying to score a perfect future, there is an undercurrent of the conflict between modernity and tradition that her life had come to embody.
Khushboo, a Gujjar girl in Wazirpur, an urban village, one of the many in Delhi, near Ashok Vihar in Delhi, dared to dream past the village’s boundaries. That’s where the waves broke and rolled back for others. They could go into the city but when they returned, the “cityness” had to be abandoned at the village threshold.
Not for her. Khushboo wanted to be a model, fell in love with a model coordinator, and eloped with him. She crossed into what they call the ugliness of the other side. But no thresholds had ever beaten Khushboo. Not when she scribbled those aspirations in her diary. Not when she wore what they called “outrageous” clothes, not when she ran away from home in May.
It's been more than two months since Khusboo has been missing from her Wazirpur house. And while they were searching for her, Khushboo's cousin Monica and her sister Shobha were killed in cold blood by the family for defying the unspoken rules of the village, of their community that's struggling to hold on to their tradition in the midst of a city that is lurching forward in its obsession with modernity and with being a world class city where cultures intersect, melt, and everything becomes a fluid identity. At least that's the dream. But on the road from inception and fulfillment of the melting pot dream, there’s a lot of distance to be covered. They were the first casualties in the battle of identities between the village and its wayward child – the city. This was the battle between the core and the periphery.
In the heartland of this city, the national capital that they will showcase this October to the world during the commonwealth Games for which infrastructure projects are being completed at a fast pace, beyond the front row of houses that seem to uphold the melting pot identity, there are urban villages in and around the city that are unwilling to give up on their customs.
The national capital has around 135 urban villages, so called because they are no longer surrounded by farmland. Instead they are in the midst of untamed development.
These are spaces where municipal planning rules do not apply. Basic municipal services like roads, water supply and drainage have not reached them. But cars, amenities, and other such luxuries have.
A spate of honour killings have rocked Delhi and the NCR region. Sangeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl and her boyfriend were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in north Delhi.
According to police, number of couples seeking protection has gone up in the city. Nidhi and Kulbhushan, who married at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi, approached the Delhi Commission for Women seeking protection after the girl stared receiving threat calls from her family.
At the DCW, officials say they now receive one or two letters seeking protection against honour killing daily and at least two couples drop by personally demanding the same.
“After the khap panchayats in Haryana that ordered such killings, we have got at least 20 such complaints from Delhi. Most couples were educated and parents were harassing them. We summon the parents and we do counseling. They usually work. We used to get cases before also. But after the killings in Delhi, the couples are more scared,” a DCW official says.
Such gruesome killings have also been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana where the khap panchayats have openly dictated that such errant youth must be killed in order to preserve their culture and to set an example.
Recently, a youth was stabbed was stabbed to death in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district allegedly by the father and brother of a girl who he was having an affair with.
Lal Singh, Anju's father, has been arrested along with his son Rinku, after they admitted to killing Mithun, 20, a graduation student to protect their family's honour.
As urban way of living becomes more attractive, it also destroys traditional cultures. Anthropologists have pointed out that a city is a social context very different from peasant communities. Robert Redfield, who focused on contrasts between rural and urban life, cities are the centres through which cultural innovations spread to rural areas.
His body was found is Kajipura village in Uttar Pradesh.
The police says they can only take action after the crime has been committed but in most cases, the killings are hailed by the family and the villages as the right thing.
People tend to judge their surrounding world according to their space grounded in ethnicity, gender roles and norms, and that helps them differentiate from right from wrong, good from bad. It is a question between collectivism and individualism, anthropologists say.
In these villages, the individual obeys the tradition. If anyone fails to meet those expectations, or to conform to the “identity” they are taken to be endangering the order of the society, of upsetting the apple cart. That leads to the emergence of urban-rural conflicts and individual freedom. In Villages, everyone is connected. Everyone knows everyone and that knowledge functions as social control.
Therefore urban and rural function as different social systems.
However, cultural diffusion does happen and then caught between two or more social groups, people usually experience an identity crisis, researchers say.
That's what happened to Monica, Shobha, and Khushboo.
Monica married a Rajput boy from the village around five years ago. And Shobha was having an affair with a Muslim boy called Nawab Raja who ran dance classes in Ashok Vihar area.
