Well-known Hindi poet and journalist Vishnu Khare, also known for his critical writings on cinema and literature in both Hindi and English, passed away a couple of months ago. Every so often one is reminded of bits from his poems, a description, a scathing comment or just a little quizzical query thrown away as his poem took another turn.
Vishnu ji, as he was popularly addressed, had a remarkable eye for detail. He noticed things in the quotidian that normal mortals tend not to, and even when they do, they don’t find the details remarkable or worthy of note. Khare not just noticed those apparently insignificant details but made them come alive in a manner that made one sit up and take notice. His bringing up these little things reminded one of how unobservant we become as the daily rigmarole of life squeezes out our sensitivity, turning us callous and uncaring towards others.
Images from one of his poems, ‘Bangle’ (Bungalows) keep coming up even as one tries to put ideas together for this piece. After this rather lengthy introduction and without further ado, a short summary of the poem is certainly called for and we begin with the same.
The poem is about someone riding a bicycle to work and about what he sees. It reminds one of New Delhi in the 1960s, even the 1970s when one could see thousands of bicycles moving towards the so-called VIP district – the riders were mostly, peons, office boys, gardeners, office canteen staff, sanitation staff, water boys and the like.
The poem is about the thoughts that rush through the mind of the bicycle rider as he moves out of his small one-room house to ride through residential localities populated by clerks, head clerks and section officers.
He would continue his journey through localities where heads of departments lived, then passing through quiet roads in the heart of New Delhi – Tughlaq Road, Akbar Road, Sunehri Bagh Road, Moti Lal Nehru Marg, Ashok Road – flanked by those impressive bungalows that spell power, wealth, grandeur and arrogance.
He would ride through all this, thinking about the life or the absence of it in the bungalows before reaching the dark and dingy corridors of a subordinate department of some ministry or the other.
The bicycle rider wonders about those living in these bungalows, even as he thinks about this, he is assailed by other thoughts. Do hungry children rush back here from school, clamouring for food? Do kabadis come here on Sundays to pick-up old newspapers, empty bottles and cartons? Do hawkers come here? He hasn’t seen a call bell on any of the doors and the gates are always closed – how would a visitor get in, how will he inform the inmates that he is at their gate and wants to come in? He has never seen anyone leave or enter these houses, not even a gardener working on the manicured lawns and he wonders, do human beings live in these places at all or do these places come alive only late at night, when strange creatures, denizens of the dark come out and disappear before day-break.
The manner in which the journey and the thoughts of the lonely bicycle rider have been captured makes you begin to look at your surroundings a little more carefully, a little more critically. It makes you wish to engage with the city a little more sensitively.
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The journey from the house of the bicycle rider is perhaps one from the nondescript one-room places that were built for what is known as the class IV staff of the government. These residences were in areas like Sewa Nagar, so imaginatively named, because those who lived here had to serve the higher-ups as office boys, drivers, orderlies etc, how properly Brahmanical. The place was later, much later, renamed Kasturba Nagar.
The residential areas of the officers were called ‘Maan Nagar’ and ‘Shaan Nagar’, truly the spaces where ‘Honour’ and ‘Grandeur’ resided. The names changed when there were protests against the anti-democratic nature of the nomenclature. These were times when the highest executive was sensitive to such issues and understood the significance of democratic dissent. Prime Minister Nehru intervened and the localities were renamed Rabindra Nagar and Bharti Nagar.
Remember these were not for ministers or members of parliament, but for those who run the wheels of the government, directors of numerous departments and administrative officers who would be joint secretaries soon and would move to Vinay Marg.
Vinay Nagar was so named because it housed those who drafted letters that ended with yours obediently or yours respectively, and vinay is respect. All that the clerks, section officers and superintendents were entitled to do was to respectfully, put up notes before their superiors for approval. The name Vinay Nagar was found too infra dig and so it was split-up into Netaji Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Laxmi Bai Nagar, Nauroji Nagar and Kidwai Nagar.
The pecking order that determined the spread of New Delhi has enough in it for more detailed analysis that must wait for another occasion, but for the moment let us return to the New Delhi that was in the 60s and 70s and to the bicycle.
The bicycle
There was a time until the early or mid-1970s that you had to pay a tax to the municipal authorities if you owned a bicycle. Six inches of the rear mud-guard of the bicycle had to be painted white with a light reflector fitted on it. You had to have a headlight and you could buy one that burnt a wick or one that was powered by a dynamo. Your cycle had to have a stand, a bell and pedals with reflectors. There were roads where riding a cycle was prohibited and a traffic constable could challan you. Raj Path was one such road.
You could hire bicycles by the hour or for the entire day; bicycles were asked for and were given as dowry. It was not uncommon for clerks, section officers, engineers, headmasters of government schools to travel by DTC buses and bicycles. In fact, my head of the department, when I was in college in the early 70s, used to commute on a bicycle, as did many lecturers and readers in the university.
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All over the world, and especially in the developed world, there is a move to decongest the cities, to cut down on automobiles to make the heart of the city pedestrian and bicycle friendly. Our plans for building smart cities talk about everything but this.
In the time span of two generations, bicycles have all but disappeared, scooters, motorcycles, three-wheelers and four-wheelers have taken up all road space and most footpaths. The two-storied flats in Kidwai Nagar have disappeared, replaced with 16-floor high match-box structures. Nauroji Nagar is ready to house a world trade centre; Netaji Nagar and Sarojini Nagar are counting their days.
The chaos that will descend on the – already bursting at the seams – ring road when all these malls and multi-storey flats are occupied is anybody’s guess. What hasn’t changed is Kasturba Nagar – the erstwhile Sewa Nagar, where the protagonist of Khare’s poem ‘Bangle’ probably lived.
There is something else that has not changed, the bungalows about which the bicycle rider wondered. As long as the elusive residents of these bungalows remain ensconced behind the gates that never open, the bicycle rider is not safe in our cities.
Sohail Hashmi is a filmmaker, writer and heritage buff. He organises regular heritage walks in Delhi.