Zainab Bawa’s Blog

16/04/07

‘Pension Mohalla’, the address read on the details of the display board in his auto. I was intrigued. I asked him what kind of place was ‘Pension Mohalla’. He said these were old names of places. ‘Pension Mohalla’ is about one and a half kilometers away from K. R. Market, he explained.

Khan is his name. His physique is on the leaner side, and he looks friendly and kind. I entered the autorickshaw outside Theological College on Millers Road. A bunch of North East boys were in his auto. They wanted him to drive them inside the college. But he told them, Paidal chalo, paidal chalo. Go walk inside. I have a fare waiting here.

My curiosity about ‘Pension Mohalla’ got us talking. In reality, it was my desperation to connect with this city that got me talking to him – my search for ordinarily extraordinary stories in this city.

Khan owns the auto he is riding, among the few auto drivers I have encountered so far who own the auto they drive. He says his auto runs his household and that he recently got his daughter married through the earnings of the rickshaw. He completed schooling and then did a vocational course in air-condition repairs. But back then in 1988-1990, he said, there was no demand for his services. As a matter of desire he learnt how to drive. This auto, cars and even buses, I learnt to drive them all. I wanted to drive a bus, but I just cannot seem to get off riding this auto. Already, riding this auto from 10 in the morning to 10 at night, my ears burn, my eyes burn, I have backache and, look at these hands, they start to hurt. And the dust around, that also causes fatigue.

He asks me whether I am still studying. Then he wonders why I am headed towards Jayanagar. I am amazed, he says, you study here and you live there. Dikkat nahi hoti? Nowadays, it is luxury for even working class people to ride in autos and you are a student here. I am amazed. I explain to him that I live in Jayanagar and also study there and that I was at the Theological College on a special class. That’s what I was wondering, otherwise it is too expensive for students to ride in autos.

As we continue to ride further up, I tell him that I was in Bangalore back in 1993 sometime and the city was different then. Oh yeah, it has changed a lot now. Earlier, main aankhein moondke gaadi chalata tha, I would close my eyes and ride and today, I am afraid even as I keep my eyes open and attention focused. Traffic has increased. Now just look at this man here on the scooter, he has stopped in the middle of this thick traffic to talk on his cell phone. Back then, the city was different. Now, it has improved. I wonder what ‘improved’ means to Khan. He goes on. I encounter so many people who come from outside to study in Bangalore – from Bihar, Delhi, the madrasis – they all come here. How long have you been here? Nine months, I tell him. How long will you be here? Three years. Hmmm, even in software you see, many people from outside are coming – from Bihar, Delhi, the madrasis. There are good earnings, you can have a good life. But I remark that this city is very expensive. Why do you say that, he asks. I tell him that commuting is a cheaper affair in Bombay given the trains and the buses. But there are buses here too, he tells me, trying to understand. But here the buses run only on main roads, I explain, and then, in Bombay, the train is always there. Ah, trains run on the roads there haan? he asks. I don’t know what to say. Then he says, I have never to been to Bombay or Delhi, but I have heard about these cities. I was born in Bangalore, have grown up here, aur idhareech main khatam hona hai. His words remind of the dialogue I had heard in the movie Namesake. A fellow passenger in the train asks Ashoke Ganguly whether he has been abroad, ‘England, America’? Ashoke says he has never been to these places but then his grandfather had told him that books are meant to help travel. Here is Khan, working through an imagination of the cities he does not know and he perhaps does not even have the books to help him travel. He later tells me that last night he watched a television programme which ann ounced that Delhi is the best city in India and he started wondering where does Bangalore figure in the scheme of India. Main soochne laga, Dilli ki baatein kar rahe hai yeh log, Bangalore kahan pe aata hain India mein. He says that the best thing about Bangalore is the weather – cool climate and lots of greenery. That is why they have named this Garden City, he tells me.