Five years ago Monica, a Gujjar girl and Khushboo's cousin, married a Rajput boy from the same village. As per the village's worldview, that was a sin. In the 400-year-old history of the village, no girl had dared to do this. Butthey looked the other way. Monica left the village. They were outcasts.
When Monica's cousin sisters – Shobha and Khushboo – dared to cross over to the other side, so they could merge with the city, its diversity, marry it with their own fluid identity, the one they thought came with wearing jeans and shirts at their elder sister's marriage, they had clearly upset the cart. Girls in the village were going astray. They had to be reined in. With the killing they made a statement. A message was sent out. There were no victims. Only heroes that were to be venerated.
Memories of the past, of Monica's marriage came tumbling out of the closet, and during conversations, Mandeep, Khushboo's brother, taunted Ankit that he wasn't able to stop his sister Monica from marrying outside her community. Ankit retorted saying Mandeep too was not able to rein in his sisters. That's when the killings happened. Three in a day, within minutes of each other. Monica, her husband Kuldeep and Shobha whose body was only discovered a couple of days later from a car parked in the locality and only after the stench from the decomposing body gave her away. All of them shot at point blank range in the head by their brothers.
***
Not that these murders are a recent phenomenon. Choudhary Charan Singh Lohmod, a member of the Ghitorni village panchayat in Delhi, recalls an incident in his own village, a village that is teeming with millionaires because of the real estate boom and with teenagers sporting designer wear and driving expensive cars.
More than 15 years ago, the village witnessed its first honour killing. A Gujjar girl was strangulated for marrying a boy from the barber community. No police report was filed. The body was cremated and it was reported as a suicide case.
“The whole village knows about the killing. We couldn't do anything. We didn't interfere,” Charan Singh says.
There was yet another case of honour killing in Dayal Pur village in East Delhi around 17 years ago. That was a marriage within the Dedha gotra, a sin equal to incest because in the village everyone is part of the bhaichara and hence are brothers and sisters. There are scientific reasons behind our tradition of not marrying within the gotra, he adds, a rhetoric oft repeated by the custodians of the village culture.
“They had killed the boy. I don't know what happened to the girl. A panchayat was called, the khap dictated the family must be boycotted. The girl had left the village after marriage but then they found the boy and killed him,” Charan Singh says. “Today the world is changing. Although I don't approve of inter gotra marriages, a murder can't be condoned.”
Charan Singh can see the change. He has been around for long. With urbanization and development, views are changing. Young and educated people don't care much about the tradition, he says.
“In a few years, all of this will crumble and break. In all these killings, there's a desperation to hold on to something that we are losing. Delhi will first witness the dilution of the caste barriers, the gotra barriers because we are living in the city. We have a few girls in the village who married outside caste. The families have severed ties with them but they didn't kill them. The girls have left the village,” Charan Singh says. “Systems are changing. Education has changed a lot of things. We must be ready for the change. All this tradition, codes will break, melt. There are signs. The city has changed us in so many ways,” he says.
Already the villagers, astounded with what the city can do to their structure by its proximity, are blaming the Delhi government for its soft stand on migrants. The population has soared. That’s how the
corrupting winds of change started to howl in their ears. More men and women, those who didn’t cater to their prescribed rules, the ones that have been intact through generations, entered their space, claiming their share, paying rent that the villagers needed to sustain themselves in an inflation-ridden metropolis, but bringing ideas that struck at their very core.
“This has to stop. Crime has increased because of this,” his brother Samay Singh says. “We are traditional people. We have bhaichara in our villages. Villages have rules. The government must stop this infiltration.”
***
Long ago, when the real estate boom took over the city whose boundaries expanded into the farmlands and into the cultures that surrounded the city as demand for space went up, the Gujjars and the Jats, the two communities that had their villages in and around Delhi, experienced the rush, the high that comes with wealth, the transition that it promises.
In Wazirpur in North Delhi, farmers sold their land to the government in the 1960s, built multistory buildings that jostle with each other for space, jutting their necks out for visibility, to show they too are among the “rich.” There was an influx of migrants soon after. But here in this village where the differences between the two communities are starkly visible, the tenants subscribe to the village rules.
