Dwarka Nagar

It has been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. To her, maybe. Time moved in contexts as waves, Ruhi decided. Each wave displaces the previous one. Yet, there are some people who live in the flux of things.

Her two maternal uncles occupied the first and the third house on the front lane of Dwarka Nagar or the Gateway (to Heaven) City. The cemetery masking it from the road lent its name to the colony. Gateway to Heaven hid many such families behind its walls.

The two houses were single-room dwellings, housing multiple members, as did the others in the colony.

Ruhi could see through the front door, out through the back one, into the lane behind, and on a bright day, she could even wave and talk to someone on the third lane through the second lane house. 

In deference to architectural decorum let us refer to these houses as rooms. Grandparents, two Uncles, one of whom was married bearing her a cousin and temporary residents like her shared the two rooms. 

For Ruhi, all seemed to have lived there, ever since she learnt to identify them. 

Most part of the day here was spent in the third house as it housed a small, radio-sized TV. Daily soaps sprinkled with news guided the rhythm of chores of the elders.

Even when Ruhi came to stay for Diwali vacations, nobody thought of using the first house. Except, maybe, to entertain certain guests or rare private encounters excluding fights. Privacy may be a luxury but nothing that Dwarkaities missed much.

No concern from the outside penetrated Dwarka Nagar. She enjoyed the security and homeliness of its environment. It made her forget homework and school and her own upmarket house. These felt distressingly connected and obligated to the rest of the world.

From Dwarka Nagar’s perspective other parts of the city could be on moon. If ever an unsuspecting passer-by decided to use the roads, he/she was met with uniformly directed up-down glares. If ever one decided to feel exotic, Dwarka Nagar was the place.

During nap times, Grandmother told Ruhi stories from the Ramayana as they slept on the baaz, the jute-netted cot permanently kept outside. She never slept indoors and not due to lack of space. The hardly travelled road was a great common room for the lane.

Community sleeping was a delight. Elders shared the day. Kids could share stories, laugh and make eery noises from within the blankets to scare or amuse each other. Ruhi waited for these nights.

Each lane had the same ritual with nary a difference. The men were either in the factories or slept according to their shift timings. All through the mornings and afternoons women did the household work.

Evenings started with gossips as all ladies came out and squatted in groups. Suckling humans hung from their breasts, still others like Ruhi played and tumbled over their comfortable sarees.

Squatting was a ritual and a hobby here.

Ajay was one of her tumbling friends. They played hide-and-seek, shared ghost stories, created games of their own. Their apparatus were the walls, the tree-line separating the cemetery wall from the lane and the squatters.

Sometimes, kids from back lanes came over to play. Ruhi was a bit wary of them. They seemed like the ‘bad boys’ of the neighbourhood. Mostly to be kept away. 

But if Ruhi decided otherwise, they were only a shout away.

Her voice travelled through the open doors (no doors were closed in the evenings as it was considered an invitation to poverty) and the boys assembled in no time. Back lanes must be making them naughty, Ruhi decided.

Weird personality cults spawned in the lanes of Dwarka Nagar. One of those, as she expected, offered her to set up with Ajay. He claimed to be a match-maker like a pandit or a guru, consulted by Indian households for match-making. A stunted, child pandit with the aura of a grown-up. Pandit with a capital P for Ruhi.

Slowly but surely, Ruhi’s playing range expanded each vacation she stayed at Dwarka Nagar. Five lanes. Round the corners and through the houses. Through the houses was just a route. Children passed right under the nose of nonchalant owners.

 

***

Once, while crossing a house, Ruhi saw a couple on top of each other, grunting. It seemed a familiar sound but certainly not a sight she could stand. 

It resembled the grunts emanating from the neighbour from the second, fourth and sometimes fifth house in her lane.

Ruhi ran out quickly. Instinctively she decided it was not something to be talked or done something about.

She wondered if her uncle and aunt also engaged in similar activity? There never seemed a time when their single room was not buzzing with heads. It was a miracle that her cousin was born, she decided many years later.

Everyone liked the programme of songs which came on TV every Sunday and Wednesday evening. It was the only time they could see their favourite actors gyrating to a popular Bollywood number, outside of movie halls. Ruhi liked this time when everyone craned towards the TV like feeding bird babies.

Of course, the small television was set high on an arch extending ever so slightly from the wall. It couldn’t occupy the little place in the cramped room unlike the Gods and Goddesses who always had a place in one corner.

The craning necks stretched even more to sing along with the TV. TV-less neighbours simply walked in and sat alongside. It was a surprise people still had private holdings and concerns including her family.

Ruhi cannot forget how happy everyone looked at that moment. This was unimaginable in her part of the city.

Ajay, being one of the TV-less neighbours joined the craning with her family. Songs created magic. It sent chills and little bursts of pleasure coursing through her body. 

Ruhi imagined herself as the female lead. And for no reason, the male lead took the form of Ajay. Govinda and Karishma.