I continue to talk to him about the costs of living in Bangalore being high. Rents are high, I tell him. Oh yes, I agree. Back in my time, a house in my area was available for three hundred rupees monthly rent. If you gave four hundred, you would get more amenities. Five hundred, even more and with six hundred to seven hundred rupees, you could get two rooms, a kitchen, good water, etc. How much rent do you pay? I lied to him saying I pay three thousand when in fact I pay four. He is shocked and says, you find two or three people to live with you. Then you can each pay a thousand and spend about two thousand monthly on food. I cook at home, I tell him. He asks if I can make rotis and I say yes. How about rice? I tell him I eat red rice. And chappatis, you eat wheat eh? Yeah, and also raagi. Really, do you eat raagi rotis? he asks me. Yes, I tell him. We make raagi mudde at home. But back in the villages, they eat the rotis. with spicy chutneys, I tell him immediately. Yeah, he says excitedly, clicking his fingers, you are right, with chutneys. I think we have connected now.

I have relatives in Thilaknagar, he tells me. I tell him I like living in Thilaknagar because it is a noisy and vibrant area. Yes, he says, otherwise you have houses scattered at distances. In Bangalore, he says, 80% people are good and only 20% are not so good. Only 20%, he emphasizes. See, if you ask for directions in this city, people will tell you, unlike in Bombay or Delhi where people don’t have the time to tell you. Here, in Bangalore, you see this man walking on the roads, if you ask him for directions, he will tell you. In fact, if he is going in the same direction, he will come along with you and say, ‘I am also going in the same direction’. But back in Bombay and Delhi, people don’t tell right. See, what happens is that 20% of the not-so-nice people, they are jealous of outsiders coming here and making money. They say these people are outsiders. Jealous people.

We arrive. I ask him to stop on the main road so that I can walk into the lanes, to my house. He asks me where I stay. I explain to him. The fare reads Rs. 62. He returns forty rupees to me. I tell him to wait as I fish for two rupees. He says, let it be. Don’t bother about two rupees. You are a student here. I tell him the two rupees are his earnings and that he should let me give it to him. He smiles at me as I leave. It is a smile which tells me that for that moment of our journey together, for that time that he drove me, we traveled into each other’s lives, in Bombay, in Bangalore, in Delhi. We journeyed together.

It was desperation to seek my own words, to seek stories in this city that I got talking to Khan. I still seek the ordinary lives which have stories to tell me, stories which reinforce that these lives are not ordinary, that they make this city- whether it is Bangalore, Bombay or Delhi. I seek these stories …

zainab xanga

I was reading Lisa Peattie’s work on Planning this morning. She says:

… every telling represents a way of seeing. We see from where we stand; and why would we look unless we care about how the story comes out?

Telling represents a way of seeing;
We see from where we stand …

I was standing in my window, looking through the grills, squinting as much as my eye could reach. There was a commotion going on. The albino woman from the opposite houses was on the street, shouting loudly, as if making a very clear point, to a main in a safari suit. He could have been a politician or a bureaucrat. The woman was complaining about the lack of water in the street. There were other women standing around her, with their orange and fluorescent yellow and green bhindis. The bhindis were empty.
I got scared looking at this, frightened. The sump which stores water and the motor which pumps the water up are located in the storeroom downstairs. I decided that I will lock the storeroom when I leave.
PRIVATE PROPERTY – TRESPASSERS NOT ALLOWED

