I sat in his autorickshaw.

When I left, he said his name was Asif.

When I sat in his autorickshaw, what struck me and amused me tremendously were the two identical photographs of film actor Preity Zinta stuck right on his photo identification which every autorickshaw driver in Bangalore has to display in the vehicle. Preity was dressed in a bridal outfit and stared prettily from the photo identification (in both the pictures). Amused I thought to myself, ‘urban closet desires’.

I was headed to National Market. Asif knew that National Market was somewhere close to Majestic, but he was unsure of the exact location. At one point he asked me which route I would like to take to get there and I gave him my preference. Then I asked him, ‘So you have Preity Zinta’s pictures on your photo id?’ He smiled and said, ‘Haan, woh Preity Zinta hai!’

As we crossed Corporation Circle, Asif started talking to me. ‘You know, there is an autorickshaw strike tomorrow.’

‘Why,’ I asked. Continue reading My name is Asif →

[First published in Mid-Day]

The blogosphere has imperceptibly risen to great importance in my life. The same time as being intangible, (that is why it is called virtual isn’t it), it is also a more visible sphere. The readers have names, you can interact with them, the comment-war can sometimes become unending. And there are no national boundaries.

A piece I wrote for a web journal called Kafila was linked to some other blogs and in one day alone, at one blog alone, there were over a hundred comments.

Apart from blogs, which is a sort of personal space with a public view, there are also mailing lists where critical discussions take a different form than a newspaper or a printed magazine. Continue reading Begging for an answer →

In Catal Huyuk, at the site of present day Turkey, regarded by many as the world’s first true city, communities began to form where some did not produce any of the food that they ate. This seemingly simple fact is actually the beginning of all that we recognize as being “urban.” Cities evolved, to put crudely the words of those in the know of such things, when people got efficient enough at agriculture to produce enough for all to eat, and to do so while staying put at one place. These new developments led to new needs – vessels to store food in, people to build more permanent settlements, tool makers, carpenters, brewers [evidence of making beer is as old as the history of cities] etc. Tied together by need, these people – producers now in every sense of the word rather than just farmers – stayed near each other in dense settlements that became the world’s first cities. Academics point to the evidence of a shift in life and society because archaelogical evidence shows that most telling sign of urban life: the first known jewellery, a sign of complex social systems, and an awareness of status and symbolism, that, one could conjecture, represent an evolving society that has the time to create culture rather than simply survive. Continue reading Brand: Delhi →

On September 18, 2004, newspapers carried a mandatory Public Notice issued by the DDA, inviting objections and suggestions to a proposal to modify the Delhi Master Plan (2001). The DDA wanted to change the classification of six hectares of land that lay right by the Yamuna — just south of the erstwhile Yamuna Pushta slums — from “riverbed” to “commercial”. The change was needed to accommodate an it Park as part of the collaboration between the Delhi government and the Delhi Metro.

At first sight, the notice appears much like any other of the dozens one skips rapidly past every morning. What makes this notice different, however, is that, at the time of issue, the it park had already been under construction for over a year despite a 2003 Supreme Court order to clear all riverbed encroachments, and to stop all construction on the Yamuna banks. The DDA’s “proposal” was, in effect, simply a de-facto regularisation of what planners argue is an illegal encroachment. Just a few kilometres away, accused of violating the same Master Plan, and under the directive of the very same Supreme Court verdict, another kind of “encroachment” had no public notice in its defence, as tens of thousands of people were forcibly evicted from the slums of Yamuna Pushta — home to some of them for twenty-five years. Continue reading Whose City Do We Live In? →

When I was in Mumbai, I would talk of property from the point of view of an outsider. In that space, I was largely a participant-observer. Now, in Bangalore, I am involved in the everyday conflicts about property. Let me talk of some of my recent experiences in Thilaknagar.

Thilaknagar is touted as one of the most successful slums in Bangalore (I don’t know here what the benchmarks/parameters of this measured sucess are).

