A Visit to Hans, being some notes on alterity and cinema

To Prashaste Sinha, 

“Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.” 

* 

Cinema is such an integral part of much of urban human life that quite often we don’t concretely articulate what we might have to object to it. Like most experiences and commodities, engaging with alterities in this case too provides a range of valuable insights. 

First, the conditions of cinematic reception, the ways in which movie halls are constructed and prostituted – made available as part of the commodity market – easily become naturalised. Cinema, as the critic has noticed, is such an instantaneous form of artistic consumption that it engrosses and orients wholly towards its own internal dynamics much more than to the conditions of its immediate consumption. Given that, the module of consumption which offers greater tangible comfort in a basic sense of being finds easy acceptance and is readily integrated as natural and indispensible. 

Comfort, however, is not quite the objective universal. True, there is a sense in which comfort can be standardised and conceived in qualitative terms as a hierarchy of instant and utter sensual gratification, but the contextuality of the concept still coexists and so makes comfort also a matter of choice, perception and circumstance. Part of all of this, of course, is the economics of comfort, the cost of creating, sustaining and consolidating comfort – or comforts as the unacknowledged case usually is. 

The case of movie theatres seems somewhat similar. Comfort devolves on seating, on air conditioning, on screen, projection and sound quality respectively and on the availability of snacks. More than these tangibles, however, comfort is a corollary of the successful creation of an illusion of comfort, of the presentation of signs – from flooring and carpeting to sanitary fixtures – associated with comfort. Cinema is in any case a peculiar art form that has since its inception continuously reinvented itself to be ahistorically contemporaneous; not surprisingly, then, the visual paraphernalia of a sanitised modernity has more or less unquestioningly been an inherent part of its fashioning as the carrier and site of progressive prosperity. The movie theatre as much of Hindustan seems to know it today is precisely the consolidated product of these motifs and impetuses: we associate comfortable cinematic reception with the multiplex module not as much because that is comfortable in a comfort qua comfort sense – if such a sense does exist – but because it represents and fulfils aspirations of class and national mobility and the attendant desires for sanitised, instantly consumable entertainment. 

In such a scenario, the fact that entertainment, and the same form of entertainment, has different modules is an undesirable truth. A visit to Hans Cinema in the Azadpur area of the Capital reinforces as much. Hans is what in middle class colloquialisms is usually dismissed as a cheaparh hall, the bastion of Bhojpuri cinema frequented by destitutes and low income parts of the populace. The bourgeois visitor to Hans is at first more or less naturally struck with the exotic, and disturbing, otherness of the prospect. Class prejudices being too pervasive, the cheaparhness of Hans is, again, a factor of perceptual economics and all the attendant notions of comfort and respectability, cheapness itself being an essentially comparative qualification premised on fiscal dynamics. 

But even given the validity of these bias induced standards – for standards there must be, criticism being impossible without them – Hans is not cheaparh in many ways. The tickets are, to say the least, inexpensive, ranging from a maximum of thirty-five to a minimum of twenty. The movies are usually family dramas in the currently understood and appreciated stereotype of family dramas – romance, action, suspense, tragedy, union – and are mostly sourced from Bhojpuri and other allied, so-called regional industries. The hall itself is situated on the junction of the Grand Trunk Road with the city’s Inner Ring Road and stands opposite to Azadpur gaon and Azadpur industrial area and is flanked by high income Model Town residencies on one side and the service sector industries of Bara Bagh area on the other. It does not, from the outside, give an impression of neglect, but neither does it give the reassuring sense of unceasing maintenance of the quintessential multi-chain multiplex. 

The crowd too was of a socio-economic composition that can be thought of in similar terms. Most of the patrons seemed locals from the nearby gaon and slum cluster and seemed qualified, by their appearance, for censure from bourgeois eyes: one expected hooting, whistling, jeering and comment, just as one expected, mainly by the appearance of the theatre, semi-pornographic, crude cinema. Yet, such typical biases proved unfounded and the patrons seemed possessed of as much demeanour as those of any of your posh multiplexes. The movie, certainly simplistic in much of its technique, had as much skin and crassness as any of your regular, mainstream Hindustani cinema and the plot, nothing much to boast of, required as much willing suspension of disbelief as much of our conventional blockbusters. Most interestingly, the hall itself, the theatre from inside, was remarkably egalitarian in its structure, allowing, like the Elizabethan stage, all economic classes – vis-à-vis ticket purchasing capacity – the same, albeit gradated in terms of air conditioning and upholstery, access to the same entertainment. 