There is a wall of silence between them.
They won’t talk about the murders in the village. They won’t disapprove of it. Nor will they approve. They are suspended in silence.
“We have no opinion, no advice, no memory of it,” one young man, who refused to disclose his name, says.
While the Gujjar community says they don’t have Khap panchayats like the Jats, the other predominant community that have followed the same trajectory in terms of social-economic status, they have village elders whose diktat is as good as the word of law. Even on the matrimonial websites like www.Jeevansathi.com , most Gujjar girls, including doctors and MBAs, have listed their gotras in their profiles.
Like hundreds of other urban villages clustered in the heart of the national capital, Wazirpur would have remained an obscure village trying to insulate itself against the city's overtures had it not been for the “folly” of three Gujjar girls from the village who dared to overstep the boundaries their culture imposed.
Cars can't navigate the narrow lanes of the urban village that is not very far from the city's glass and steel structures, the glittering malls, and the Metro. Electric wires hang from the poles, and the drains are overflowing.
A young girl stood in the balcony of her second floor home of a multistory house in Wazirpur. Behind her a older woman stood as if on guard, craning her neck to follow the girls' eyes. About 200 meters on her left stands the house where the two “disgraced” girls lived.
Khushboo left the house on May 25. The family waited until June 3 to file a complaint at the Ashok Vihar police station. Every morning, the family sent out two cars to look for the youngest daughter of the house who had brought shame to the family, to the village and to the community.
But they didn't find her.
The father Jai Singh Nagar shrugs off the death of his other daughter Shobha.
“What's done can't be undone. Those who have died have gone. But I want to know where Khushboo is. Her marriage was a fraud one. This Arya Samaj marriage must be banned,” he says.
He is waiting for his daughter, the one who had long legs, and who danced and loved dressing up, and who he says was misled by an advertisement in the local paper about this modeling agency.
She fled her house on May 25 to marry Ravi, a model coordinator from Bhajanpura.
It's her sister's death and her defiance of the rules that dictate the address to their house. Jai Singh Nagar sits in his grocery store on the ground floor as if nothing ever happened. But what was he to do.
It was the city that corrupted them. How could he, placed as he was in such a setting, the metropolis surrounding him, its evils eroding the layers of tradition, stop it from happening.
He was a doting father, he says. There's an old family picture, one of those black and white framed pictures shot in a studio with the fake backdrop of mountains and blossoming tress years ago that still acquires a place of pride in the family's living room.
There Khushboo sits in her father's lap, the youngest of six siblings – four girls and two boys. Shobha is in the frame, too. They were beautiful girls, the father says.
In the wedding album of their eldest sister Rajni who was married within the community but outside their gotra in December 2008, Shobha and Khushboo wore jeans and sateen shirts. They danced and sang through the night. They were wild, but innocent, he says.
He is a father. He puts up a strong front.
No, they won’t kill Khushboo, the runaway child who doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. He just wants to make sure she is fine.
But Khushboo, the aspiring model, is under police protection at an undisclosed location. The police says she is doing well and is happily married with Ravi, who her family alleges is a tout.
On June 20, the brothers had planned to kill her too. But Khushboo didn’t call. She was spared the fury that raged within the men.
There’s an eerie silence at the family’s house. Rajni, who is here for a few days, doesn’t know how to react to the mention of her two “wayward” sisters. She steps back, and murmurs she misses them. A tear falls. She turns away.
In this space, it is hard to say who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. That distinction is blurred.
“I don’t know where I went wrong. I was the sort of man that chased away men from the corners of the streets,” he says. “The police says she is fine but at least show her to us even on television, let us see that she is not involved with the wrong sort of a man. I don’t want her to tell me later that I failed her as a father.”
But for a few in the village, he failed Shobha.
But Jai Singh is the product of the village’s social dilemmas, its bid to try to retain its heritage.
"I think we have lost control. I had two lavish weddings for my daughters Rajni and Kajal. I allowed them every freedom. They wore western clothes. But we didn’t see this coming,” he says. “We won’t kill our daughter.”
But daughters had been slaughtered. In the village, and in the city.
Khushboo escaped, The village’s ugliness caught up with Shobha whose body wasn’t even brought to Wazirpur. Her cremation was a rushed affair.