Soon she learned that the first room, usually vacant in the evenings, courtesy, no guests or activities, was a perfect place to enact one of the Bollywood scenes. Squatters didn’t suspect. Ajay didn’t have a clue but was carefree enough to follow Ruhi inside.

They might be coming out in a second from the other side, any other day of play. Not this time.

Ruhi leaned back stylishly on the stack of rolled over beddings. Ajay was asked to come up one her. He swallowed and followed. She strained her neck and pointed at the exact spot she wanted to be kissed. It was thrilling. No sooner he had done it than he was back upright.

‘Glide over, not touch-and-go’ she remembered her saying. ‘No, no. Not like that. Like Govinda does to Karishma in that song.’ 

Ajay seemed to be falling short of the expectations. But she was a good teacher. And pleasure was too much an excitement to be given up on, so easily.

Just to maintain the secrecy of this activity felt empowering.

Playtime freed up some space for quick sessions of exploring the tabooed forms- forms of human interaction most hypocritically organised in India. Years later, Ruhi’s would publish a paper on the same.

When the time came to go back to her own house, she cried a lot, every time. In fact, her father was not happy with this annual arrangement. 

Ruhi pleaded and begged her father. She promised to do all her homework. It’s amazing how he consented many times! But he was concerned about the environment. His in-law’s lifestyle bothered him. Only his wife’s face didn’t make him say it.

In a particularly uneventful year, something changed the living dynamics of the place. Two casted groups fought over cremation space. The living fought on behalf of the dead. 

Even though they were to be burnt and not buried, where they were cremated was hallowed ground and to be exclusively claimed for ‘their kind’ or ‘sub-kind’ or …

Occasional funeral processions went past Dwarka Nagar. The home of the dead was as close as any other; ignored wilfully by the citizens of the rooms, until one of their own was to be taken there. People can be so close to death yet never feel its icy hands reaching out. But it happens and it did.

A man was to be buried during the peak of dispute. Of course, he belonged to a sub-type. His community insisted on a particular place.

This time arguments leaped over the cemetery walls and spilled into the lanes. Dwarka Nagar exchanged positions furtively. That year, Ruhi’s visit to her maternal unlces defined her understanding for years to come.

Squatters redistributed their loyalties. Lane groupings gave way to community groupings. Ajay’s mother started squatting in the lane behind. Ladies from the back lanes came and sat with Ruhi’s grandmother and aunt. Each lane was armed with gossip previously unheard of!

Just looking at Ajay walking away from her, held firmly by his mother was disheartening for Ruhi. Anything more than a cursory look at him meant a severe rebuttal from random same-caste elders.

Community assertions sealed the deal. Spicy aromas that wafted through the rooms and mingled happily had now sharpened threateningly. Husband’s complained of tiffin being vitriolic those days. 

Ruhi tried to make sense of it all. 

 

***

The fight was to be fought in all spaces.

Except Ruhi’s grandmother had different fight on her mind. She had started work as a grass-root soldier of the local Hindu party. The party had planned to field her for the post of ward councillor elections from the area.

Very predictably, the notion was vehemently opposed by the other sub-faction within the Hindu party. The leadership tried to reason. A greater cause was in the making. 

Muslims elsewhere, everywhere were to be ‘shown their place.’

‘Nothing doing,’ Ruhi heard the first-room echo. A meeting was hosted by her grandmother. The rolled-up beds were laid out. They will never host another neck kissing session. Definitely not for Ruhi.

‘Since inception, our party is dominated by their caste numbers. It is time we assert our place. In the party and also in the cemetery.’ Clearly, it was Mr.Angre’s voice. Pandit’s father from lane two.

Ruhi had known him to be a serious yet gentle human being. Unlike his son, the self-styled match-maker, who by that time, had also offered to set up Ajay with one of his own kind.

‘I don’t care about the cemetery. After knowing me for all these years you could say such a thing, Angre!’ It was Ruhi’s grandmother. ‘The interest of the party and indeed those of Hindus are far too important than either of us. You know it should be me.’

‘One of ours or consider our resignations from party. The Muslim Front will willingly offer us candidature.’ Mr.Angre decided his sub-identity was more important than his super-identity.

Ruhi’s grandmother and her supporters relented. As the numbers came out of the room, people whom Ruhi had known for years, appeared different from their usual selves.

Finally, the party leadership chose to field Angre’s wife. She was a proxy for him as the seat was reserved for women candidates.

Uneasy truce prevailed in the lanes. It was a high stakes battle. Ruhi’s grandmother campaigned for Mrs.Angre in Dwarka Nagar and the neighbouring colonies. 

Ruhi simply gathered. She didn’t like the happenings.  

Thankfully, the cemetery didn’t see any new-comers from among the residents during the campaign. The combined face of the party cadres was like a camera-shy husband forced by his photogenic wife to pose against his will.

One night, a faction approached Ruhi’s grandmother. Ruhi was immediately sent inside.

‘We don’t want Mr. Angre as our councillor. Let us make sure he loses without working against him,’ someone announced.