Of course, the very fact that demeanour and decency were considerations in this scenario, and at that considerations premised on distinct economics of being, indicates the continuance of biases even as they are challenged and interrogated on other planes. We tend, that is, to take such experiential economics as is out of the common currents of our analyses and engagement in ways indicative of our own biases and though that seems natural in many ways, it is nonetheless responsible for much avoidable injustice to peoples, places and perceptions. 

A visit to Hans demonstrated as much. The movie, nothing much to speak of in the untrained audience’s sense of judgement, was still entertaining in its own right; the hall, nothing much to speak of by bourgeois standards, was still comfortable in its own way. The own of here is significant: one judges by one’s own standards, but faced with alterity and difference one must consider one’s own loci and their fundamentals as much, if not more, than the other’s existential basis. We who are accustomed to the comfort economics of multiplex cinema must interrogate the basis of that comfort, the conditions on which it is provided and what that persuasively invisible process of availability entails: if other industries, as much regional – or national – as so-called Bollywood, can work and be consumed on more equitable basis, on basis reflective, even if unintentionally, of economics comparatively less discriminatory of class and the largely superficial paraphernalia of culture and taste, then there seems no convincing reason for the supposed mainstream to not operate similarly. 

That it does not indicates not as much the exigencies of recovery or the indispensability of comfort as the pervasive hold of extensive, unscrupulous profiteering on these forms of production, dissemination and consumption. In that sense, to be used to certain modules of consumption and to have sets ways of conceptualising socio-economic dynamics is perfectly alright, as, to a lesser degree, is holding on to them when faced with alterities. What we must endeavour when faced with such alterities, then, is to interrogate the basis of our own conditionings and rationalisations and see whether they themselves cannot be bettered in ways which would make them more equitable and oriented towards a communal sense of welfare and well-being, the community being, as the proverb goes, of all, for all and by all. Cinematic consumption has the potential to set such standards and Hans, even if unintentionally, leads the way.

Remembering Bal Bharati

To Parth Taneja

*

The idea that Bal Bharati, GR branch can be the best school in its area will immediately seem incredulously ridiculous to anyone who has actually studied in the blessed place. Of course, we all have more or less fond memories and of course after passing out we more or less remember it fondly as the good old place, but thinking hard and strong there are few who would actually agree that it was, or is, half as good as the papers would have us believe. Seriously, Bal Bharati best amongst all the other heavy weights in Central Delhi? Khullar Saab must have loosened CES’s purse strings a bit.

Jokes apart, does it really make any sense? Bal Bharati best? Okay, the survey says it scores highest in terms of perception, but even then, who would be stupid enough to perceive that place best amongst all others?

Don’t get me wrong here. This is not to indicate that I don’t or didn’t like being there, nor that after passing out I’ve acquired airs and disdain to acknowledge my schooling. None of that, no: instead, what irks me is this very thing about being best, this entire charade of being better than what you are, of trying to be better and better and better still. It has brought some changes, this aspirational anxiety, but given the inside reports I last had of it, Bal Bharati remains what it has always been and will always be: average.

Thankfully, I say. Seriously, that’s what it’s always been and that’s what it’s best as, an average school amongst so many more better equipped, more professional, hi-fi schools. Average. A charmingly average school.

It’s good to be average, isn’t it? Like anything, Bal Bharati has its faults, but the best thing about it is that it’s average. It’s not like any of your ambitious, verbose institutions aspiring to make the ideal man out of children. Of course, the school diary and PR material has some such bosh to that effect, but then I suppose that’s for the perception surveys. The inside story remains that Bal Bharati has, given the few fortunate exceptions, more or less incompetent, bungling teachers, a lackadaisical attitude towards sports and extra-curricular activities and fails to make anything more than semi-noble savages out of its students.

And yes, that’s the best thing about it. Most students tend to be cocky when they graduate and remember almost all their teachers as bumbling, bilious ignoramuses. Common human tendency which, I suppose, is common enough to apply to most students of most schools. Again, later on in life most people, even as they sentimentalise, tend to think a bit flippantly of the educational institutions they were part of, remembering the good with the irritating but still thinking of all of the latter in a sepia-tinted, oh-old-days way. I have absolutely no doubts about being privy to such sentiments, but when I say Bal Bharati is best being average I don’t just deprecate my alma mater in that half-joking, flippant manner. I mean more.

More in the sense that I feel being average is one of the best assets of any educational institution today. In Bal Bharati, I never felt myself under any extraordinary pressure to perform, never saw myself faced with any larger than life standards to come up to. There were always extra-curricular activities, there were always assemblies and house meetings and sports days, but there was never, as so many students – and more, their parents – complain, any overwhelming, continuous pressure to exert yourself more than what you might desire.

