by Aman Sethi
‘The demolition ruined Masterji. He didn’t have a title for his land and so never got any compensation. Two days after the demolition, he packed his bags and went back to Bengal. I gathered my clothes and came to Bara Tooti.’
‘Was this the first time you came to Bara Tooti?’
‘No, no. I had lived here intermittently for many years before I started work with Masterji. When he left, I moved here full-time.’
Ashraf says that despite its name, Sanjay Amar Colony was a largely Muslim settlement. ‘That’s why it was one of the first to go. That year, 2004, was an election year and the BJP was in power. They knew that the basti would vote for the Congress, so they thought, “Let’s demolish the Muslim areas first.”’
It didn’t work, the Congress still came to power, but for Ashraf, and thousands like him, it was little consolation.
‘The BJP just lost the elections. We lost our lives.’
The violent displacement of 800,000 slum dwellers received surprisingly little attention in the national press that described the process as a necessary and painful part of urban renewal. But occasionally, the working class city would force its way into the daily news in bizarre and mysterious ways. From 2000 onwards, there were a series of unlikely incidents—the appearance of fantastic creatures, the rise of serial killers like West Delhi’s Hammerman, and a mysterious masked motorcyclist who dressed in black and prowled Delhi’s streets by night—that could just have been made up by J.P. Singh Pagal but were reported in national dailies.
In the summer of 2001, for instance, an elusive creature was spotted in working class dwellings in Ghaziabad and East Delhi’s adjoining districts. Descriptions varied between a primitive four-foot-tall humanoid, and a futuristic, if somewhat hirsute, robot from outer space. When public hysteria reached fever pitch, the Delhi Police commissioned a study on the phenomenon, hoping that a report that categorically denied the existence of the creature would put an end to the phenomenon.
If the testimonies of fifty-five witnesses, interviewed by the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, are compiled, the Monkeyman was a creature between four and eight feet tall with long iron legs shod in sleek black sneakers with springs attached to the soles.
On closer examination, he was observed to have long hair, a ‘terrible face’, which he sometimes masked, and gleaming lasers for eyes. He struck mostly at night, though one witness claimed to have been attacked at 10:15 am; and could be identified by his distinctive call of ‘ohu-ohu’, ‘she-she’, or ‘ho-ho’, depending on the witness interviewed. Apart from his ability to jump great distances, the Monkeyman sometimes flew with the help of a black belt, a red-and-black-striped suit, and a light affixed to his chest. ‘He was like Shaktimaan,’ noted an excitable young woman, before she swooned and fainted into the arms of a troubled behavioural scientist.
I met Dr Nimesh Desai, the lead author of the study on the Monkeyman, over a cup of coffee in the genteel settings of the India International Centre on Max Mueller Marg. My purpose was to understand what such stories told us about the city we lived in. Dr Desai stroked his beard and offered me a biscuit. ‘The problem with the Monkeyman issue was that, in at least one case, someone had been attacked by a real monkey.’
But it was the other cases that were more interesting. Almost everyone interviewed by Dr Desai had claimed to have tried to grab the creature. ‘So the scratch marks should have been on the ventral aspect of the forearm’—for any creature caught and clawing to get away would leave long gashes on the inner part of the forearm. However, ‘all scratches were along the dorsal aspect, that is, the outer part of the forearm, suggesting’, Dr Desai leaned over the elegant teapot, ‘that the injuries were self-inflicted!’
Dr Desai stressed that this was only a preliminary hypothesis but he surmised that most of the victims were going through considerable amounts of stress at the time. Some had known histories of substance abuse, some were worried by the threat of eviction or demolition of their houses, some had absent husbands and ill family members, and many were characterized, by researchers, as having severe sleep deprivation and ‘histrionic personas’ (a tendency to be excessively emotional and attention hungry).
When the news of the creature broke, it was possible that the victims had attributed to the Monkeyman injuries that they had unknowingly inflicted on themselves in their sleep.
‘It could be mass hysteria caused by mass media,’ he concluded.