In the month of July, the street in my lane was dug up so that it could be concretized. It was agonizing to be part of this process because for fortnights, the muck would lie on the street and rains would make it sloshy, but the contractor would nowhere be seen. (This would have been the usual rant of inefficiency in the language of Civil Society!) Continue reading On dilemmas about property →

Taxi driver was driving past Mysore Road. As usual, I asked him where he was originally from and when he had come to Bangalore. Fifteen years ago madam, he told me. We passed by a bus station along Mysore Road. He pointed towards it and said to me, ‘international. Totally international’. I looked at him and said, ‘Aha, international’.

As we continued further, I asked him where he lived in Bangalore. He said Hanumanth Nagar. Where is Hanumanth Nagar, I asked him. It is near Banshankari, he replied. It’s official area. I was a bit flummoxed when I heard the word ‘official’. I asked him to clarify, what does official mean. Like residential, commercial, like that official. I presumed he meant that it was a place where a lot of offices were situated. He continued, proper, water, electricity, no problem. And when he said this, I thought he meant regularized, no problem.

Official, that’s a new term in my dictionary of the city.

I was headed to the airport, going back from Bangalore to Mumbai. It was one of those thunderous nights, rain pouring heavily. Sridhar was the taxi driver. He promised to get me to the airport right on time. I trusted him.

Around Airport Road, we got stuck in a jam. We started conversing. Sridhar was trained at the National Association of the Blind in Bombay sometime in the early 1980’s. He then came to Bangalore and started teaching here. After a while, I realized that personal and social life cannot be intermingled, he said to me as he continued driving. I then started my own cargo company, doing work for Blue Dart Couriers, ferrying between Bangalore and Bombay. After a while, I stopped because the stress increased. Then I bought a taxi of my own and I drive this taxi now.

Sridhar continued to talk to me about his daughter and asked me for advice on what career in psychology she should pursue. As we neared the airport, suddenly I asked him, where do you live? Banshankari, he answered. Is it your own home? Nahi madam. When I did not have money, I said I will make enough to buy my own home. Now when I have the money, the prices have gone up and I cannot afford to make a purchase. That’s destiny. I don’t have a home of my own.

I carried Sridhar’s words with me. My flight touched Bombay late that night. A day later, I met with Begum. Begum lives in slum settlement in Bombay that is due for resettlement. Begum is leading her block in the slum and is negotiating with builders for in-situ resettlement. Begum tells me about the negotiations that she is carrying out with the builders, legal safeguards that the block and she have worked out to ensure that all of them have a proper place to stay. Eventually, Begum starts to narrate a story, a story of the place called ‘her home’:

I came to this place more than twenty-five years ago. This neighbourhood was largely Muslim. I had a different way of living. Since I was quite educated, I would speak with my children in English. We lived differently. The neighbours thought I was a Catholic lady. Gradually, they started coming to me and began to bring their grievances to me. They started telling me how their children had only one school to go to and that was far away. I decided to help them enrol their children in school. Initially they were afraid, telling me, will private schools admit our children? I said why not. As long as you are paying for their fees, why should they refuse you? Today this area has two good schools. Then the problem was that there was no public BEST bus coming to this area. Along with the residents of this area, I took out a morcha to the local bus station. Today, bus number — comes to this area.

I have realized and I must tell you that people of this area are very loyal. And they will stay loyal to you all their lives. The love that I got from this place, nothing can compensate that. That love, that is it! And I will never leave this place and go!
Tomorrow, we will be resettled. The builder here has told me openly that he is hoping that most of the people who will be given houses here, will sell them off and take the money and buy house some other place and invest the rest in business. I want to tell you that this builder, he wants to ultimately build malls here, and she raised her teacher’s stick and banged it and repeated, he wants to build malls here! That’s it! He wants to build malls here!

I carry only these words with me to tell to you. What it is this place that they call home?