That is to say there was impetus and ample opportunities were always provided, but you were never forced into availing of those opportunities, never taken into the whole paraphernalia of competitions and events for the school’s greater glory. There is always rivalry between schools, but as students of Bal Bharati – and I suppose I’m not alone in assuming so – most of us never felt that rivalry. We couldn’t care less what students of other schools were like and what they would think of us precisely because that intensely cutting competitive spirit just wasn’t around to instil that peculiar sense of pride and belonging which institutions with their glorious traditions and grand narratives always inspire. It was, and perhaps still is, a school where you could be, spend your days peacefully with all the momentous upheavals of infancy, childhood and adolescence without coordinators and managers hammering you for some supposedly prestigious competition designed to make you better. If nothing else, Bal Bharati makes you thick skinned in some subtle ways and so the entire rhetoric of bettering yourself which all schools bombard their students with has little affect on Bal Bharatians.

Which is why when I hear news of Bal Bharati becoming “an international school” and what not, I thank my lucky stars of getting out in time. Being average, it was a healthy mix of ambition and incompetence, of imposition and free will. Certain minimums were always expected and efforts made to attain them, but beyond them only the chosen few fell victim of the headministerial staff’s ambitions. There was always guidance, but you still had enough leeway to explore yourself and find your own way, not be straightjacketed into models of the ideal would-be scientist, the ideal would-be engineer, the ideal would-be accountant, the ideal would-be sports star and so on. I find people of my batch and my class doing various interesting and remarkable things, people whom almost everybody hardly expected to be good at anything being more successful than anybody’s wildest dreams. There are always students of this sort and it is their hard work and genius of course, but what marks Bal Bharati distinct is that it never stigmatised such students for not living up to general, public school expectations. Yes, attempts would always be made to co-opt us into the all-rounded personality network, but something in the very fabric of that place prevented most of us from falling prey to that typically industrialist, market-oriented disease. We had good times and bad, but we never felt the pressure to become marketable in that sense.

Which is why the Bal Bharati I know and remember is best being average.

*

Author’s note:

Prompted by a conversation and this: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2011/12/19/ArticleHtmls/AND-THE-AWARD-GOES-TO-19122011011002.shtml?Mode=1

An Invitation

Considering the demographics of this City

and

of this, its University,

it is felt necessary

to

make reparations

and thus

ensure a degree of equity

in

participation and representation

of those

denied their rights

and

claims to welfare

by

the ov’rwehleming tide

of

migration, outlandry and factionalism.

It is deemed fit, then, to

announce

the creation of

The All Delhi University Non-Punjabi, Non-Baniya, Non-Bengali, Delhi Male Students’ Welfare Association

(ADUDMSWA)

Our agenda shall be to guarantee

equitable representation of our community

in spheres academic, administrative and sportive.

We shall work to secure

those natural rights

denied to us

by

ov’rbearing oppression of the dominant.

Those part of the elect may join:

to liberty, equity, fraternity!

On Reading The Last Mughal

To Prashansa Taneja,

hoping this proves explanation enough.

*

The Last Mughal is without a doubt one of the most horrible books I’ve read in a long time now.

Oh no, don’t get me wrong please. I don’t mean horrible in that sense, that it’s a badly written or badly research book or that it strikes at our moral or ethical fibre, assuming momentarily that I believed in such a thing. No, I don’t mean horrible in that sense, for far from that The Last Mughal is an engaging, thought-provoking work that fills the supposed divide betwixt creative writing – or fiction as it’s generally considered – and academic discourse, showing, as Khushwant Singh observed in a review, “the way history should be written”. In reimagining the events that led to the fall of Delhi in 1857 and evidencing experience from both sides of the divide and from the respective factions within these, Dalrymple adopts a remarkably nuanced and humane approach that is neutral and biased at the same time, thus appealing at once to both the emotional and intellectual faculties of the reader. No, The Last Mughal is a very well written and intensively researched book, a must-read, as they say, for all those with even an iota of interest in history and India’s colonial past.

Still, it makes one shudder: without a doubt, one of the most horrible books. It is, admittedly, not a bad read in this sense, this sense I’ve discussed above, but it’s certainly more than just bad when it comes to the ideas and associations it brings to mind by virtue of being good, being well written and well researched. That, I suppose, is the catch with good books as it were: they’re good, yes, but usually they leave you nowhere close.