Dr Desai’s report lay on my desk for many days: a snap-shot of a city splintering under the strain of a fundamental urban reconfiguration—a city of the exhausted, distressed, and restless, struggling with the uncertainties of eviction and unemployment; a city of twenty million histrionic personas resiliently absorbing the day’s glancing blows only to return home and tenderly claw themselves to sleep.
•
By ferreting out the absurd, the unlikely, and the almost true, J.P. Singh Pagal served as the medium for Delhi’s dislocation and unease. His stories seemed informed by the newspapers, street gossip, and his unique perspective that was in turn framed by a deep-seated paranoia directed against the government and police. In the course of their work, the mazdoors of Bara Tooti travelled across the city, picking up snippets of information that they used to measure the ‘temperature’ of the city. ‘Mahaul garam hai, the situation is hot,’ said a mazdoor once when I asked him about the mood in a slum settlement that had just been demolished by the Delhi Municipal Corporation.
J.P. Singh tapped into this network of mazdoor information and passed on the news as he travelled from chowk to chowk in the markets of the old city. With J.P., as with any tabloid, it was enough to know that ‘something had happened’ in a certain part of Delhi. The specifics of the incident could always be sought from a more reliable source.
Sadly, I never met J.P. Singh again, but everyone in Bara Tooti had a J.P. Singh story. ‘He’s a thief!’ proclaimed Rehaan with uncharacteristic vehemence. ‘He’s the man who steals chappals in the night.’
‘Have you ever caught him, Rehaan?’
‘No, obviously not. He’s so good at it that no one has ever caught him.’
‘So how do you know it’s him?’
‘I just know.’
Lalloo had an amazing story about him. ‘J.P. Singh was not always like this,’ he said. ‘Once upon a time he was a very big man—in Bollywood. He used to roam around with all the actors and actresses and he used to drink English whisky.’
J.P. used to work in the Sadar Bazaar office of a major Bombay film producer where his primary job was to make sure the office stayed neat and clean in case someone ever visited. ‘But no one visited,’ according to Lalloo. ‘So all he did was sit in the office and get drunk. Sometimes when he was bored of drinking alone, he would come down to Bara Tooti and drink with us. Sometimes if he got too drunk, he would pass out here on the pavement amongst us.’
Then one day, the film producer finally did visit—but J.P. wasn’t there. ‘He was fast sleep in the galli behind Kaka’s shop—drunk out of his mind. The producer was very angry, but because J.P. was basically a good man, the producer took him along to Bombay.’
In Bombay, J.P. worked as a handyman on Bollywood sets. ‘Whenever he was back in Delhi, he used to drop in. After a few drinks, he would boast about meeting this actress and putting makeup on that actress’s face—Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Karishma, everyone. But once when he was very drunk, he burst into tears and confessed.’
It was true that J.P. was working in Bollywood, but his job was to supervise the daily wage workers who built the sets, mark their attendance, and pay them their seventy-five rupees at the end of each day. ‘He was working in Bollywood, but he wasn’t meeting any actresses. He spent his day among chootiyas like us.’ Lalloo couldn’t help the broad smile that spread across his face. ‘Aishwarya, Sushmita, lowda mera. J.P. was a munshi at a construction site!’
A few months later, he returned to Bara Tooti. ‘By now he was beginning to loo
k a little crazed. He had fallen out with his employer once and for all and told us he would never go back to Bombay.’
‘So what did he do, Lalloo bhai?’
‘I don’t know. Every time he came, he seemed a little more insane. Finally someone saw him sleeping behind a shop in Khari Baoli and we realized he was now living on the streets in Chandni Chowk.
‘We still see him around occasionally. But every time he comes, something goes missing. It is difficult, no, Aman bhai? If a man loses everything in one go, what option does he have but to go mad? At least we only lose things in stages.’
No one really sees J.P. any more, but ever so often someone’s slippers go missing in the night and they wake up and remember J.P. Singh Pagal, the half-mad teller of half-true tales.
•
It’s 2 am and my phone’s ringing. It happens every now and then; it’s usually Ashraf, and he’s usually drunk. There is an all-night phone booth near Old Delhi Railway Station. I imagine Ashraf slurring unconcernedly as a crowd of irate railway passengers wait for him to finish.
‘Aman sirji, I hope it’s not too late to call, but Ashraf wants to say “hello’’.’
