Note Book of Ordinary Things 5: Lonely Cold Water Machines

Crowds are not mysterious even if crowds do not have any face. If crowds carry flags or weapons we identify them as the part of some groups about to create social unrest or lynch someone. Crowds going towards a common cause to build or rebuild a society is a thing of past now. They do not even deconstruct a society or nation, they simply destroy it. That’s why I say that crowds do not have any mystery. But lonely things are mysterious. Imagine a lonely tree in the middle of a vast stretch of barren land. Look at a lonely kingfisher waiting broodingly on an electric line. Follow the flow of a lonely bird up there in the sky. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahans got his first shock of enlightenment when he saw a flock of birds darting across a sky laden with rain clouds. But for him neither the clouds nor the birds were a crowd. The first wave of enlightenment was triggered in him because he saw the whole vision as singular unity; a lonely thing. Imagine such a scenario; alone in the vastness you stand confronting the immensity of nature. Yes, it was felt by Galileo, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, Chaplin, Gandhiji, Tagore and all those creative people. As you know the lonely figures are the most mysterious visions in the world.

 While walking back to home at night I see this ‘Machine ka Danda Pani’ (Cold Water Machine) cart locked up to nothing and standing alone on the way side. Nobody is around and nobody is there to give or take water from it. The aluminium surface of the box fitted with wheels reflects the innumerable headlights of the vehicles that rush back to the welcoming hearths and homes. I stand there for some time and take a photograph and wonder whether it could be lifted off by the municipality vehicle and would be lost forever to the person who owns it or ekes out a living from it. But the relationships of the people who run wayside business are very intricate; they are more complex than the veins in the living body. The florist under metro bridge perhaps must be the caretaker of this ‘Machine’ for the night. He must be paying to the police a handsome bribe to continue his semi-permanent business there under the bridge. And he in turn must be taking an amount from the Machine Water owner and keeping a portion of it in his pocket and giving the rest to the police or the local goons who own the footpaths in the cities.

Recently in Kolkata I saw a provision store in a busy market near Belur where a roaring business was underway. Right outside the store, on the floor on either side of the store, I saw two people selling the same provisions (rice, sugar, jiggery, condiments and spices) from small jars and containers. There too people were thronging to buy things. I found the arrangement intriguing but to my analytical mind it became quite clear in a moment. I noticed the clothes that the people wearing up there at the store front and the one who stand at the wayside provision dispensing. Obviously the people at the shop front were decently dressed and were able to pay for the ‘shop price’ and those who stand down there cannot pay that so they get lesser quality stuff from the wayside but sold by the same shop owner through two of his subordinates. That means the shop owner was not losing any business to anyone else. He was in a way monopolizing the provision market through interesting decentralisation of sales. Cities are like that with its own ways of networking for survival.

 I have seen the ‘Machine Ka Danda Pani’ people coming from the fringes, the slums from where the so called middle class would never drink water or eat food not because they maintain some sort of caste system but because of the lack of hygiene. Look at any cities and its merry places. Machine ka Danda Pani and ice cream carts come from these places. They store their ice creams in the refrigerators fitted into custom made mopeds. Nobody knows from where the water in the Machine Ka Danda Pani comes. They claim that it is clean water. They use ice blocks to cool it and nobody knows how reliable these ice chunks are. But in the scorching summer people drink it. People relish ice creams from these ice cream vendors. Does anybody remember the faces of these ice cream vendors and water dispensers? Behind these wheeled machines they sit hidden like birds behind the foliages. The neon lights that lit up these machines and the charts of different varieties of ice creams, which the children of these vendors would never able to taste regularly, hide these vendors face. We are not living in the days of Kabuli Walas who have been immortalized by Rabindranath Tagore in his famous story. But these vendors are without faces.