Which is precisely the case with The Last Mughal. It is well written, but it cannot but make you wonder at the cupidity of the human race. Reading that book, one cannot but be grieved at the many mistakes our kind has made throughout its recorded history, the misunderstandings and prejudices that have time and again pitied one community against another. Of course, human history is naught but a chronicle of human avarice and insensitivity and so no account of any period or any battle cannot but give rise to such gloomy speculations on the nature of humanity, but to read such accounts of one’s own history, of events which directly made one’s present environment what it is is manifestly different from reading of just another chip off the historical block: one can feel a connect otherwise, but it’s hard not to be affected when the connect is to one’s own.

The Last Mughal worked just so for me. A great burden of history weighs Delhi and none can live in it without being aware, however dimly, of the past, a past that is at once dead and living, a past that informs our thoughts and actions even as it stands apart, aloof as a vestige of unknown days and years. To those who think about this much, who engage with the ways in which the present flows into the past and interacts with the needs of the future, it is difficult, or so I believe, to be unaffected by works that draw attention to those awesome events which cataclysmically changed the course of time.

Reading Dalrymple’s lucid prose on the events of 1857 does as much. Delhi is a city, a culture of gaps; the course of a violent history has scarred it time and again in as many ways as can be imagined. It has risen, yes, but like most such coming to terms with disaster stories, that seems more owing to the will of conquering armies than any never-say-die spirit of the butchered mass of generations. In that context, in being a year of general rout and massacre, 1857 is no different from, say, 1398 or 1739, but in marking a sudden and extremely regressive end to a flourishing cultural ethos 1857 is, perhaps, distinct from all earlier and subsequent disasters. It may be because it’s comparatively recent and we still feel and see its consequences in the nature and structure of the city or it may be a totally personal bias, but to me nothing destroyed Delhi and all it stood for as 1857 did. The sense of loss, that peculiar sense of being rooted in an ethos without roots and of being without a coherent past in spite of all the imposing spectacles of history that causally and daily regale the eye, this particular sense which informs a Dilliwaalah’s engagement with his physical environment and time and again makes him aware of something missing in his being, something valuable and precious the lack of which makes his identity at once tenuously solid, solidly tenuous, this sense is, I believe, directly the consequence of what happened in 1857, of what the British did to the city in their mad and manifestly misguided lust for vengeance and power.

It is, of course, not wholly correct to blame the British: the blame of what happened should be assigned in varying measures to all parties, not just the British whose brutal reprisal has left certain parts of the city without as much as an inch of ground untainted with blood. But why blame anyone at all? To read is to understand, to understand is to contextualise, weigh the complex mass of actions and motives against reasons and causes and unearth thus the forces which materialised as processes. It may or may not be to forgive; it is certainly not to forget, but to understand is perhaps to not hold a grudge, to not forgive, no, but to move beyond blames and learn and not repeat.

Which is something humanity has seldom, if ever, done. Works like The Last Mughal strike you not as much as for displaying the cupidity of man then as much as man all along, man throughout his recorded history, a history that is nothing but a rutted, bloody chronicle of opportunities missed and lessons unlearnt. That we, we who live in this supposed age of technology and information, this age of learning and knowledge, that we should know so much and still fail in our endeavours to understand each other, to accept difference as natural and healthy and turn bias interactive and productive is a vindication of the deep seated unwillingness of humanity to take stock of itself, a blindness that prevents it from seeing what it was, what it is and what it is moving to become. Works like Dalrymple’s remind one of that, of not just the intense pain man extracted from man and of the blood and gore on which our greatest civilisational endeavours are built and ultimately reduced to but also the grief which we continue to inflict on each other in failing to understand the roots of our existing biases, problems, and tackling them thus, not superficially, from above, but as a whole with patience and tact. It is our continual failure to do so, to exorcise the ghosts of our past and to not attempt reconciliation that contributes steadily to the tragedy called man. The Last Mughal reminds one of that, of the ruin and end an entire civilisation came to, of the lives unnecessarily lost to prejudice and greed. It’s a tale we should all remember, but to remember it in itself, to understand and come to terms and still not forget, that is the challenge, that is what it demands of a reader: to live, even if for a while, the fall of a city, the death of thousands, the heart of a people...

...and that, precisely, is why I say it’s horrible.

Lines Composed upon Wazirabad Bridge

(to Lakshita; or the idea of her)

*

Tranquillity or not, recollecting emotion is no mean task. You sit back, relax and spend many ponderous hours mulling over what you saw and felt at such and such place and so and so time. Every few minutes you think you’ve got it and you jump up in excitement and then just as soon you feel a sharp pang of disappointment when a mean little devil in your head rakes up doubt and whispers this wasn’t really it, you’ve missed something, that you’ve lost what it was for good…

It happens so many times too! Of course, for day to day commonplaces you don’t mind it happening, and you pass over such everyday trivia eagerly without a care. But for those things or events or just, well, moments, for these, for those for which you feel a special pang, not being able to recollect them perfectly well can be pretty irritating – irritating as it can be beautiful, both at the same time.