In the following days, the family erased Shobha from their lives. They gave away her clothes, her shoes. No traces, no memories to remind them of the shame.
On the internet, many Gujjar community members have hailed the killings as an act of courage.
“Everything comes with a price tag. Same is the case with development.
The negative change in the new generation is the price we Gujjars are paying as the cost of this development,” a member who identified himself as Gurjar Krishan Kumar wrote on www.ashokharsana.proboards.com, an interactive web portal for the Gujjar community set up by Ashok Harsana a few years ago to discuss the community and its issues.
Others acquiesced. They said it was a classic case of “disruptive urbanization” that upset the social structure of the urban villages, threatening its values as other population marched into their space bringing with them the ills, the sexual liberties, the free mixing between sexes, part of the city's culture with them.
Yet another man posted that the Delhi-based Gurjars had a bad reputation elsewhere because news of Gujjar girls eloping with boys from other communities were far too frequent.
“Very often there is news that some Gujjar boy has done love marriage or yet another Gujjar girl has run away with a boy and Gujjars outside Delhi say that we are not real Gujjars because we can't save the honour of our families,” said someone who called himself 'Hardcore Gurjar.'
The virtual space is rife with such commentary barring a few that cautiously denounce the killings.
Mandeep and Ankit, the killers who are serving time in jail, have been compared to Lord Rama, the mythical hero who abdicated Sita after she returned from Raavan’s entrapment.
“That Rama, the Lord is still worship by the people. If the same thing done by our brother then how it can be termed as crime,” Ravi Kasana wrote in the ongoing thread. “I strongly termed Ankit and Mandeep to be Kalyugi Ram and Krishna and salute them for showing this world that pride is more important than life for Gurjars. Murder is wrong but this (killing) is socially the best thing that has been done.”
Such killings happened earlier too. But they didn’t hit the headlines. Those were hushed killings. The death of a daughter or a sister gone astray would be termed as an accident or a suicide. Penetrating the layers of the village to investigate the deaths would often be a futile chase, a Jat community member said.
Kanwar Singh Tanwar, the former Bahujan Samaj Party member who has now joined Congress and is a heavy weight Gujjar leader in South Delhi, says he is in favour of such panchayats.
“Gotra this is our history. Yes, inter caste marriages have caught up and culture has changed. Now more and more Gujjars and Jats are sending their daughters and sons to schools and colleges. We have doctors, engineers, and not just bouncers,” he says. “Aajkal ke gaon mein ladkiyan hi-fi hai. We have a system. We can’t let go.”
In the battle, the new recruits are a few Gujjar youth who have taken it upon themselves to preserve their culture.
Pramod Mavi, an engineer who set up the Youth Gurjar Federation last year to reach out to the community and focus on education, travels to Delhi’s urban villages on weekends and talks to the youth about their culture, the gotra system and the temptations like smoking and drinking they must resist.
With a group of young people, he is also collecting material for a book on Gujjar culture and tradition listing all the gotras in the Gujjar villages across India.
“We are working on it. We have state level people going into Gujjar villages and taking to sarpanchs asking them about gotras in their villages,” he says. “But it is at preliminary stages. We plan to distribute it free of cost to the youth. I am against honour killings but we are bound by our tradition.”
Ram Niwas Gujjar, of the same organization, says they have been holding meetings in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan regularly to educate youngsters about the Gujjar tradition.
"Money has gone to their head. We tell them that you need to hold on to the tradition,” he says. “We are against inter caste marriages, and those within the gotra system. This is to counter honour killing so people don't have to resort to such things.”
***
At the point where Ghitorni, another urban village with a predominantly Gujjar population, opens up to the metropolis, a car showroom has set shop.
On display is the dream car – a two-door red Mercedes sports car. Its doors open out in the sky just like giant wings.
Outside, contradictions abound.
Of the around 140 Gujjar villages in the city, Ghitorni is among the ones where money knows no limits. The farmers sold off the prized land to the private builders, to the very rich who went shopping for sprawling farmhouses. Resto bars have come up on the sides of the road.
The blazing red car has already 80 suitors on its list. Many are from the nearby urban villages where roads are not yet concretized, and are riddled with encroachments and potholes.