However, I am interested in the lonely vehicles that they push back to their homes. They are mysterious. The lonely lights that move towards the fringes of the cities, to the slums and to the one room holes where they hide rather than live throughout the night and once again come back to light at the day break, are mysterious. I have seen lonely horse carriages, all decorated but with no procession to follow it, with no bride or king on it, but going back from a marriage ceremony or from  a seashore to the fringe localities where they live. It is too much an overwhelming scene to see a lit of horse carriage going through the corridor of darkness. I have seen it in art; Salvador Dali has done a painting titled ‘The Phantom Cart’. Similarly you see the lonely shadows and lonely girl running in the works of Chirico. Look at the painting of a bar girl in Renoir. She is in a crowded bar tending the needs of the thirsty ones. But in a moment she is alone and too absorbed. Any portrait is a lonely portrait, when the artist is able to catch the loneliness of the sitter in the likeness.

I do not know what would happen to that Machine Ka Danda Pani cart. They disappear from the city roads when summer recedes. They would be stacked up somewhere in the chawls; like their owners they would be chained to the other carts. The owners too are chained to their friends and the situations in which they live. The chains are so strong to break therefore they are not stolen. For almost six months they sit idle. Then they come back to the street. Nobody knows the water people drink for two rupees per glass is coming from an unclean and invisible tank which has been untouched for six months. Still people drink this water. One night as I was walking back to home from a Metro station, a lonely boy called me out from behind this machine; “Uncle, have a glass of water, just two rupees.” He was making a last minute sales pitch. I smiled at him and walked off. I never had water from these machines because...I still do not know is it a sense of hygiene or lack of faith in poor people.

Note Book of Ordinary Things 4: Telawalas, the Roadside Vendors

Four wobbling wheels, a rickety platform and something on it to sell. In this side of the country it is called Tela. Those wonders who sell vegetables, fruits, peanuts, golgappas, ice creams and so on together and alone make a moving market. With the corner shops closing and paving way to the organized supermarkets and international markets with franchise showrooms, these telas come to be seen as alternative market place. In the text books of cultural studies we see how the alternatives slowly turning into mainstream forces but in real life the mainstream of yesteryears turns into alternative these days. Telawalas were erstwhile mainstream market vendors. They used to come to a locality confidently, sell their wares and go back. Often they made friends with the local people and housewives waited for their favourite vendor to sell vegetables and fruits.

I do not say that today the telawalas are completely gone but I am sure they are a vanishing lot; a species at the verge of extinction. Telawalas still have that beautiful theory of makeshift markets. They could change a road into a temporary market place; a play ground or a parking lot could turn into a weekly market when the telawalas gather there with their wares. Somehow the municipalities, corporations and the policemen seem to be not so keen to have them in the streets as before. They are periodically chased away, brutalized and at times manhandled as if they were petty criminals. These policemen take bribe from them and when there is pressure from the higher officers either to keep the streets in order or to fetch more bribe, the telawalas are terrorized. The people who gather around these hapless men and women are mute witnesses of these police atrocities. Men and women with loving and waiting families back in some far off places, at the distant site of the Khakhi uniform push their carts and run away to the side alleys as the frightened animals hide behind bushes and rocks to save themselves from the preying beasts.

These telawalas used to live somewhere around. They used to live inside the towns and cities, in small holes devoid of basic living conditions, still hoping to make it big one day in the city. With the arrival of flyovers and metros and also with the general beautification of the cities, these itinerant vendors are now pushed out of the cities. They are literally taken away from the cities and dumped in the outskirts of the cities from where they have to push their carts for kilometres to reach the places where people inhabit. Vegetables and fruits are bought by people, not by trees and bushes or the vast expanses of dumping yards that these people have to cross in order to enter the cities. Those people who have cars and other vehicles go to the organized markets to buy things without looking at the price tags. But the poor people still depend on these telawalas who would sell things in a decent price because they know those who come to buy are also like them. You may have a different opinion about it. Telawalas too over charge; they too bully the buyers. They do this when they know that the buyer is from middle class and the haggling is just their second nature.