Really! I mean, you think and think and get all the more irritated at the way it just eludes you try as much as you can, but then there is a certain quaintly quixotic charm in this game of cat and mouse, in trying to fix reality knowing full well you never really can fix it after it’s over and done with. Is it man’s will, aiming a la Mirandola and ye olde Humanists to reach out for perfection in thought, in achieving a unity of thought and action, all a harmonious, shining whole? Or is it just plain, ruddy perversity, this hankering after a few seconds, wasting hours for a few moments when there’s much else to do: duties to fulfil, tasks to complete, life to be made…

See how it goes! From one to the other the chain goes on and on and so by leaps and bounds transports you leagues from what you started with. Such if life, and such is the human mind!

Wazirabad. It enters the city there; not literally, no, not in the geographical sense of entering the city limits and coming under the jurisdiction of some of its multiple bodies. No, not like that; yet, in that sense, in sense of jurisdiction, control, this is where it first falls under our control, us as a city. That’s where the first of the many bridges and barrages which we have over it here is and so, in that sense, that’s where it enters the city.

Nothing special about that. Of course not: it’s just yet another bridge and barrage over the mighty river. Ha! Not even a might river; a nallah, rather, as many of us are wont to derisively call it most of the time, implicating in such ridicule our governance, the famed bodies, in the twin conspiracy of corruption and pollution which has for long characterised any effort to restore it to any semblance of a living river. The Yamuna; not a river, a nallah: the Yamuna nallah.

Not a nallah then.

Mighty, mighty river! Crashing, pounding, taking all in its path – forward on to doom! The meek shall inherit the earth, and so the docile, staid, everyday nallah rises up in froth and fury to submerge man and his kind, to take down whatever comes in its path, threaten his arrogance with heavy blows, rot and decay! Chastise him with a heavy, heavy hand, a resounding slap against the vanity of his dreams…

It’s such a pity it didn’t flood, that it didn’t really break down all those banks. It would’ve been spectacular had it, had it flooded that Village. Ha! That would’ve been divine retribution for the Abhiyaan, something to finally award their long, fruitless vigil for nature and man. Not that death is pretty, nor that loss of property or of a lifetime’s hard work desirable. But rather it would’ve broken into our monuments than the lowly hovels, rather it would’ve reclaimed its own there and not thus. The poor always suffer; is the river a capitalist too?

Pah! A river’s a river and that’s it! Not, of course, like an urn’s an urn, or a daffodil’s a daffodil and that’s it, but still, a river’s no more than just that, a dead, lifeless river!

Yet, what a river and what a sight!

Perhaps it’s inexperience. I’m sure it is. A nallah otherwise, just now in spate – what of that?

Yet, why not? Why not indeed? A narrow, two laned bridge laden with the filth of man, his wheels. In it’s centre, the river’s centre, the centre where the channel runs deep and eternal and where now the watery expanse flows the most disturbed, waves upon stormy, turbulent waves of muddy water. Mud of the hills, mud of life, the seed of all our joys and sorrows, this water and mud…small whirlpools, just along the tired pillars aching to give up, make way, the steel of the walls long drawn up in abject obeisance to the river’s will. The will of man? A grain of sand tossed in a stormy sea…

It shakes. The heavy weight of tired souls; hearts laden with dust and grief, with daily cares and joys – the bitter-sweet offices of life and love. It shakes to the core. The mighty sinews of mortar and steel, what might before mud and water? Round and round the muddy water, through the grill a force unknown beckoning, pulling in to its dark, suffocating, deathless womb. It shakes. So shakes man, shaken to the core, his core: a nallah in spate.

Yet, what of it? A week, two at the most and the walls come down: the plains re-appear, the devotees with their plastics come back, the squatters, humbled yet again for no fault of their own, try yet again to piece together the shadow of a life. Spirit? A great city’s spirit, to continue as if nothing happened, as if twas naught but just another blip on the nation’s, the economy’s heart? Very few casualties, just a few displaced – the circle of life? Games people play…

Wazirabad. The nallah enters here. Soon there’ll be a bigger, grander bridge in its place, a bridge to make the city proud, a monument to its power and glory. The nallah flows on…

Semesters Sequestered

Subject since its inception to an abiding public controversy, the issue of the implementation of the semester system in Delhi University remains highly contentious with its barebones still shrouded in mystery. This is of note, for the contention is not just in its alleged “autocratic” implementation but also the manner in which the entire project was conceived and then, soon after, opposed by sections of the academic fraternity. Both betray disturbing trends in our policies for and politics of higher education in India.