‘Hello, Ashraf.’
‘Hello, Aman bhai. Were you sleeping?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah. I just called to say that yesterday a girl came to the chowk and asked me how many mazdoors are there in this chowk. So I said, “Fifty.” So she said, “Make them stand in line.” So I made them stand in line. Then she gave us all ten rupees and went away. Hello? Are you there?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It’s late, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Ashraf bhai.’
‘I just called because I thought this might interest you—for your research, you know. Anyway, we were all just drinking and thinking of you. I thought, why not call you?’
‘Why not indeed.’
‘Good night, Aman bhai.’
‘Good night, Ashraf.’
two
AKELAPAN,
or Solitude
1
In the spring of 1992, Munna borrowed a bicycle from his mother’s sister’s brother-in-law, who owned a cycle shop in Chandni Chowk. It was the day before Holi. Summer was still some weeks off, but the sun was hot enough to give dull headaches to those foolish enough to step out of the shade for too long.
Pedalling along with long, easy strokes, he made good time as he headed out beyond Old Delhi Railway Station down towards the river to meet a friend who lived trans-Yamuna. Onward he went down the outer Ring Road, past the many Hanuman mandirs, under the imposing arches of Red Fort. Children were already out in the streets, jump-starting celebrations that would continue till noon the next day. At the gurdwara on the way, he contemplated stopping for langar—it was now past twelve and devotees would soon be handing out lunch to the pious and the poor—but decided to press on.
He finally stopped at Shastri Park, just short of the turn towards the Wazirpur Barrage, and dismounted for a quick drink of water. Excise laws prohibit the sale of alcohol before noon; but all thekas, including the one at Shastri Park, open their counters by one o’clock. The Shastri Park theka was a bit of a ‘last chance’ theka—beyond the Wazirpur Barrage, Delhi’s distinct borders dissolved into an intermittent patchwork of East Delhi and West Uttar Pradesh, each square corresponding to different excise duties, fuel prices, and telephone exchanges. But the Shastri Park theka was unequivocally in Delhi; and as Delhi sells some of the cheapest alcohol in north India, this was an important distinction.
He lingered around the theka, eyeing the bottles that peeked out from behind the shop’s iron grille front. He stared at the brown paper bags stuffed under the arms of those leaving the store. Why buy rum at fifty rupees a half in UP when he could buy it here for just thirty-five? Whisky was at seventy-five, beer at thirty-five, Jalwa country liquor at only twenty-five. How much money did he have? A brisk appraisal of the contents of his pockets suggested he had ‘enough’—kaafi. Not ‘just about enough’, but closer to a ‘more than enough’—enough with an emphasis.
Perhaps he could simply stock up and continue on his way. But it was really hot. Maybe a quick quarter, followed by an even quicker nap, and a resumption of the journey by about four when things had cooled off a bit? But if he was drinking, instead of a quarter of Jalwa, he could perhaps have a half of rum? Rum could be considered a light drink—well, not exactly light, maybe lightish—definitely lightish compared to Jalwa. And he wouldn’t smoke a beedi—because it was beedis that got people high. Without a beedi the alcohol stays in the stomach; with a beedi, the heat makes it vaporize and enter the brain. Or was it the other way around—did alcohol make beedis enter the brain? But in either case, beedis were bad for the brain, and alcohol was good for the heart. ‘After Holi I shall not smoke beedis,’ he resolved and, fortified with piety, thrust his hand under the barricaded front onto the shop’s countertop. ‘A half bottle of rum.’
By the time the rum wore off, four o’clock had long passed him by. The sky looked decidedly sixish, as did the torrent of rush hour traffic on the bridge. He hurried down to the bus stop near the bridge and hopped onto the first bus he saw. Still woozy, he stuck his head out of the window, watching as the driver expertly negotiated cars, buses, tractors, and swarms of bicycles. Bicycles? Wait, he had a bicycle. In fact, he had his mother’s sister’s brother-in-law’s bicycle. But he seemed to be travelling by bus.
Bhenchod!