In one of the very good novels of the 21^st century so far is ‘A Strangeness in My Mind’. Written by the Nobel Prize winning novelist, Orhan Pamuk, this novel has its protagonist, Mevlut who is a Boza seller. Boza is a Turkish traditional low alcoholic drink which the vendors like Mevlut say contains no alcohol at all. Before the ‘thirst market’ was monopolised by the multinational corporations with their aerated drinks, there were drinks like Boza that used to cool off many a citizen in many a country. Mevlut tries different businesses including chicken-rice selling and ice cream vending. Each time he does it some sort of calamity affects him and he finally has to go back to his Boza selling. He calls out Bozaaa along the darkening alleys of Istambul (Boza is an evening drink mostly) while carrying the jars of Boza hanging from a bamboo staff kept across his shoulders. The old timers call Mevlut to their homes only because they want to taste the nostalgic drink and listen to the Boza teller talking about the streets of Istambul. Some people ask him to call ‘Bozaaa’ just to transport themselves back to the good old days. Mevlut knows that one day he has to end this business too.

 In between Mevlut tries his hand at selling chicken rice. And one day he parks his ‘tela’ near a shade and goes away for some work. When he comes back the cart is missing. The municipality has confiscated it. Now, using his friend’s influence he goes to the dumping garage of such confiscated carts where he finds hundreds of such carts. He is unable to find his one. There is a very touching scene when he comes back to his home. His daughters wait for him to come and when they see that their beloved cart is not with him, they break down. I am sure in several homes in cities and towns children must be breaking down when they see their fathers and mothers coming back home without their telas. Many of the vendors must be finding it difficult to get their carts back from the municipalities. Who knows about them? We do not have time to think about them. We do not have time to think about the farmers who grow vegetables, rice and wheat for us. We do not know those small scale poultry owners. We know only about the soldiers fighting at the borders. We are so proud of them while we don’t give a damn about our farmers and telawalas.

Each time I see a telawala I remember Mevlut. After reading the novel last year, I forgot what I used to think about the telawalas before. Now a days I think only of Mevlut and his father and many other father who come to the city of Istambul from rural Turkey in search of a job in the city and most of them end of up in selling Boza. We wonder whether these people have a story or not. We are taught to give ear to the story of people with some consequences. But there are inconsequential people whose lives are richer and complex than those of those rich and powerful people. If life is an intrigue for the rich and the powerful, for the poor it is a riddle that they want to find an answer. But for us, the middle class it always a straight line story with an end that we have already thought of (even if the ending is always contrary to our belief). The happy ending and happy hours lead the middle class. But for the telawalas it is a story that looks alike day after day but so complex, varied and dark. Dostoevsky, Dickens, Okri, Pamuk, Roy and so on are such writers who go under and see the underbelly of cities and recount stories from there. Giving voice to the voiceless is one of the prime duties of art. Unfortunately, our artists and novelists fail in this even if they see the telavals being chased each time out of the alleys that lead to the respectable colonies where they live.

  (photographs by Sushma Sabnis)

Note Book of Ordinary Things 3: Flower Pots on the Window Sill

 A few flower pots in the window sill or on the space that hangs between immeasurable depths and heavens. Opening one’s eyes in the morning to such a simple sight in the world is quite a soothing one. But unfortunately most of us do not that, not because that we do not want to do that but because for many balconies have become the places where the discarded furniture and other household items are stored. In the busiest of lives that we lead we do not find time to sit in the balconies and take a look at the world around. Even if we try, we have this terrible feeling of others looking into our privacies as much as we do into theirs. Our windows in the cities have become grills from where unacknowledged undergarments dry incessantly. In pairs and alone they appear flaunting the world about the mood and choice of the days that have just gone by. The gaping passersby do not get enough time to register therefore the windows of the  apartments become a jumble of well spread rags of different colours as if they were the victorious flags of our dreary lives.

In such situations opening our eyes to a few flower pots with plants and flowers with fresh colours, well tended, loved, cared and talked is a great feeling. But most of the English speaking and English reading people in the world have now forgotten the idea of seeing the world through the plants and flowers. You should be super rich or super laid back to have such a luxury. A majority wakes up with an irritation for their faithful alarm clocks’ relentless reminders. The days look so distant when a dear or near one wakes you up with a glass of tea, a smile and a kiss. Even in films such scenes are carefully deleted. I do not say that the woman should serve the man with a cup of tea, smile, a hug or a kiss. It could be the other way round too. People sleep inside air tight rooms with their air-conditioners on so that the first thing that you wake up is to the noise of the air conditioner. Then to the irritation and then to the hurry to get somewhere. Who cares to look at the flowers or plants or flower pots?