Cleared by the University’s Academic Council last year, the semester system promises to radically alter our entire experience of education. Putting aside considerations of nostalgia and for tradition – which in a welfare state committed to holistic well being of its citizens should be of no mean significance – the most important question here is why change. Let this by no means be considered an invective against change: to do so would be naïve and against the current urgent need for inclusive socio-economic development retrograde. What is being asked instead is why change for the sake of change or, perhaps worse, for the sake of a top-heavy international model?

Indeed, not a little of the onus in this matter seems to be to bring our system at par with so-called international models of excellence. That what is international is more often than not Western is common knowledge. What we need to ask ourselves is whether we want to blindly exult in imitation of these models or combine these examples with our legacies and resources to create models of excellence – and excellence not as a superiority to be attained but as a quality specific to milieu – suited for our needs.

The answers need to come from all quarters. In voicing dissent DUTA does not represent all; it silences within even as it protests against autocracy from the top. Yes, the concerns it raises are for the most just, but the tone is too often of irritation at the prospect of increased workload – not, as one would’ve expected, regarding the quality of education. Of course the two are linked, but for that matter the administrative staff – or their union, for individual voices are seldom heard – have till now maintained a studied silence regarding the obvious increase in their workload. What is of greater concern, however, is the disquieting silence of DUSU and other student organisations on the matter. The University, at least ostensibly, is meant for students and not vice versa and in claiming to be their representatives these bodies should address all issues carrying the potential of impacting their education and training in a major way.

What is needed, therefore, is that we move away from a top-heavy, exclusive framework which institutionalises agency to and for a few functionaries to an inclusive and consensual model which takes into account all possible shareholders. The role of surveys and of direct interaction between shareholders in open debates is of no mean importance in this. Students’ Unions too need to be rejuvenated and herein those who claim to be liberals must engender and maintain a sustained campaign for giving student politics a pertinence which as of now it seems to be completely devoid of. Of course this will be no mean task and miracles cannot be expected, but still, given our current biases it has become imperative to make democracy more democratic. To do otherwise would only be to further a policy of estrangement and conflict.

Chalte chalte…

Chalte chalte, chalte chalte,
Yunhi koi mil gaya tha, yunhi koi mil gaya tha,
Sare rah chalte chalte, sare rah chalte chalte...

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream!
I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam!

*

“Goddamnit! There has to be a place!”

“I hate humans!”

“Hmmm…”

The road goes forever on and on,
Down from the door where it began,
And I must follow it if I can!

Like hell I was! Past the Blackened Gates, ‘cross the road, up the hill, down and down…

“Heck! Let’s at least sit here for a while!”

Wise men say only fools rush in

But I can't help falling in love with you

Shall I stay would it be a sin

If I can't help falling in love with you

“You know, we could turn our backs to the road…”

Khullam khullaa pyaar karenge ham dono!

Is duniyaa se nahin darenge ham dono!

Haan, pyaar ham karte hain chori nahin,

Mil gaye dil joraa-jori nahin,

Ham vo karenge dil jo kahe, hamko zamaane se kyaa!

Good idea. Closer, closer…

“Damn that bloody cycle-wallah! Damn these richshaw-wallahs! Damn that guard!”

“Humans! Friggin’ place’s full of them!”

“Agreed…”

“Chalo.”

“Kahan?”

“Chal na. Come…”

Come away with me and we'll kiss

On a mountaintop

Come away with me

And I'll never stop loving you…

Indeed! Up and up, into the deep, out and yonder, farther beyond, past a bend, onto the gate…

“This looks interesting…”

“You wouldn’t want to go there. Shady…very shady…no.”

“Ah well…”

Jaye to jaye kahan? Jaye to jaye kahan? Jaye to jaye kahan?
Samjhega kon yahan, dard bhare dil ki zubaan?
Jaye to jaye kahan?...

“Waapis chal...”

“Waapis! Bilkul nahi! Haad hai! Itni door isliye nahi aaya tha ki...”

“Accha baba, chal, aage chal…”

Kahan? Ye hansata hua kaaravaan, zindagi ka na poochho chala hai kidhar

Tamanna hai ye, saath chalate rahen, ham na beete kabhi ye safar

Ye hansata hua kaaravaan, zindagi ka na poochho chala hai kidhar…

Poocho mat kahan kahan gaya! Idhaar, udhaar; aage-peeche, upaar-neeche, har jagah…

“Is it just me or do you also think the bloody place’s full of people today?”