That itself is proof of the transformation of the urban villages that are still steeped in tradition, in the rigidity of its dos and don’ts but are finding it hard to wrestle the changes that have crept in.
The money that once brought the adrenaline rushing to their brains, the sorts where you feel nothing can escape your fancy, where dreams are one with reality, is now making them realize that money can also make you lose control just like the drugs.
So they are in denial of the mess that money has made their lives.
Youth, with their pumped-up muscles from working out for hours in the local gyms that dot the village landscape, roam around the locality, whiling away time at the property dealers’ outlets. Many sport thick gold chains and tight T shirts accentuating their biceps.
In the evenings, they pack themselves in swanky cars, and ride through the village’s crumbling roads, loud trance and techno music playing, and go to city’s numerous pubs.
Elders say the villages have no rape cases in the village. That’s because boys and girls know that the rules prohibit them to marry within village. So they are all brothers and sisters.
A group of young men turned away when a bunch of young girls from the village passed.
In Wazirpur, at the Natraj photo studio, a young man said village girls came to get their pictures clicked for marriage purpose. But no, they were all sisters. What if fell for one? No, that’s not going to happen.
“You don’t know the rules of the village. I think you are not from here,” he says.
The Pradhan of Wazirpur Choudhury Subhash Kahri says it is the loss of the land that anchored the village people to a lifestyle is the core issue. All of that is gone and has been replaced by inflated bank accounts. They have been rendered rootless, aimless and with a thick wad of crisp notes, they have no option but to indulge.
But this money is not going to last, Tanwar says.
Not many of them have invested in other properties. So, the young people are torn between the lifestyle of the rich, lured and tempted by the freedom of choice, and the unwritten codes of the village.
Riya Lohia, a 12-year-old, studies at the Poorna Prajna Public School, is a product of that conflict. At her age, she knows she has to live within an invisible boundary.
Her friends from school hang out, stay over at each others’ house, but Riya is chaperoned if she has to attend anything outside school.
“They can go out. We can’t go alone for outings alone. So we have different lives,” she says.
Her uncle Kiran Kumar Lohia lives with his four brothers – a joint family setup that the community has not relinquished yet.
Five cars are parked in the courtyard where she sat with her uncles.
“We have women doctors and teachers in the house. We are for education but we can’t let go of our culture,” Kiran Kumar says. “No, we don’t mind inter caste marriages. The only issue that threatens our society is the population growth. Our youth are getting affected. But it is up to us to tell them what is within bounds and what is wrong.”
Riya silently walked back to the house.
The Dishonoured
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl Asha and her 21-year-old lover Yogesh were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in North Delhi. Before they were killed, they were flogged with steel rods for hours.
Sanjeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
In the last four months, in yet another instance of honour killing a newlywed man Rajesh Negi was burnt by his in-laws as he married outside his caste in Kichripur in Mayur Vihar. The entire family of the bride Bhavna Pal has gone into hiding. The two married secretly in January but when the bride's family came to know, they allegedly threatened the couple.
Then, in June again, the Wazirpur killings happened. Monica, her husband Kuldeep, a Rajput man, and Shobha who was seeing a Mulsim man named Nawab Raja were killed din cold blood by the family on June 20. Ankit and Mandeep, who are in jail for the murders, also tried to kill Khushboo, the third sister, but she had gone into hiding.
In Daula-Razpura village in Greater Noida, a khap panchayat sent out a diktat that daughters of all Dalit families will be abducted last month after an upper caste girl from a neighboring village Mandiya Priyanka eloped with Suraj Jatav, a scheduled caste boy from Daula. The panchayat also issued shoot-at-sight orders for the couple who fell in love in college in Dadri. The couple is still absconding.
While NGOs have sprung into action including a group called Love Commandos headed by Sanjoy Sachdev to help the couples that face such threats, a bill on honour killing is yet to be approved. On Thursday, Home Minister P Chidambaram said the government plans to introduce a bill on honour killings in this session of parliament. He said all state governments are being asked for their views and the “murders” must not be condoned but punished with severity. Khap panchayats have protested against the bill and have been asking for amendments in the marriage act to ban marriages within the same gotra.
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