You may argue that to have a look at a plant or a flower you need to have the luxury of a relaxed life. But who has denied you of that relaxation? Having a job, a couple of children or having a huge responsibility of running an institution etc cannot be a hindrance to look at a plant or flower at the window sill. Relaxation is within you; not outside. You have a pair of eyes and a mind to look at and understand things. Looking at plants and flowers would make you a better human being. You don’t need to have a terrace garden or a real garden to do that. You can just look at the small little weed sprouting there at the way side or at the parapet. If you are too caring, you can have a few flower pots.

There are people who say that only those who remain at home could think of keeping some flower pots at their window sill. Rest of the people do not have time. I have seen people who are having very hectic life during the day still nurturing plants in their homes. I have also seen people who are devoid of any work and spend a lot of time at home even do not look at the empty window sills or the flower pots there kept by somebody else. Let me tell you these plants and flower pots are not just plants and flower pots. They are a frame and a pair of spectacles to the world. You could see the world better once you see the scene framed and bordered by these brittle and humble beings on the earth. Without attributing any religious or ecological meaning to it you could have them; what you need to see is the happiness quotient. There are still people in the villages who start their daily chores only after worshipping the trees; the remnants of a pagan life but how beautiful it is!

The other day I was looking at a few video clippings from West Bengal where both the Hindus and Muslims had taken out processions with weapons in hand to prove their strength and might. Faceless men and women clad in saffron (they outnumbered the green ones in the other videos) wielding weapons in hands went on baying for the blood of their enemies. None cared to ask who was their enemy? I am sure those people in the videos just don’t care about the plants or flowers even if they have a lot in their homes; even if those women do have kids and they do wear flowers in their hair buns. How many times we could tell them (the way Kabir and Tagore had said) that the God that they are fighting for is not there and that God has left long back to the refugee camps. To see the God one should look at the plants at the window sill or elsewhere. Once you see their tenderness and you understand that your life is not that different from those plants, then you wouldn’t ask for the blood of your enemy because there would be no enemy left in the world in that state of mind. Foolish are those people who come out in the street to show strength of their religion. They are blind and mentally challenged people for the mentally healthy ones are those who lead peaceful life elsewhere creating art, music, dance and literature or simply looking at life flowing by.

Note Book of Ordinary Things 2: Children and Light in the Alleys

  

The photograph that you see here is taken at night though it does not look so. In the city that I live, especially in the alleys similar to this one has such lights installed by the Government of Delhi. These lights almost turn the night into day, giving each alleyway the look of a floodlit stadium where a nightly game is on. Under these lights only children come out to play. Men and women no longer come out to share their woes and gossips for these lights expose them too much and the ones who have sorrows need some cover and shadows to hide themselves. Men and women goaded by primitive memories of moon light and the recent memories of power cuts prefer to gather under dim lights than such flood lights.

I asked somebody who knows everything about such alleys about the sudden arrival of such strong lights. He told me that it is to prevent youngsters from making the dead end of such alleys into dens of drugs, sex, mischief and theft. Each house, even if they look dilapidated and desolate in their newness (the old ones have been broken down for redeveloping) has a surveillance camera fitted to their balconies and looking at the computer screen divided into a few frames of grey visuals is becoming a much cherished pastime especially for the bored girls who have been either forced out of schools and colleges or whose marriages have been fixed and are heavily into day dreaming or who are simply bored of looking at their smart phone screens. Only the men folks of such houses look at the monitor once in a while with seriousness. Before they go to sleep they definitely watch the monitor as if they were the old emperors looking for invaders from the hinterlands.