Telling represents a way of seeing;
We see from where we stand …

I was sitting outside Dilli Haat, the crafts bazaar in Delhi. The afternoon was hot and I was tired.
The circular seating space outside the Haat is decorated with patches of grass and some trees. There are sprinklers rooted in the ground which then water the grass.
It was getting hotter. A boy came from somewhere. He was about 14 or 15. He squatted a bit, then put his mouth close to a sprinkler and turned it on. In about a minute, he quenched his thirst and switched off the sprinkler. Satisfied, he walked along.
I was quite amazed to see this. Walking around in Bangalore and exploring people’s access to water, I discovered that the Municipal Corporation of Bangalore (BMP) which has been responsible for providing water to the poor decided that it will no longer pay the Water Board (BWSSB) for supplying water to the public fountains and standpipes. This is now called Non-Revenue Water (NRW). So BWSSB now urges the poor in the slums to take individual water connections and pay according to the meter. Standpipes are being taken off from the slums because we live in an age where ‘UTILITIES MUST ENSURE FULL COST RECOVERY FOR SERVICES’.
The stories which my friends and I have collected show that the very category ‘the poor’ is problematic because it does not account for the heterogeneity of incomes and contexts that make up the poor. Some among the poor earn as little as Rs. 1,500 per month and pay a water bill of Rs. 73 (in addition to buying potable water) and this accounts for 4.87% of their monthly incomes. In contrast, I pay about .67% of my present monthly income (and even lesser if I earn more).

Telling represents a way of seeing;
We see from where we stand …

‘Neeru beka’, Eeshwari said when she came home that day to work. Eeshwari works in my house as a maid. She looked troubled that day, troubled because there was no water. We told her to take water from our house if she needed. Meanwhile, we began worrying at the prospect of water shortage and no water in the sump downstairs.
Eeshwari came home as usual next day. ‘Neeru beka’, she said again. We asked her to take water from our house. She happily came over, with her sister-in-law and five empty bhindhis. They filled it to the brim and went off.
Meanwhile, we worried at the thought of water shortage. He said to me, “WHAT IF THERE IS NO WATER?” I told him, “I have never thought of a situation when there is no water. I have always had access to water.”

BUT THEN, WHAT IF THERE IS NO WATER?

zainab xanga

1: Saw some houses when I went home. Liked one. Will look for some more before I settle on buying one.
2: Kewl!
1: Some of them are priced too high. Will not be able to afford the EMI!
2: You want to take a home loan?
1: Where else will I get the money to buy the house.
2: But I heard that home loans are not a good deal for buying a house! I hear there are lots of hidden costs involved in a home loan.
1: I am aware of it. But where else will I get the financing for buying a house?

After eating dinner, we boarded autorickshaws and went off to our respective homes.

Next day …

2: The auto driver was cool. He gave me his number and said that in case I needed an auto to go to the airport at 3 or 4 in the morning, I just had to call him and he will come over.
1: Yeah, my autowalla was also cool. He took me to an all night booze joint right next to my house!
2: Are you telling me that you did not know there was an all-night booze joint near your house all this time?
1: Yes, I did not know about it and the fellow took me there.
2: I tell you, I am sure these auto driver colonies will be very useful to study and become known to. I am sure they should be having networks of money circulation among them. For all you know, you will get your home loan from these fellows!
1: Yeah, I think so too!
2: Let’s try to study them!

zainab xanga

Is information neutral?

At Bar Camp Bangalore3, people were talking of how information needs to be made available to public. One such form of information that will be made available is lists of registered voters. Now, I have problem with this information about registered voters being made public. In the case of the Sikh riots in Delhi, during the 1992-1993 Bombay riots and also during the Gujarat violence, the rioters made use of electoral rolls to target people. If information about registered voters is made public, online, isn’t there a danger that this information can be misused in ways that may have been unimaginable?

Then, is information neutral?

zainab xanga

Sitting at Bar Camp Bangalore3 http://barcampbangalore.org/wiki/Main_Page (where there is neither a bar nor a camp), the discussions around technology and society lead me to wonder on two counts:

1). Can technology solve problems in society – issues of corruption, inefficiency, etc. which e-governance wants to address;
2). Is this technology-society divide artificial after all?