“Argh! Don’t remind me! Damn them all!”

“What now?”

“I’m tired! I want to rest!”

“I want you…”

“Uhm, here?”

“Let’s go up…this tower block.”

“Pagal mat ban…”

Baawra man dekhne chala ek sapna,
Baawra man dekhne chal ek sapna.
Baawre se man ki dekho baawri hain bate,
Baawre se man ki dekho baawri hain bate…

Dreams don’t come true. Not up, but on: on and on and over across.

“Gothic fiction’s interesting y’know…”

“Hain?”

“Haan-haan! You know, crumbling castles, dungy dungeons, haunted houses…”

“Darling, ye side wala khaali nahi hai! Kaam chal raha he!”

Mera sundar sapna beet gaya
Main prem mein sab kuchh har gayi
Bedard zamaana jeet gaya
Mera sundar sapna beet gaya…

“Waise, hum bachon ka bachpan to nahi bigarna chahte, right?”

“Sharm karo!”

“Mazak, mazak! Aise hi kaha tha, bhatate bhatate aise hi!”

Yahoo! Yahoo! Chaahe koyi mujhe junglee kahe, kehne do jee kehta rahe!
Hum pyaar ke toofaanon mein gire hai, hum kya karain!

“Aakhir yeh ghatiya sarak jaati kahan hai?”

“Police station, phir ek school, thori jhuggiyan, phir ek aur police station…”

“Brilliant! Police station ke siwa kuch aur he yahan?”

“Kahan jana he?”

Wahin, jahan koi aata jaata nahin…

“So, we’ve conclusively established that there is no place!”

“So it seems. You’ve something to write now at least…”

“Hmmm…”

“By the way, what’s that?”

Every bursted bubble has a glory!

Each abysmal failure makes a point!

Every glowing path that goes astray,

Shows you how to find a better way.

So every time you stumble never grumble.

Next time you'll bumble even less!

For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!

Grow the roses!

Grow the roses!

Grow the roses of success!

Roses don’t grow in August. Not here in over-populated Delhi at least.

“Hmmm…”

“Kya?”

“Your smell…”

“Damn these people!”

Ai mere dil kahin aur chal

Gam kii duniyaa se dil bhar gayaa

Dhundh le ab koi ghar nayaa
Ai mere dil kahin aur chal...

“Chal, ghar aane wala he...”

“Ji. Aur kya? Ghar jao, mai apne yahan jata hun. Ghar. Aur kahan? There is no place...”

“True. Buh-bye.”

“Hmm…bye…”

Doorie, doorie, doorie!

Sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa!

Khomshiyaa yeh

Seh na saku

Aawaaz deke mujhse tu

De ja sukun

Doorie, doorie, doorie!

Sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa, sahi jaye naa!

“Sach me pagal he! Pagla kahin ka! Utar kyun gaya?”

“Tere liye. Aise hi chali gayi...”

“Aww!”

“And, I thought this place looks promising…”

“Hmmm…so it does…”

“Chal phir…”

Kahan jaate par? Jahan jaane ki sochi, who to band nikla. Waapas aane lage…

Jiivan ke safar me raahi,
Milate hain bichhar jaane ko

Aur de jaate Hain yaadain,
Tanahaai me tarpaane ko…

“I can’t believe it! There’s no place in this goddamn city!”

“I wonder what’s behind this 6-foot high bush wall…”

“Um, do you want to find out...”

“I wouldn’t mind an adventure…would you?”

“Of course not…chalo”

Yunhi chala, chal raahi…
Dil ko hai kyun ye betaabi

Kis se mulaaqaat honi hai

Jis ka kabse armaan tha

Shaayad wahi baat honi hai

“This looks really promising!”

“Indeed! Very if I may say so!”

Hum tum ek kamre mein band ho,
Aur chaabi kho jaaye…

“So, finally!”

“Finally!”

“Finally…”

Shalalalala!

Don't be scared,

You better be prepared,

Go on and kiss the girl!

Shalalalala!

Don't stop now,

Don't try to hide it how,

You wanna kiss the girl!

Go on and kiss the girl!

And there it ended.

Metro Trouble

I believe that a Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) like the Delhi Metro is not a feasible, long-term intra-city transport option.

Here’s why.