These were the same alleys that once remained the narrow corridors of varied activities. But now everyone with a redeveloped house feels much better about themselves as they are having western commodes to shit and gas stoves to cook. Modernity has an absolutely different meaning in these quarters, it seems. For them modernity seems to be withdrawing into the innards of homes and watch the world through the CCTV grabs. The world has turned against them. The dirty grey world out there is constantly on a look out for a chance to thievery. These CCTVs give a chance to counter voyeurism. You don’t like a voyeur peep into your bedroom or bathroom. But you like to peep out into the whole world through your grainy little monitors.

This is the dead end of the alley where children gather to play. From any first floor window in any part of the city you would get a sort of bird’s eye view of the place. You could just stand at the window and watch the world in killing day light and blinding flood lights with the arrival of night. Counting children who come out to play is an interesting pastime for me. Each summer I count them and surprisingly their numbers are increasing. In this summer I counted twenty two of them; two full cricket or football teams from a single alley. But they do not play football and cricket alone. Like a drop of ink fallen into a glass of water, they take different shapes and device different kinds of games. While a group of comparatively elder children watch them over. Girls teach girls their girly games. Boys teach boys their boyish games. Boys huddle up share some terribly secret things and disperse as if they were statesmen of a few warring countries while the girls cuddle up each other and giggle and take leave with a smile on their lips, mischief in their eyes and a spring in their heels.

 I ask myself whether these lights are good or not. I had seen children playing under the good old yellow light which are called ‘street lights’. When they played under street lights each of them had a shadow to run around with them. Those shadows used to have some kind of life of their own. Sometimes I used to think that the shadows would separate themselves from the children and go to play on their own. But these shadows cast by the white lights are not impressive as they used to be with the yellow lights. These shadows remain with the children always; walk as they walk and run as they run. They look afraid of losing these children in the other end of the alleyway. So they keep a watch, remain closer to the ground and try to be happy. Brittle as they are, children show a lot of resilience to survive the light. They look like forms made up of white biscuits and dark chocolates. They could break and melt at any time. But they know how to preserve themselves even in the direst of the conditions.

From the other window I see the sky. I could see a lot of sky from all the windows a couple of years back. But now the sky has hidden itself behind the buildings. The forms of the sky that I see always stand above the huge synthetic water tanks on the tall building, as if it was looking into the tank to check the water level. The eagle that had hit at my head a few weeks back tells me that somewhere there is a sky. I train my eyes to see it and I see strangely shaped sky here and there. But the eagle does not show sky alone. It indicates there is garbage dumb somewhere near. Eagles survey the land and land where they find garbage or butcher shops. These days they do not go to the butcher shop to have some meat because butchers have become now ordinary people and new butchers have taken to the streets. They would butcher anybody who could be a potential butcher. So the eagles look for dead animals and they are sure they too are dumped somewhere in these garbage bins. Luckily the Government has carefully avoided flooding that area with white lights therefore you just need to smell the way out, not necessarily see the trash that perhaps you yourself have dumped in the morning and escaped the vigilant eyes of the cows, dogs, crows, eagles and rag pickers who don’t look different from these animals and birds.

You may not find such places exciting. But I do not think that the places that have been regimented including the fun parks and malls have anything to offer in terms of excitement. I silently walk through the streets and I find only fear lurking there. Death whizzes past me at any given moment so I keep very close to the broken boundary walls that smell with ammonia emanating from the urine of men and women. I come back to the lonely room which is quite comfortable with my computer, books, desk, chair and everything in place. What a soothing feeling it is to get back to where you belong! I open the window and look out. Yes, the children have come to play.  

