DelhiWaLLas

1) Lying on the grass, he is looking up at the sky. There are no stars to be seen yet. The evening’s gathering darkness, however, is bringing the surrounding skyscrapers into closer focus. The tall office buildings, lighting up for the night, are suddenly looking accessible.Nitin Chanana, 23, is searching for a job. Met him on the park above Palika Bazaar in Connaught Place. He is with a friend.

“Delhiwallas are big-time haramis (bastards),” says Mr Chanana. “They all are after each other’s ass. Everyone is selfish. If you ask anyone for directions, they won’t tell you.”

Mr Chanana is not saying it in rage, but in a matter-of-fact tone. A native of Ferozepur, a town in Punjab, he has been living in the city for two months. He is looking for work, but not finding it. “Last year I finished my engineering in B.Tech from Jalandhar University in Faridkot. But in Delhi they are offering me positions in call centers. I don’t want to work in them.”

Just then the phone rings. “My girlfriend,” Mr Chanana says. “Haan, Dimple. Are we meeting? OK… No, first I will go home, freshen up and then let’s meet. Come to my place… You want me to come? OK… OK… See you then.”

Mr Chanana is living in an apartment with four other men in Pandav Nagar, a neighbourhood near Akshardham Mandir in east Delhi. His girlfriend lives in the same locality. She, too, is from outside Delhi and had bumped into him two weeks ago while looking for an apartment. They exchanged phone numbers. Later, they fixed up a meeting at Mr Chanana’s place, had sex and got the relationship going.

“My hometown Ferozepur is not modern. Before coming to Delhi, I stayed in Chandigarh for few months,” says Mr Chanana. Chandigarh is the administrative capital of Punjab. “There are wide roads and so many pubs and beer bars. Girls are frank and broad-minded. When they dress up for the evening, they don’t care what their families would think about their short clothes. In Chandigrah, people live their individual lives. You earn on your own, you live on your own. It’s not possible in Ferozepur.”

After a short pause, Mr Chanana says, “Delhi is more fast than Chandigarh.”

As of now, Mr Chanana’s father is funding his sojourn in the Capital. “Dad calls me up once a week. He asks me if I’m eating well and things like those. I tell him to send money and that’s that.” Besides his parents, Mr Chanana has two younger sisters in Ferozepur. “I miss mom the most.”

When he was young, Mr Chanana was a famous athlete in his school. His dream was to become a boxer. This evening I can see a little beer belly poking out of his Tee. “It all changed when I left home and went to Faridkot to do my engineering. College life is different. There are so many attractions. You lose focus. Earlier I was a kind of man who would like being alone. I would daily read the newspaper. In the college, I made friends. We would drink beer, watch movies and chase girls. The dream of being a boxer was forgotten. Now I want to be rich. I want to have a job. But you need to know somebody influential.”

Earlier in the day, Mr Chanana and his friend went to a bar in Karol Bagh and ordered tandoori chicken and beer. After finishing the meal, they went out, telling the stewards that they were going for a smoke since cigarette smoking was banned in the bar. They then took an auto and came to Connaught Place, without paying the bill.

“There are ways of making money in Delhi,” Mr Chanana says. “If you have brains, you can do things here.”




2)The Delhi Walla met Irene Banias in Humayun’s Tomb, the first big Mughal monument to be built in India in 1570.She clicks the camera button, looks at the image on the LCD screen and is disappointed. “I’m better at writing than photography,” she says. “This is just spectacular. The beauty and the harmony of the curved lines trying to reach upward, to the spirit…”

It is sunny but the sweltering May heat is tolerable due to the strong wind. Ms Banias is carrying a handbag and a water flask. A lawyer, she teaches Human Rights at Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey, and is in Delhi for a sabbatical from work. It is her first time in the city. “The Machu Picchu in Peru and the Oracle of Delphi in Greece are also as deeply spiritual as Humayun’s Tomb. I went to Peru in 1998. The stones of Machu Picchu, the lost city of Inca people, rises out of the huge rocks in a rain forest. The sun god was worshipped there. Since the city was buried under a thick foliage for centuries, the Spanish conquerors could not destroy it,” Ms Banias says while showing the entry ticket to the guard. Being a foreigner, she paid US $5. For Indians, the ticket is priced at Rs 10.

