Utopian Dystopia

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it but the place looked exactly the same. Time moved in contexts and waves, Ruhi decided. Each wave displaces the previous settlement. And yet there are some people who live in the flux of things.

Her maternal uncles occupied the first and the third house on the first 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 collected many behind it.

The houses were all single roomed, small dwellings filled with lot of people.

Ruhi’s sight could travel through the front door, out of the back one, into the lane behind. On a bright day, she could even wave and talk to someone on the third lane seeing through the second lane house. A house is almost a mocking term. Let’s call it a room.

Grandparents, two Uncles one of whom was married and her cousin born of that incestuous marriage shared the two rooms. All had always lived there ever since she could identify them, including her aunt. After all she was one before marriage.

Most part of the day was spent in the third house as it had the small radio sized TV. Daily soaps sprinkled with news guided the rhythm of chores.

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.

It seemed to Ruhi that no care or concern outside Dwarka Nagar penetrated this world. She enjoyed the security and homeliness of the 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.

Grandmother told Ruhi stories from the Ramayana when 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. They lived for the nights.

Each lane had the same ritual with nary a difference. The men were either in the factories or sleeping according to their shift timings. All through the mornings and afternoons women did 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 tumbler-friends. They played hide-and-seek, shared ghost stories, created games of their own. The apparatus were the walls, tree lining between the cemetery wall and the lane and the squatters.

Sometimes kids from the 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 bad boys assembled in no time. Back lanes must make them naughty, Ruhi decided.

Weird personality cults were spawned by 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 usually 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 visited Dwarka Nagar. Five lanes. Round the corners, through the houses. Through the houses was just a route. Children passed right under the nose of nonchalant owners.

Once, while crossing through a house, Ruhi saw a couple on top of each other, grunting. It seemed a familiar sound but not a sight to stand. It resembled the grunts emanating from the neighbour from the second, fourth and sometimes fifth house in her lane.

Ruhi didn’t understand and felt she must come 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 songs programme which came on TV every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. It was the only time outside movie halls they could see their favourite actors gyrating to a popular Bollywood number. 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 the ones with them. It was a surprise people still had private holdings and concerns including themselves.

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

The first room, usually vacant in the evenings because of no guests or activities was a perfect place to enact one of the Bollywood scenes. Squatters were unsuspecting. 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. Another day of playing. 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 spot to kiss her. 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 excitement to be given up on easily.

Just to maintain the secrecy of the activity felt empowering.

Playtime freed up some space for quick sessions of exploring the tabooed forms. Forms of human interaction which are most hypocritically organised in a place like India. Ruhi’s would do a paper on the same years later.

She cried to stay back even after vacations. Her father never allowed. She begged her father. She promised to do all her homework. Sometimes he did allow but he was concerned about the environment. Only his wife’s face and didn’t make him say it. Her parents and her brother’s lifestyle bothered him. Only twice or thrice for about a month he conceded to Ruhi’s request.

Dwarka Nagar was heaven, her world… was just world. 

In a particularly uneventful year, there was a dispute. Two groups fought over space within the cemetery for their own community. The living fought on behalf of the dead. Even if they were to be burnt and not buried like the Muslims or Christians, 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. Yet ignored wilfully by the citizens of the rooms, until one of their own was to be taken in. People can be so close to death yet never feel it reaching out onto oneself. But it did happen.

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 colony was helpless.

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 never heard of!

Just looking at Ajay walking away held firmly by his mother was disheartening for Ruhi. Anything over a cursory look towards him meant a rebuttal from her 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.

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 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 meeting hosted by her grandmother echo. The rolled-up beds were laid out. They will never host another neck kissing session. Definitely not for Ruhi.

‘Our party is dominated by their numbers since its conception. It is time we assert our place. Here 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 had also offered to set up Ajay with one of his own kind.

‘I don’t care about the cemetery or the fact that even 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 identity.

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

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

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

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

The cemetery, thankfully, didn’t have any visitors 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 its will.

A faction approached Ruhi’s grandmother one night. Ruhi was sent inside.

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

But grandmother was too determined to fight for the ‘larger cause’. Angre won. Her victory procession through the first lane was meant to rub it into Ruhi’s grandmother, the face of her own community. Contrary to expectations, grandmother stood with the ceremonial thali and garland for Mrs.Angre.

That day, Mr.Angre cried in Ruhi’s grandmother’s arms. He knew too well that victory was not possible without her support. It was a sudden acknowledgement.

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

Ruhi simply assimilated the happenings.

Hardly a month had passed since the election when Ruhi’s grandma was at the forefront of some action. She had 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 thousands of Hindu rules in the process. But 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 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 that she couldn’t do anything about it. She wanted to play. Talk and exchange stories on the baaz, from the baaz. Play, hide, get kissed on the neck. Pretend to be shy like Karishma did on screen.

Ruhi cannot seem to 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.

Meanwhile, a big riot had killed members of both these 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 bad boy, Pandit. Awkward 18 hours later, they exchanged numbers.

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

She met her uncle and enquired about Dwarka Nagar. Even he seemed to have moved a world away from the people and the place. Finally, Ruhi called 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 an 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.

‘Don’t know. He followed your uncle out of here. So did the rest.’

The upwardly mobile exodus to better neighbourhoods had excluded only Pandit.

‘How come you are still here?’

‘Mainly due to father’s politics. Later, I shifted for higher education and 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 was.

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

Ruhi didn’t seem to care for him. ‘Are people still living together here?’

He got what she meant.

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

‘Of course,’ Ruhi sighed.

The time-context had changed. Ruhi walked out of Pandit’s house, into 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 suddenly 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.