Harried commuters on the Wazirpur Barrage that evening pressed down hard on their brakes as an Uttar Pradesh Roadways bus screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. Suddenly, the door swung open and he jumped out into the oncoming traffic. A second later, the driver poked his head out, delivered a stream of abuse, and the bus lurched on towards Ghaziabad. Embarrassed but unhurt, he rose to his feet, smiled sheepishly at the piled-up traffic, and made his way back to Shastri Park.
‘I left a bicycle here a few hours ago.’
The man behind the counter peered out from his self-imposed internment. The thick steel grille that protected him from his customers obstructed his view of anything that did not occur directly in front of him. Out here on the frontier, it was best not to see anything at all. People did the stupidest things under the influence of alcohol, and if he saw everything that happened on the perimeters of his theka he would have to give up his business and become a full-time witness. But the grille had fixed all that; he had survived three years without seeing a single thing. So when Munna enquired about the whereabouts of his bicycle, the man behind the counter at first pretended not to see him at all. But after a while it became impossible to ignore the persistent banging on the steel grille.
‘I left a bicycle here a few hours ago.’
‘I left one too. Can you see it?’ said the man behind the counter.
‘No.’
‘They must have left together. Goodnight.’
Misplacing a bicycle is a pretty serious oversight—especially if it belongs to one’s mother’s sister’s brother-in-law. He would have thought that the owner of a cycle shop would be reasonably relaxed when it came to lending out bicycles—particularly to family members—but no, not this man. Short of making Munna sign an affidavit rendering him a gulaam for the rest of his life, he had mobilized the pride of entire branches of their shared family tree, promising to humiliate him in front of the whole clan if he as much as punctured a tyre. He probably cursed me from the start, Munna thought; serves the bastard right. Thus filled with righteous indignation, he walked back to the Interstate Bus Terminal at Kashmere Gate and caught the night bus to Panipat.
At Panipat he changed buses for Amroha. At Amroha he stayed at his sister’s house and plied a rickshaw. When his sister tired of his company, he moved to Moradabad where he worked as a painter for a few years before saving enough to get married. His family was overjoyed by the prospect of him finally settling down. But a year later, for no obvious reason, he jumped onto a bus and arrived at the Inter Stat
e Bus Terminal near Kashmere Gate. As he walked down from Kashmere Gate to Bara Tooti, Munna realized it had been ten years since that day before Holi. By now his uncle would surely have forgotten about the bicycle.
•
Munna has been summoned by Ashraf to Kaka’s tea shop to explain to me how and why he came to Bara Tooti. According to Ashraf, Munna’s story illustrates that the life of the mazdoor is equal parts azadi and akepalan, or solitude. ‘Today I can be in Delhi,’ says Ashraf. ‘Tomorrow I could well be in a train halfway across the country; the day after, I can return. This is a freedom that comes only from solitude. Isn’t that so, Munna?’
‘Yes, Ashraf bhai.’ Munna is a slender, reedy mistry with salt-and-pepper hair, his lungs hollowed out by smoking, his voice a throaty whisper. His matchstick arms are encased in plaster casts—a consequence of a drunken argument with a policeman who knocked him out without much ado.
When Munna came to, he was in the public ward of the Bara Hindu Rao Hospital in Malkaganj with both his hands in slings. ‘So I slipped out of the ward and hurried back here.’
‘Didn’t you meet a doctor, ask a nurse? Find out what happened?’
‘I couldn’t find anyone. Besides, I didn’t have any money for the plaster cast. So I ran away without paying.’
‘It’s a government hospital, Munna. They weren’t going to charge you a per square foot rate for the plaster of Paris in your cast.’
‘Oh, and how was I supposed to know that?’
I am flummoxed by the manner in which Ashraf and his friends make decisions.
‘Why did you come back, Munna?’
‘I felt like it, Aman bhai. I missed Delhi.’
‘But what about your wife?’
‘I suppose I miss her too, but I keep going back.’
‘When did you last go?’
‘Three years ago.’
Ashraf is frowning. I think I’ve asked too many questions. It’s bad form to keep asking people about pasts that they are reluctant to confront. At Bara Tooti people come and go all the time. A man could get up from a drinking session, walk down the road for a piss, keep walking till he reached the railway station, hop onto a train, and return after a year without anyone really missing him.