I sat through some of the sessions today; two of them particularly struck me. The first session was where we began to discuss the impact of ICTs (information and communication technologies) on rural development. The presenter presented the case of ‘one laptop per child’ and then raised the issue of whether ICT can address some of the core issues which cause farmers’ suicides. He pointed out that farmers’ suicides are caused by farmers using genetically modified (GM) seeds because they are ‘illiterate’, farmers engaging in inefficient production methods, lack of physical infrastructure, etc. Just about two weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a person working on organic agriculture on the issue of farmers’ suicides. His point was that farmers are forced to used GMs. Once farmers plant GMs, it affects the soil resulting in poor productivity with each consecutive crop. In the past too, I have heard from farmers themselves that they are forced to used GM seeds. My first reaction to the presenter (though I did not state it in public) was that how can we assume that the farmers are illiterate and therefore they use GMs? Farmers also commit suicide because they are not allowed to fix the prices of their crops and that it is our governments which decide at what rate farmers should sell the potatoes and onions they produce. In the cities, we raise a hue and cry about the prices of commodities (and that teary bulb) going up and then governments attempt to bring down prices, but this directly affects farmers. Farmers are also not allowed to sell their produce to another state. So inter-state sale of produce is not allowed.

When listening to this presenter questioning whether ICTs can address the fundamental issues involved in farmers’ suicides, I asked myself, as technologists/engineers, how much aware are we of the ground situation before we make ‘interventions’ or design ‘ICTs’? Is technology unaware of the power hierarchies/structures/flows of the field in which it will intervene? For who is this transparency, accountability, efficiency for that e-governance is touted as the messiah of? Is it opaque transparency – transparent for some, opaque for others?

The other presentation I sat through was one where a lady was talking about an open source software designed for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) http://www.mifos.com . The software is useful for loan officers of the MFIs who are on the field collecting loans from borrowers in the rural areas. When the lady asked whether she is aware of the problems that microfinance poses for borrowers (high interest rates, lack of control of borrowers over the amounts they borrow, etc.), she said that that apart, the software is good because it is ‘open source’ (which sounded patronizing – ‘we are doing good because we are using open source’!). On listening to her response, I asked myself again whether the producers of the technology are unaware of the field they are operating in? I was at that moment very tempted to criticize this open source software designed for loan collectors because I find aspects of microfinance very problematic – not just the point of high interest rates, but the fact that MFIs do not reveal the hidden costs that are involved in the loans that borrowers borrow, that in cities microfinance is rooted in the complexities of land and land tenures which can have consequences like evictions, etc., but my criticism of the software at that moment would have been completely misdirected.

The divide between society and technology is artificial or should I say absolutely unnecessary because the technology (and its producers) is situated in the very society in which it is located and operating. In areas like governance, technology cannot claim to operate in a completely neutral environment because there are real dynamics of power and what might appear as efficiency created by technology in governance (/administration), can very well be centralization of operations and power. At the same time, I cannot make a blanket criticism of all technology. It can be deployed for subversive purposes which challenge the very power hierarchies and structures which we find authoritarian (like maps created in New York City of areas where CCTV cameras are situated so that people looking at those maps know what areas they can avoid being stared at by the cameras!).

zainab xanga

23/01/2007

 

I was out of Bangalore, traveling.

Received news about riots in East Bangalore from a friend in Bombay.

She asked if everything was okay.

I wondered if everything was okay at all?

Sent a text message to an acquaintance in Bangalore asking if all was well.

He replied saying that you Bombay people become paranoid when you hear about riots.

I yelled back saying and what about you Bangalore people, you are indifferent to trouble.

 

(A boy was killed in East Bangalore in a procession condemning the hanging of Saddam on the first day of the month of Muharram. I still don’t know the details …)

 

ENTER SHIVAJINAGAR this morning …

It is about 12:00 PM. The sun is shining bright. It has been my intention to walk around Shivajinagar market and begin the year’s writings from here. So here I enter Shivajinagar, amidst an odd silence and a white Rapid Action Force (RAF) van zooming past me. The place might appear normal. But certainly this silence is not normal. Some tension is looming in the air. The normalness is not about the silence; it is about the tension.

 

Standing in his shop is a young Muslim boy, dark skinned, running the machine to serve sugarcane juice to a waiting customer. I ask for coconut water. He seems like a pleasant, amiable fellow. As I sip the coconut water, I ask him if there is tension in the market. “ Raada idhar mein nahi hua, udhareech hua, mere ghar ke paas! ” I asked him if he was suggesting that the trouble broke out in Cantonment area and not in the market and he said that was the case. The trouble broke out close to his house. “ Abhi baraah baje maloom padega kya hua! ” I paid him and went off inside the market.

