Photography by Anant
Text by Namitha
Delhi bears its imprints on my life. Fifteen years of my life have been spent in this city - more than I've spent anywhere else continuously, even the place of my birth. My ten year old son has spent all his life here.
I wanted to record our impressions on a leisurely Sunday of a curious city that seems to be a common transit point, but rarely the final destination in the lives of people.
It was supposed to be a casual walk in Connaught Place to take photographs of this city celebrating its centenary as the capital of India.
Starting out from Janpath we walked towards the inner circle of Connaught Place.
The most striking images were those that captured the serenity and grace of the vendors on the road. The shoeshine man waits expectantly for people - does he wonder whether the footfalls will be down this Sunday too?
A paanwala preparing for the day before his first customers arrive, with different containers arranged neatly in front of him.
A lady sweeps the pavement, the grace in her motions captured in an instant. A flashy red handbag sits incongruously in front of her on the pavement. What is it doing there? Is it hers?
Cheeky captions come to mind about the following scenes.
City for lost souls? Soles for sale? Trapped souls? Walking with the Gods? What is it about this city that you are on sensory overload the minute you step out beyond your home?
By noon, the vendors have spread out their wares, women with bead necklaces, scrolls, and wandering ones come up to us with chess sets, toy snakes in baskets, or beckon you into their shops spilling over with souvenirs.
Chattering girls go up to look at the magnets and other souvenirs and excitedly discuss what to purchase. Some owners are just opening their shops, performing the religious rituals before the start of the business day.
Still further, the architecture begs to be noticed.
And then so do the stark realities stick out.
Over three hours later, the two of us realised that our walk has “mentally” been sidetracked by Anna Hazare’s campaign – wherever we went, we could not escape the signs that something was happening in this city. Spontaneous slogan shouting by topi-ed youngsters, motorists going past waving flags and apparently headed to the Ram Lila grounds.
An urgency pervaded the atmosphere. Even the shop signs seem to stand out like slogans.
The Tantra shop which sells T-shirts with quirky, sometimes nationalistic, slogans had a single T-shirt in their shop window. Stark, black and white, which had the slogan Black Money-White Money on it. The popular street side shops have kept up with the theme ...are they the barometers of social consciousness in present times?
The sceptic will question: are T-shirt slogans a reflection of the national psyche? Have we become a nation of people waiting for cues to catalyse our conscience – waiting for giant billboards to light up saying “Act Now” or for a T-shirt to proclaim what the next issue is?
Even the staid Jain Bookshop has made way for books on corruption on two window shelves, the juxtaposition of titles bringing a smile to my lips.
Still, the images that mean the most are those that neither of us would ever photograph. They capture moments too precious, too disturbing, too stark, too fleeting or those that contain too much muchness… and consequently, we can only walk past on tiptoe, just letting the imprint stay in our minds forever. In front of Wenger’s pastry shop, a lame beggar sits on the ground just outside the glass door, a drink of Pepsi and one of Coke clasped in each shaky hand. He thirstily sucks on the straw in one glass – drawing up just the iced watery dregs of a drink belonging to someone who’d just stopped loving it, perhaps. Is this a sign of prosperity – that instead of one non-biodegradable tumbler of somebody else’s leftover soft drink, there are two different ones in his hands? It is painful to be a journalist even in your mind; the soul feels the ironies even while the brain thinks out a suitable caption for a photograph that never will be clicked.
As we speed along the corridor trying to avoid the growing crowds of shoppers, I swerve for an instant to avoid bumping into someone, and notice a man sitting next to a small rack of books propped up against the corner. The rack has only books on poetry – just Hindi and Urdu poetry. I recognise Faiz and Sahir Ludhianvi among them. Two months ago in Bangalore, we had scoured about four large bookshops looking for books of English poetry and could only find one thin shop-soiled book by R.L. Stevenson which I did buy eventually. To find a whole rack of poetry just here in this fairly inconspicuous corner on the road was a revelation. The salesman did nothing extraordinary to proclaim his presence, he just was there sitting with his poetry books in that corner, and if I’d walked by too fast, I’d have missed him. He was real and live, making a statement by being there in that space and time. He was not holding up a signboard with slogans like “read poetry” or “bring some poetry into your life”. He disturbed me as much as Anna Hazare does, and therein lies the lesson for me - deep lessons, about noticing and being noticed, issues submerged and issues remembered, lone battles and group movements...
Like any other large historically rich and politically significant city, Delhi is a large organic entity reflecting different facets in time and space. To be able to understand it is to be able to judge the mood of a river. Wandering about in this city raises more questions than answers sometimes.... yet, we walk confidently that we will find some reassurance just around the corner.
Commentary: We took this walk on August 21 2011. Anant's favourite photograph he says is the one of the young boy putting the soft drink bottle in the dustbin - because "he was keeping the environment clean". My favourite photograph is the one of the lady sweeping the pavement for the sheer grace even while performing such a mundane task - coupled with an air of mystery over that red handbag sitting on the pavement. I really wonder what was in it. - ND
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