“In Greek mythology, Delphi is the site of the Delphic oracle. It was dedicated to Apollo, the god of music and art. The oracle was founded on the slope of a mountain. Kings would come to seek advice from the priestess Pythia, who would sit on a tripod-legged chair that was placed over a fissure on the earth. The vapours coming from there inspired visions to the priestess whose pronouncements would then be interpreted by other priests.”

Feeling the same emotional connection to Humayun’s Tomb as she did to these two historical landmarks from Peru and Greece, Ms Banias says, “Although this monument is surrounded by the city, it feels solitary.”

Ms Banias arrived in Delhi in April 15, 2010. A Greek from the island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea close to the Turkish border, she has traveled to Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Spain, Italy, England, France, Holland, Belgium, Romania, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia. At 18, she left Greece for higher education in the US. She married in Wisconsin and, 30 years later, divorced in Illinois. “In every place I lived, I took a part of it in me. My biggest passion, however… the thing that always stirs in me strong feelings… is… I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand it… is social justice.”

At the university in Istanbul, a student once asked Ms Banias what made her chose human rights as her specialty in law. “The reason was personal and I hesitated to tell him since we were in a public space. When I was a very young child and Greece was in the middle of a civil war, in the late 40s, my father was tortured by the para-military forces due to his political beliefs. I must have been three or four but I remember the sight of my father as he returned from the detention. He had broken ribs and his face was swollen. His body was black and blue with bruises. He was repeatedly hit with rifle butts. I can see all of it very clearly. But what was inspiring was that my father survived and spent his life without any bitterness.”

Sitting on a bench in the sprawling lawn of the monument complex, I ask Ms Banias how difficult it is to let go of the past bitterness. As a Greek woman, how complicated it is to live in Turkey, the historical ‘enemy’ of Greece. “I never had any desire to go to Turkey. Living in Istanbul was an idea I never thought of. My father was Turkish-born of Greek descent. The Turkish-Greek war of the early 1920s resulted in a chaotic exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey and my young father like so many others had to flee for his life. He and his family suffered great losses. So, you know, I had no desire to go to Turkey. You see children inherit the pain of their parents.” The wind ruffles through Ms Banias’ hair.

“Then a very close friend moved to Istanbul and she kept convincing me to visit. After a lot of efforts to persuade me, I relented and decided to visit her for four days in 1999. It was my life’s most dramatic experience. From fear and apprehensions, I came to love Istanbul and its people. I felt that something was changing in me. As if an outer skin was slipping off from my body and soon I was left with no bitterness towards the Turks.” For a few minutes, we quietly look at the red-stone tomb. Humayun was the second great Mughal and his widow had built this mausoleum.

During that short stay in Istanbul, the friend invited a few colleagues for dinner. One guest, a professor in Bosporus University, was sitting across Ms Banias on the dining table. During the conversations, she suddenly looked into Ms Banias’ eyes and said, “Will you like to live in Istanbul and teach human rights? No one is teaching that course presently?

Stunned by the unexpected offer, Ms Banias said, “Isn’t it absurd to ask a Greek woman to come and teach human rights in Turkey?”

The professor replied, “It is not absurd at all. We will love to have you.”

In 2000, Ms Banias shifted to Istanbul.

How did Turkish students take to a Greek woman teaching them human rights? Turkey, after all, is a very proud nation and very sensitive about foreign critics pricking it on delicate issues of the present and the past, such as its role in the massacre of Armenian people in the last century. “Students were so open and accepting. They were very eager to talk to me, to discuss sensitive issues, to find out more about me. At times we would continue the conversations we had started in the class. I have developed warm relationship with some of my students.”

In her course, Ms Banias would cite references from the various judgments of the Indian Supreme Court. “I’m impressed by some of the clauses in your constitution, for example, the right to life which has been interpreted by your courts to include the right to livelihood. In other countries, you don’t have a right to establish a community on a sidewalk where so many are able to find jobs nearby.”

Climbing the stairs to the tomb, Ms Banias turns to me and says, “Economical and social rights are not considered fundamental rights in many developed Western countries such as the US. This is one thing that piqued my interest in India.”