 

I am not sure how to map out the market to you. It’s a vast place, incompatible with what I had imagined it to be. It has various hues and colours, perhaps many histories, memories and of course, there are multiple identities here. I see Muslim women walking, Christian women walking, and South Indian women walking. There are police vans and army vans near the Ave Maria church. I am quite surprised that these are stationed here instead of around the Jumma Masjid which is also in the market. But then, I have never understood the logic of security and protection.

 

Shivajinagar is made up of several streets. There is the Central Street. There is a Chettty street which I avoided today. I went all around the Ave Maria church to discover a world within Bangalore which I was unaware of. I walked down from Central Street and watched all the shops and their wares. There were lots of clothes, some in shops, some outside the shops on the streets. There were hawkers, some stationery, some mobile. One hawker had displayed his minimum wares on a motorbike parked in the street and was negotiating with a customer from that space. The back side of the wall of the Bowring Hospital is occupied by hawkers who have displayed their clothes-wares on the wall. There are Tibetan women sitting there, selling woolens. On the opposite side are cane crafts and furniture shops, engaging in export and import of their wares. I can’t say that the density here is that of Bombay markets, but there is a peculiar sense of time that I feel here, a time of the past, a present of that past, a future … perhaps … who knows!

 

I emerge out of the market by moving towards the bus stand. Opposite me is ‘Singapore Wares Shop’ selling Chinese goods and a little distance away is the Bombay Chowpatty Kulfi and Bhelpuri. A little away is a poster carrying Saddam’s picture saying something to the effect of:

“Saddam is the friend of India

We pray for World Peace

Down with George Bush, Tony Blair and global imperialism!”

 

As I walk out from Central Street, I notice yet another white RAF van. All through this visit to Shivajinagar today I have navigated through feelings. And here, with another RAF van passing by, I ask myself if I feel a sense of numb indifference, a product of the memories of the Bombay riots of 1992-1993, watching several RAF vehicles then. Who knows! It’s either paranoia or indifference …

 

Towards the end of Central Street is a wall with posters of South Indian films. One of the film posters has an English subtitle saying ‘feel of flow’. Yeah, perhaps walking through this city will give me a feel of the flow.

 

A Pakistani acquaintance had once said to me that you Bombay people don’t walk; you simply look for transport. As the year commences, I am testing the strength of my feet, the tenacity of my heels. (And then in the BMTC bus which I board to go back home I find a boy sitting in front of me, his feet naked, caked with dirt, perhaps finding solace in the bus ride). Let’s see how far I can write with my feet.

 

Adios!

 

zainab xanga

20/01/07

This evening I watched Mani Ratnam’s ‘Guru’. Perhaps loosely framed around the story of Dhirubhai Ambani, the story has an ambiguous position towards ‘capitalism’.

Gurukant Desai (Abhishek Bachan) hails from a village in Gujarat. Having failed his final year school exams, he goes off to Turkey on a job offer. After seven years of progress, he decides that he will work for himself and come back to his village. He marries his friend’s elder sister Sujata (Aishwarya Rai) and invests the dowry money in business. His wife, now brother-in-law and he come to Bombay and start trading in textiles. Guru faces the hurdles of starting his business including corruption, bureaucracy and power. In the process he meets the owner of the newspaper Independent (Mithun Chakravarthy) who is referred to as Nanaji. Nanaji is a communist who believes in writing the truth. For Guru, Mithun is father figure. In the relationship that Mithun and Guru share, we see the tension between capitalism and socialism/communism.I am not even sure what Mithun’s own position is because in the beginning of the movie, he scolds Abhishek for staring at the building he lives in and later comes out as a professed socialist!

Guru goes on to start his textile factory where he produces polyester. He runs his business on the basis of public equity. He is given gifts of land by ministers. He fakes his exports to gain license. He runs two factories under permit to run one. And he establishes the country’s most successful company.