As an entirely electricity dependent MRTS, the Delhi Metro naturally consumes a considerable amount of electricity. Nonetheless, there seems to be no general consensus regarding its exact consumption- a paper on the Institution of Railway Electrical Engineers website claims it’s the largest power consumer in Delhi, a May 9, 2006 report on the Tribune website puts the same to 45MW, or 1.15%, of the average demand of 3,200MW and a write-up on the Metro’s website fixes total consumption to 75+45=120MW or 3.75% of the average demand of 3,200MW. Now, as anybody who’s spent this summer in Delhi knows, this last figure cannot possibly be accurate, for, first, as the channels and papers have been publicising, the total demand at the peak of summer in June was a staggering 1000MW more at around 4,400MW and second, since this figure is so patently obsolete and the Metro’s network has increased considerably since then, its net consumption of too must’ve gone up. There is, unfortunately, no clear figure for that.

Be that as it may, one thing is totally unambiguous: an over-whelming percentage of the Metro’s electricity comes from either non-renewable fossil fuels like coal and natural gas or from ecologically unsound hydroelectric power plants in the lower and middle Himalayas. This crucial fact has till now been consistently ignored by media and civil society alike, for even as we rightfully applaud the DMRC for installing a solar power plant on the Connaught Place station and justifiably take pride in it been awarded carbon credit validation by the German TUVNORD for the use of the innovative regenerative breaking technology, we simultaneously forget that at its core the Metro still functions on hazardous, toxic and ecologically unsafe technologies. Like a majority of successful corporate establishments, all the DMRC does is to stay on the right side of public conscience by adopting small, piece-meal green methods with great fanfare without changing it’s core base of unsound energy generation technologies.

What is urgently required, therefore, is a holistic scientific analysis by an independent, unbiased agency on the overall environmental impact of the Metro’s creation and its unfettered expansion.

First of all, it must be found out to what extent electricity generation in thermal power plants offsets the Metro’s commendable achievement of preventing emission of around 2,275 tonnes of vehicular carbon-dioxide. Indeed, even as we in Delhi celebrate the supposedly modernising influence of the Metro and felicitate it for it’s role in the reduction of vehicular pollution, we overlook the fact that the DMRC characteristically follows conventional Western wisdom of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ by increasingly buying power from a NPTC plant in far-off Orissa. All this happening in the National Capital acquires another, ironical dimension when we consider how the Indian Government cries itself hoarse in every international climate change forum about developed Western nations relocating all their dirty work to developing countries and so making them victims to their insatiable hunger for resources.

Similarly, a detailed study on the multi-nuanced ecological impact of the construction of the Metro too is in order. The DMRC claims to be “one of the most eco-friendly projects in Delhi” so it will be worthwhile to find out whether or not it sources construction material like bricks, cement, concrete, girders etc from clean, green and ethical firms instead of the popular run of the mill profit-maximising, unsound businesses. The affects of exposure-whether adverse or not and if so, how much-to fine concrete dust to construction workers and those living near construction sites too must be conclusively established.

Moving on, one must also consider the costs involved in maintaining the DMRC’s entire network. Whether or not the Metro makes profits, maintenance costs are bound to go up each year as its assets age. Gradually, in about a decade or so, it’ll be bound to phase out a majority of its existing rolling stock if it still wants to maintain its current high standards and afterwards major changes and upkeep would be required in all the stations as well. It is not wholly inconceivable that as time passes maintenance costs would slowly become a considerable amount of its expenditure so that the DMRC’s huge infrastructure and unmovable assets might just end up as an encumbering public liability. Once again, an unprejudiced investigation is in order to determine whether or not these will eventually become equal to or override the net income.

On the whole, I think the DMRC can really not be fully blamed for not being far-sighted enough to anticipate these issues: it is, after all, just a modern replica of a century old transport model carried out under the guidance of a smart and efficient yet aging man. What is surprising, however, is that nobody in Delhi seems to have realised that the Metro, in its current avatar, is only repeating old mistakes and so seems to be going well down the way of becoming an embarrassing liability for the city. Indeed, had even a fraction of the will and money spent in erecting the humongous Metro network been spent on refurbishing roads and revamping the bus system the need for the Metro would never have arisen and the transport problem solved without so much exertion. The very induction of air-conditioned buses in the DTC’s fleet, which will make available to the common citizen a facility till now the Metro’s complete monopoly, coupled with the increase in road space and, so, vehicular traffic raises serious question marks over the very existence of the project as some of its basic objectives get gradually defeated.

All of this is not to say that I am against the Metro. No, like all Delhities, I too have more or less enjoyed the Metro experience and do sincerely believe that by setting enviable professional standards it has brought about a sea change in and contributed immensely to the evolution of public attitudes and consciousness, creating, in fact, a whole new ‘Metro culture’ of discipline, responsibility and patience. Nevertheless the Metro is no holy cow and, more now than ever before, we need to evaluate the whole project in a radical, all-encompassing manner and ascertain its viability for the moderately long-term. That alone will be beneficial for the city.