It is dark in the tomb chamber. Ms Banias walks to one side of the hall and tries looking out of a stone screen that is sculptured with a fine latticework. Sunlight is streaming inside in patches. “Although the laws are there in the books, the extent of poverty in Delhi is overwhelming. Courts alone cannot rectify it.” We come out of the hall to watch a few laborers working on the stones under the noon heat. “I’ve seen poor and homeless people in the US and everywhere I have been. The look of the homeless is the same everywhere. Empty gaze, filthy clothes, disoriented consciousness. But the lack of any kind of effective measures to address poverty on a large scale reflects the priorities of our societies.”

Delhi is becoming intense for Ms Banias. “The density of the population, the abject poverty, the content of the rich, the destitute and the comfortable living side by side, the great diversity of peoples and cultures, the magnificent monuments… all this is so overwhelming.”

As a human rights scholar, is there anything here that makes her angry?

“My stay has been too short to draw any conclusions but at times I do perceive a resentment of those who are well-off towards those who are living on the streets. I just sense it though I have no proof. But I also see people who reach out to the poor and give.”

Ms Banias chose Delhi for her sabbatical because of a strong recommendation by a Spanish friend who has lived in the city for a long time. “For years I’ve been reading Indian literature. I read Bhagwad Gita and Mahabharat. They opened my mind to a different way of looking at things. I also read contemporary Indian authors such as Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh. Their novels spoke to me about a multi-cultural multi-layered society that has developed strong spiritual traditions but also faces many challenges. It mirrors the cultural background of my land, Greece, where too the gods frequently mingled with the mortals but which also faces daunting challenges currently.”

After watching the Delhi monsoon in July, Ms Banias will return to Istanbul. Her book-filled apartment, a block away from the Bosphorous, is in a small village called Arnavutkoy. Dominated by the Greek in the past who have had to leave Istanbul, it is now very cosmopolitan and is home to conservative Muslims as well as liberal artists, academics and foreigners. The village has elegant fish restaurants along the sea, traditional kebab places and coffee shops. Ms Banias commutes by the bus and the metro rail. She loves cooking and often invites friends to dinner. “My Christmas and Easter dinner guests are mostly Muslims, atheists and a few stray Greeks,” she says with a laugh.

While in Delhi, Ms Banias spends her time meeting human rights activists, making friends and hopping the city’s monuments. She is also planning to visit Benaras and Kashmir. Refusing to disclose her years, she says, “When one reaches a certain age, time becomes of the essence and one must live fully. I think I’m very happy at this point in my life. I’m glad to be in Delhi.”




3)Paapu cant dance saala

The other night I was feeling very lonely. So I went to a club hoping to hook a partner. But no one showed interest in me. I danced alone and returned home to sleep alone on my bed. Before crashing, I wrote this diary recounting the exact details of the evening:
11.47 pm. In a Kailash Colony disco. Maybe someone here is looking for someone like me. My closest friend says I need a f-buddy. Fine, will act like one. Done my homework. T-shirt is tight, hair jelled but damn, feeling totally out of place. Too shy, can’t dance.

Ummm, too many drop-dead looks around… hey buddy, you a looker, come to me… why not anyone coming to me? Ooooo, Shakira… hips don’t lie! Maybe I should jiggle my hips… maybe then someone will approach me… See, I’m doing it. God, why everyone looking at me? What if Papa watching from somewhere? Oh Papa, please leave me alone. Go home… mymy, look at this pair… how closely they’re dancing… legs into legs, arms round each other, and hey, he’s kissing on his neck! Lucky lucky lucky.

If I had a dancing mate, we, too, could have done this number… like them…
… And I’m on tonight
You know my hips don’t lie
And I am starting to feel you boy
Come on let’s go, real slow
Don’t you see baby asi es perfecto
God, how long will I keep shaking my hips… feeling bored, fake. If I had learnt dancing instead of wasting time on books, I would’ve freed myself in flaying my limbs: tapping round the dance floor, the strobe lights blinking all over me, my eyes closed; arms, legs flying off me; leaving me no longer inhibited, no longer aware of the world. I would have been on a different planet. But hell, I can’t dance.