Mithun vows to reveal the corruption behind Guru’s success and get his reporter (played by Madhavan) to do stories about Guru’s business malpractices.

Guru starts to doubt whether he is a businessman or a thug. He is struck by paralysis and is served a court notice on 39 charges. Finally, in the court, he defends himself by saying that when he started his business, he faced corruption, bureaucratic hurdles, did not know what customs was, what excise was, what income tax was. He says he knows only how to do business which is what he has done and has successfully established the biggest company in India. In this respect, if he has defaulted here and there, it is for the benefit of the people of India who have also profited from his success.

The courtroom drama leaves a lot to be sorted out in our own heads. Does this film mean to say that for the country’s development and for the sake of the nation, anything is fair in business? Somehow the film is itself confused. While it wants to glorify Dhirubhai Ambani for taking the country on the path of progress, it cannot deny the malpractices that have been involved in the building of the Reliance empire. But for the sake of the nation, we are willing to overlook the malpractices is what the film comes out as saying.

This film is definitely different from a Swades type, it still remains confused in what it wants to say. If global monopoly is problematic, isn’t national monopoly equally not acceptable? Is it possible to tell a story of an ordinary entrepreneur without getting into the trap of narrating the story of national development? Who is the entrepreneur after all?

zainab xanga

Bangalore!
City!
Space!

It has been about five or close to six months since I have been in
Bangalore, peppered with three trips to Bombay. I am wondering if I can
say that now is the time when my writing will pick up, but let us see
…

So what is a city and what is Bangalore I would say, for now, that the
city is a space. It is a space that I carve for myself. And I can
fairly say that a great part of this space is prodiced by perception.
So my perception of this space is different from yours!

So what is Bangalore? Reflecting back on the last five or nearly six
months, I feel I have still not been able to capture the texture of
this city. Perhaps that is also because I have not developed much
liking for Bangalore. And here I am in a position of a migrant who has
these ambiguous feelings about home and journeys. I reside here in
Bangalore with an anxiety about my sex, that I am female. I dare not
say gender because that takes us in different domains. So I am female
in this city. I get marked here as a Muslim but that marking has a very
different context and texture to it, a different (social) fabric.

I decided to live in Thilaknagar which has a history of Muslim-Tamil
conflicts. I had hoped that living here would help me find my words but
that did not come to be. Instead, I interestingly navigated thourgh the
dilemmas of property. A daily wage laborer sleeping in the garage
downstairs causing immense anxiety to my landlord that this might
become his permanent space of occupation. Children from the
neighbouring areas climb up on the terrace to fly kites and I wonder
why other people’s terraces are not made kite flying battlefields?!?! I
find an anonymous clothesline tied from the gate of my house in my
absence and I rethink occupation. I have to lock all open doors in this
two storey building and I wonder about freedom and the city. My
neighbours can take my space for granted. Each of these experiences
have revealed my attitudes, vulnerabilities, tensions, anxieties, etc.
towards property. And I emerge from among these with fresh confusions,
tensions, anger, amusement, violence and surprise!

Experiences in Bangalore have revealed the importance of public
transport in experiencing the city in similar and dissimilar ways. I
also look at ways in which people interact, what are these spaces where
people gather to interact and I find for now that the spaces are
private, domestic.

To conclude for the day, there is one experience which I find worth
sharing. Some days ago I was traveling all over the city and was
virtually fed up and angry with the auto drivers, expensive auto fares,
the monopoly and attitude of auto drivers, and lack of public
transport. I felt this city is worth giving up!
At abou 3 PM, I descended on R. K. Hospital canteen to wolf down a meal
of rice-bhat. Standing, eating his meal, by the side, was a very old
man. I watched his reflection in the mirror. He was eating with great
effort. Perhaps he had lost some amount of his teeth. He looked tired
and worn out by age. He made sobbing noises as he ate. In his
reflection, I looked inside myself and realized that this man’s
suffering could not be greater than mine, that his sorrow could not be
beyond mine.
To this day, I live with the image of his reflection, giving hope to
myself that  am yet to discover humanity, I am yet to discover the
Bangalore (and perhaps I am hinging closer to my words)!

