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.