But you folks in this club, don’t think me dumb. You may shake your booby, all right, but have you ever read Toni Morrison? I’ve. I read Beloved seven times. You know Sethe? She was beloved’s mom. I know why she killed her daughter. I know why her home is full of baby’s venom. You hearing me! You guys here, read Morrison’s Song of Solomon? Obama has. Me too. You all haven’t. You only know how to boogie, how to bang while I’ve a huge library in Huaz Khas. Ain’t you impressed? Come, come to me… hey you, hug me, hold my hands, kiss me, dance with me. I’ll tell you all you need to know about Toni Morrison and more… Come, come, come.



4)South Delhi Dreams

My address has changed. I’m now the Shah of the Jahan, the king of the world. I’ve moved from the wrong side of the Yamuna to the right side. From Lower East Side to the heart of upper crust Delhi. Such a long journey: from Anand Vihar to Defence Colony.
Def Col. The culmination of my dreams. So many times have I wistfully glanced at it from my Blueline window as the 543 would rumble down the smoggy Ring Road. Would the day ever come when I would live here? Nahi, how could that be possible?

There are only three Def Col types:
a) Your pa is rich, rich, rich
b) You have become a cricket star-turned-soft-drink-endorser
c) You are an expat from a shiny white land

I am none of these. But I was muqaddar ka sikandar. An expat friend living in C block had to urgently go ‘back home’ to US for a month and she requested, “I don’t want to leave the house all abandoned. Can you please stay here?” (Jackpot!) “Er, yes, let me think about it. I suppose I could. That’s what friends are for.” (Excitement contained.)

Scene I: Defence Colony bungalow. Time: 6 am. My first day here. I’m alone in this big house. Each room has its own remote-controlled air-conditioner (there are six rooms). Imported books line the walls. Walls decked with paintings purchased from Paris, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco and Dilli Haat (Madhubani, of course). Recent issues of Vanity Fair in the magazine rack; Puccini and Britten fill up the CD rack. Proper shower curtain in the bathroom and white thick soft towels (bilkul 5-star hotel type) hanging behind the door. What luxury, yaara!

Now, follow me to the kitchen (I’m feeling like Michelle Obama conducting a televised White House tour). Open the bumper-sized Samsung refrigerator. It’s all Khan Market and INA inside: Dijon mustard (from France), Remia French salad dressing (from Holland), Pollis Olive Denocciolate (from Italy), DAK chopped ham (from Denmark) leeks, asparagus.

To add to these first-world luxuries, there’s an English-speaking maid from Jharkhand who cooks everything from hummus to Thai green curry. Last night, she made pasta with cherry tomatoes and arugulas. (“Sir, please tell me what are you liking for tomorrow?”)

Scene II: Outside in Defence Colony. Time: 6.30 am. Taking a walk. Ignoring barking dogs, security guards and construction labourers. Concentrating on the white bare arms of expat memsahibs as they lean on their bungalow balconies. So relaxed, so content.

It’s true. People of south Delhi are happier than other Delhiwallas. Their trees are greener, their birds chirpier, their sky bluer, their air cleaner, their cars fancier. Theirs is a better world. I’m jealous.

Scene III: Bathroom. Time: 7 am. I fill the bathtub with warm water, take off all my clothes and slowly step in. Ooh la la, this bathtub business is so relaxing. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Yuck, I see my friend. She would return next month and I would have to leave for Anand Vihar. Then it will be back to bucket bath



3)Smackyyyy

He walks to the young man and whispers in English, “Sir, I see you are lucky. ” The man stares at him for a moment, looks scared and go away. He lowers his head and then raises his eyes looking around suspiciously. The Delhi Walla goes to him and together we sit down on the pavement bench. It is late night and we are on Mathura Road, just outside the main entrance to Nizamuddin Basti, the 14th century village famous for a sufi shrine that gives its name to the locality.

“At present I’m in a very poor condition,” says Salim Javeri. In a dusty blue jeans and a long muddy-white kurta, he has a green scarf hanging around his neck. His beard is scraggly. Chest hair is springing out from his kurta buttons. He has drooping shoulders; his eyes are sunken. Sitting away from the orange glow of the street lamp, he is reduced to his silhouette.

“I collect donations from pilgrims who come to visit the Baba,” he says referring to the sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. In India, educated people speak such good English. Where did Mr Javeri, a beggar, learn this language? He is not exhibiting that pathetically poor persona, devoid of all dignity, that is thought by beggars to appeal to the charitable instincts of the well off. Who is this man? Why is he forced to beg?