Welcome to the new year!
Welcome back to citybytes!
(Home is where the words are!)

zainab xanga

I have let my fingers loose.

This evening, I am a conduit for the words
that come through me.

 

The other night it rained.

4th T Block.

 

I walk past the lane,

Everyday,

4th T Block.

By the corner is a house,

Grey,

(Ugly)

Beyond the planner’s discipline,

Beyond the architect’s plans and
elevations,

Built of desires,

Built of prosperity,

4th T Block.

 

She sits outside the house,

Lights the wooden sticks,

4th T Block.

She keeps the stomachs churning,

4th T Block.

Her grey (ugly) house by the corner of the
street.

She stokes the fires,

As those wooden sticks burn,

4th T Block.

 

The other night it rained,

4th T Block.

The wind blew and blew,

And it poured torrentially,

4th T Block.

I began my ascend on the staircase,

4th T Block.

As I climbed the first few,

I saw some of her wooden sticks that the
wind had brought into my (rented) abode.

Those wooden sticks, that fire stoked, the
food cooked,

Some pieces of her wooden sticks,

4th T Block.

 

Strangers in a by-lane,

Strangers in a city,

Will the wind make our acquaintance?

Will the wind cultivate our relationship?

4th T Block.

Will I ever know her?

4th T Block.

Will she be a stranger forever?

4th T Block.

My stomach is churning …

She stokes the fires,

4th T Block.

 

I wonder how strangers meet in a city. What
spaces does the city afford for interactions between strangers? Public
transport is one such space, but this space also gets encroached by images and
prejudices, often circulated by popular media.

 

The other night I was at Nariman Point. The
space seemed totally different or should I say indifferent. Somehow, its
character appears to me as if it has changed. Maybe I am trying to read too
much …

 

Are spaces for interactions between
strangers shrinking in our cities???

zainab xanga

BACK TO BANGALORE

 

One day …

 It’s amazing how many Muslim women I notice
in Bangalore,
clad in the black veil called the burkha.
I notice them frequently, walking on the roads and in the BMTC buses.

 I wonder what it feels to be Muslim in Bangalore …

 The other day in the BMTC bus …

It was bus number 27. I sat on a seat meant
for two persons. At some point, a lady who I assume was Tamilian came over and sat
next to me. She appeared pleasant and social. She was praying the rosary. I
deducted she was Christian

(overt symbols, semiotic markings, making
sense of masses in the urban)

and most likely not Brahmin.

 At the fourth block bus station, the bus
started to get crowded. A tall, well-built woman came and stood by our seat. I
assumed that she was Tamilian because she was wearing the white ash spread over
three lines on her forehead. She was Hindu (perhaps Brahmin) and had a staunch
and stern look on her face. The Tamilian Christian woman started to say
something in Tamil. She then gestured to the well-built Tamilian Hindu lady to
sit next to her. She began to squeeze in a bit, moved, solpa, solpa, and
eventually, we were three women sitting on a seat meant for two. Our Tamilian
Christian lady, the one who made space, was evidently the most uncomfortable,
but she was happy that she had made space for the other lady to sit. She began
to chat with me in Tamil.

I don’t comprehend Tamil, but I do
comprehend emotions and gestures and hence, was making some sense of what she
was saying to me. She spoke to me of the Church, the priest in the church and
maybe the importance of completing the rosary daily. After a while, she asked
me where I was headed for. Shivajinagar, I said. Immediately she asked,
‘Muslim?’ I was a trifle shocked that she had ‘caught’ me as a Muslim. I shook
my head, saying no.