Note Book of Ordinary Things 1: Never Say Discard

  

In many an article, I have expressed my displeasure for accumulating things with the complete belief that I am devoid of that sin of hoarding. I see hoarding as a middleclass thing, the remnant of its lower middle class status, the inability to shed the last trace of its deprivations and parsimony. Right from banking and co-operative movements to lottery, piggy bank to art collections, accumulating has many dimensions. The Rich amass wealth and it becomes an obsession, a time pass. The poor want to do the same and it becomes an occupation. In between, both the groups accumulate things. The rich ones collect souvenirs, artefacts, works of art, perfumes, liquors, silks, stones, precious metals, cruise boats, private jets, cars, pets and so on. The poor ones collect bus tickets, used refills, old clothes, milk covers, polythene bags, egg shells and what not. While the former collects things for enjoyment, the latter collects it for a possible future use (which perhaps never comes). Children collect matchbox stickers, superhero cards, toys, candy foils and so on (I am talking from a very old experience). Lovers collect lovers, broken bangles, kerchiefs, dreams, tears, sighs and at times hair. Brooding ones collect stamps, coins and curious information. Smart ones just collect information so that they could keep their neck up in any situation.

Freud calls it anal retention. Any collector has this habit of holding the shit back up in the posterior. They just do not want to leave it. Freud was perhaps utterly unromantic. Walter Benjamin did not think so. For him collecting was a sort of memorialisation of life. It has a lot to do with history. Benjamin is acceptable because he does not reek with the smell of shit. Freud is down to earth and calls a shit, a shit. People hoard things because there are a lot of memories attached to each of the collected items. I am talking about a conscious collector; not the ones who invest in a work of art or the mothers religiously collecting milk covers. Both of them never use it. The art collector who invests in art never enjoys what he has just picked up from the galleries or studios. The mothers would never put the milk covers back into use. At times they wonder why they do it. You can show off a Husain on your wall even if it is a bad print. But you cannot flaunt your milk covers or egg shells. The best policy is to throw what you do not need after use. Do not collect.

But people do not do it because they attach a lot of memory to the things that they collect. When they look at something, they just remember from where they have got it and who was with them and what had prompted the collecting of it. It is beautiful to remember things past; some memories are painful but far removed from the time of happening, even the painful memories lose their pain part in retrospection. That’s called philosophical distance/distancing. The mad man on the road who collects rubbish and ties them to his body must be carrying a lot of memory with him. The memory of scavenging. But who said it is scavenging? For him, he must be digging for gold or exploring in to the annals of history which we fail to see in the rubbish and rubble. What else do historians do in the research centres and in their private studies. They look like these mad men but in good clothes with a lot of invisible burden. I like both the parties. They generate a lot of interest.

Except books I do not hoard anything. I collect books not for the sake of collecting but for reading. People have offered me books which I have politely declined at times as those many not be of my interest. Those people who do the spring cleaning at times think of giving me some books upon hearing that I collect books. But when they come and see the collection I have they shy away without talking about their charity offering again. I am not a dump yard of books. However, I salivate when I hear about books. Even if you have had enough food to quench your hunger when you are given some delicious dessert you would think of stuffing your mouth again. That’s the case with me as far as books are concerned. But in the case of other things, be it clothes or anything else, I have been thinking of myself as a person devoid of that hoarding vice. Recently I was cursorily going through the stuff and I found out the following.

In a corner of my bed room I found three pairs of foot wears. Nothing great about it because I have heard of people having quite a good number of shoes, not just Imelda Marcos of Philippines and Jayalalita of Tamil Nadu; my friends, artists, who have shelves full of foot wear. I saw these three pairs and was shocked. One pair I had never worn which is now filled with dust. One pair of walking shoes is in a dilapidated state. Another pair of walking shoes lies there waiting for me to push my feet into it next time. That pair of shoes has not informed of my techniques of doing my morning walks or evening walks without foot wear. Then I came across these small little pouches and covers of washing powder and bathing soaps inside the bathroom cupboard, reminding me the number of times I have washed my clothes. I do not have a washing machine. I dance on wet clothes for fifteen minutes and I get my exercise and the clothes get their adequate thrashing. Then I look at a small soap box which is full of soap pieces. I am person who uses soap till they become transparent or invisible or even thinner than the paper. I wonder why I did not throw them out. Then I look at these empty ink bottles which are slowly growing in a silent corner. Why am I not throwing them out? Is it because I am middle class or I simply forget to throw them. What is holding me back from throwing them? I need to really throw them out.