“It is my internal matter. Not open to anyone.” Taking out a packet from his kurta, Mr Javeri says, “If you don’t mind, you like sweet biscuits?”

Over the glucose biscuits, Mr Javeri gives clues to his life:
o He is from Benares, UP.
o He was born in March 1965.
o He is a graduate in Sociology from Kashi Vidhyapeeth University in Benares.
o He was employed as a maintenance engineer in Texla TV.
o He has parents, two brothers, a wife and a son. They live in Benares.
o He left for Delhi in 2001.

Mr Javeri: “I’m in no position to go back.”

Me: “Why?”

Mr Javeri: “What to say… economic and maintenance (sic) reasons.”

Me: “If you have problems, why can’t your family help you?”

Mr Javeri: “Time passes. Poverty is powerful.”

A pause and then Mr Javeri continues: “I have developed certain weak points in my character and though I try to get rid of them, I can’t. So I can’t face my family.”

Me: “What are those weak points?”

Mr Javeri: “You are yourself intelligent. I’m a smack-ey.”

Smack, or heroin, is an addictive substance sold illegally in Delhi in powder form. In the underground subways, for instance, the homeless are often seen inhaling its fumes. “I put the powder in an aluminum foil, which I heat from below with a matchstick and then I sniff the fumes, the real thing.”

It feels great?

“Look, the fact is that the fumes are powerful only for those who are trying smack for the first time or having it after a long gap. For people like me who smoke it daily, we are so used to it that we feel no effect. Instead, we feel a powerful effect when we don’t have it. Then our body stiffens. We don’t want to get up, don’t want to walk, don’t want to eat, and don’t want to drink. We start having pain in the leg, in the arm, in the head. To keep the circulation going in our body, we need to have it. Else we can’t have a normal day.”

Smack is easily available in Nizamuddin Basti. The area’s beggars are often seen walking in a drug-induced daze. Mr Javeri goes to Dilli Gate, in Old Delhi, to get his daily dose, each of which comes for Rs 50. He spends Rs 200 daily on the drug.

“I can do anything for the dose. If I have just Rs 25, I can still get it. If I don’t have money, I pester other addicts to give me some. If an addict has Rs 500, he will invest all of it in the smack. Yet he will not get sakoon (satisfaction). Actually you do get sakoon but it lasts only for a short time. Then you again start thinking about arranging the money. You collect donation, you pick somebody’s wallet, and you even attack someone with a knife. But I have never compromised myself.”

During the day, Mr Javeri sleeps behind the shade of Nizamuddin Dargah bus stop. In the evening, he collects ‘donation’ for a few hours. Later, he boards a bus to Dilli Gate where he gets the ‘powder’ from a vendor in a graveyard in Takia Sarai Kale Khan.

Once Mr Javeri had a different life. For ten years he worked as an engineer in a television manufacturing company. His job would take him to different states but once every month he would come to Delhi to get his pay cheque. In those trips to the city, he would see addicts in subways and traffic lights but he thought nothing of them. “I never realized that one day I would end up like them.”

When Mr Javeri lost his job and returned to Benares, his parents married him off. A year later he had a son. By that time he had mixed up with people who were addicted to hashish. He too got into the habit. The family tried to help him get out of the addiction but the attempts failed. “I was sinking in a quicksand. The more I flayed my arms in desperation, the deeper I sank. I was like a child who would look at the direction where he was pointedly asked not to.” Mr Javeri’s parents and brothers started beating him… sometimes in front of his wife. “I could not tolerate it. I left for Delhi.”

It has been ten years since then. “I’m never been to see them. In fact, I came to Delhi because it is such a big city. No one can find you here if you want to be lost. And you know I’m a Hindu by birth. My real name is Sanjeev Kumar Singh. There is a reason why I chose this Muslim locality to live. If my family ever comes searching for me in Delhi, they will never think of looking for me here.”

Will they ever search for him?

“I’m confident that sometimes they must be shedding tears for me.”

Does he regret leaving them?

“Sir, there is a saying in Hindi:
Apno ki do baat nahi bardasht kar sakte
Baad mein lakohn logo ki baatien bardasht karte hain.