That evening, I wondered whether my looks
were a give-away or just stating that I was headed for Shivajinagar was the
give-away. I assume the latter to be true. Shivajinagar is a large market area,
filled with meat shops and wood furniture trade. It is a Muslim area. I find
that most of the women on bus numbers 27 and 27E who are headed for
Shivajinagar are Muslim women. But an equal number are not Muslim and are still
headed for Shivajinagar. Then what makes me marked as Muslim? What is it to be Muslim?

 

Then the other day …

It was raining heavily. The door downstairs
was locked. I had no way to reach to the house. I stood downstairs, looking
like a cat drenched in the rains. The shopkeeper on the other side gestured to
me to get inside the store room to protect myself. Then he gestured to switch
on the lights. I could not find the exact switch. One of the boys came in and
tried to find the switch. On discovering that there was no light in there after
all, he went away and joined the bunch of boys. In a few minutes, some of the boys
in the bunch asked me to get inside the opposite door neighbour’s house. I ran
across the street.

 (The house opposite is interesting. It has
been designed and created by its inhabitants. It consists of a row of one room
tenements on one side and some store space on the other side and perhaps a
toilet too. In between is a passageway which runs across the tenements. All of
this is covered by a tin roof which is partitioned such that it covers the
tenements’ portion on one side, is open in between through the passageway, and
then covers the other side. The rain keeps pouring in the house through the
open section of the roof.)

 I knocked on the door. The neighbour’s
daughter opened the door. The boys shouted out to her saying that they must let
me in till the rain stops or someone comes and opens the door downstairs,
whichever is first. The daughter let me in. She can converse in English, unlike
her mother who largely speaks Tamil and some amount of broken Hindi.

I call the mother Amma and the daughter
Sunee.

Sunee asked me where I am from. We chatted
a bit about my background. I asked her about some of hers. Eventually Sunee
asked me, which god do you pray to? I smiled. Muslim, I said. Oh, Sunee replied
back, if you stay here, you will be able to manage because there are lots of
Muslims here. I smiled again. Sunee communicated to Amma that I was Muslim.
Amma smiled and spoke rapidly. Sunee then translated back, Amma thought you
were Christian. I smiled. Sunee mentioned that her family is Christian. I told
her that I’d like to come to the church some day with them.

 Amma thought you were Christian.

if you stay here, you will be able to
manage because there are lots of Muslims here.

 Sunee’s words appeared schizophrenic to me
because I live in a schizophrenia of identity and to some extent, a paranoia
too. Sunee says I will be able to manage because there are lots of Muslims in
this neighbourhood. Then Sunee says that Amma thought I was Christian. And here
is precisely where my schizophrenia strikes. I dress differently as against
conventional Muslims. I barely behave like a Muslim. Among Muslims, I am an
outsider.

 An outsider!

 Schizophrenia!

 Paranoia!

 I stand on borders I don’t know of.

 Precarity, on the edge.

 Identity, affiliation.

 Outsider I feel and perhaps remain. It
reminds me of my times when I walk through the lanes of Imambada where I see
myself clearly as an outsider, by custom, manners, demeanor. And maybe others
see me as an outsider too.

 Mumbai-Bangalore

Tilaknagar is in Bangalore. Imambada and Dongri in Mumbai.
Both places are different. Being Muslim in Mumbai is a tactile experience,
perhaps emerging magnifies owing to the density and crowdedness in this city.
But as I walk through the now familiar lanes of Tilaknagar, I also conclude
that the experience of being Muslim in Dongri and Imambada and the texture and
tactility which comes along with it is embedded in memory. For me, these are
vivid memories of the 1992-1993 communal riots in (the then) Bombay. While I was not living in those areas
at the time of the riots, my childhood affiliation with the place and the
marked identity of being Muslim add to the sense of tactility and that texture
(which I guess is lined with inherent paranoia) which I experience as I
navigate through Dongri and Imambada.

 I don’t know Tilaknagar yet. But I do know
that it has a history and like Dongri and Imambada, it continues to be a marked
space – space for rumour, riot and mischief, linked with everyday life,
practices, the print media and people’s memory/ies.

 I don’t know what it is to be Muslim in Bangalore.

 THE END.

zainab xanga