But her grandmother was too determined to fight for the ‘larger cause’. She held fort, despite the grumblings. Ruhi was proud of her, although, she couldn’t explain why.

Angre won or Mrs. Angre won. Her victory procession through the first lane was meant to rub it into Ruhi’s grandmother, the face the other community. Contrary to expectations, grandmother stood with a ceremonial thali and garland for Mrs.Angre.

That day, Mr.Angre cried in Ruhi’s grandmother’s arms. A sudden acknowledgement of what should have been the obvious. 

All appeared well. Dwarka Nagar seemed to be trundling back to usual squatting positions.

And Ruhi continued her assimilation of the happenings.

Hardly a month had passed since the election, when, Ruhi’s grandma was at the forefront of some action. She sat on a dharna, a protest within the cemetery.

She had climbed onto the platform where the pyre was to be lit. It might have violated a thousand Hindu rituals in the process. 

But again, more important things were at stake here. Ruhi remembers her concerned parents rushing with her to Dwarka Nagar. Ruhi’s mother tried to convince her mother to get off and think of her standing. Her image. Her image in front of her son-in-law.

But there was no budging. It was the living of one side and the dead of the other, fighting for a pedestal. The battle had transcended mortal world. At Mr.Angre’s behest the police acted swiftly. Or at least this is the version Ruhi had known. They almost lifted her grandmother into the police van.

Dwarka Nagar entered a state of entropy. For example, Ajay’s mother couldn’t decide her squatting location. As a result, she beat Ajay whenever he was seen near Ruhi or her Uncle’s first and third house. 

Venting anger had turned absolutely crazy. How does one keep away from neighbours whose houses one could get into before one reached the washroom within one’s own house!

The worse part for Ruhi was her inability to do anything about it. She wanted to play. Talk and exchange stories on the baaz. Play, hide, run through the rooms, get kissed on the neck without worrying which castes were involved. She wanted to pretend again to be as shy as Karishma on screen.

 

***

Ruhi doesn’t remember when her visits to her maternal family almost stopped. Her father decided he didn’t want her to see, whatever she saw.

Slowly but surely, she had graduated towards friends and classes and career. In her world. The connected world. The ambitious world.

In a terrible sweep of time’s wrath, a big riot had killed members of the two communities in Dwarka Nagar. It included her unmarried uncle. 

The shock killed her grandmother. Her other uncle sold the two rooms and moved to a rented place elsewhere in the city. 

Ajay was forgotten, at least for a very long period. So were the faces from the lanes.

Years later, on a flight from Canada to India, in her career phase, Ruhi saw a familiar face. It was the bad boy, Pandit. Awkward 18 hours of meek glances and a cursory exchange of numbers followed.

Back home, it was a very different world. It differed from her place in Canada thousands of miles away, as much as it differed from Dwarka Nagar, a few kilometres away.

She went to visit her uncle and enquire about Dwarka Nagar. Even he seemed to have moved a world away from the people and the place. 

Finally, Ruhi decided to call Pandit. His parents had never left Dwarka.

The car ride was automatic. She got down behind the cemetery whose walls were now raised higher. Her walk through the lane was more confusing than nostalgic.

The houses were the same. No car could still pass through. Another generation of women squatted there. Breasts out, children tumbling. Only now, Ruhi was the exotic one, receiver of glares.

A wave of depression swept Ruhi. ‘It’s the same,’ she mumbled.

A girl chased a boy into the room as she warily moved.

Maybe, that was a Ruhi and Ajay. 

Oh yes! Ajay. Where was he?

She hastened towards what she knew was Pandit’s house. His house had eaten up neighbouring two and climbed two floors. The only anomaly in Dwarka Nagar of her childhood.

‘Where is Ajay and his family?’ Her first words on entering Pandit’s house.

‘Hi Ruhi! Don’t know. He followed your uncle out of here. So did the rest,’ Pandit automatically responded.

Seemingly, the upwardly mobile exodus to better neighbourhoods had excluded only Pandits, who stayed with a new wave of residents.

‘How come you are still here?’

‘Mainly due to father’s politics. Later, I shifted for higher education but they had no incentive to move out of the political clout and hence from here.’

Sophisticated and towering, Pandit was as different from his surroundings as his house.

‘Listen, about that cemetery riot. My father had orchestrated it. He is paralysed for life now, maybe as a punishment.’

Ruhi didn’t seem to hear. ‘Are people still living together here?’

He got what she meant.

‘A much bigger riot. Hindu-Muslim. Heard of 2002?’

‘Of course,’ Ruhi sighed.

The time-context had changed. Ruhi walked out of Pandit’s house, into a back door of one of the first lane houses, out into the front lane again. The owner simply watched. Still not a big deal.

A funeral procession passed by. Curious squatters recognized its caste and the air grew uneasy.

Before the loyalties realigned and Ruhi could wrap her head around the scene, her legs carried her into the car, out of the place.

More importantly, she could. And that was all that mattered.