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From: zainab bawa <zainabbawa@yahoo.com>
Date: 08 Oct 2004
Time: 15:04:30
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Hello! I am writing in connection with the 'Urban-Living Film Festival'. It is interesting that something of this sort happens at the very moment when Metro Cities are being touted as the future of not just India, but the world and particularly, given the stresses and strains on urban ecology and infrastructure and increasing migration. In the last nine months, I have been researching on the 'Local Trains' in Mumbai city and looking at the Ladies Compartment as a critical physical and mental space in Mumbai City. What turned out very important by the end of the research fellowship period was the value of the 'local' which is quite much ignored in the present urbanism. Trains would enable women from the same neighbourhood to interact with each other - they had never met in the neighbourhood, but they met on trains. Similarly, women's reactions and perceptions of the city based on which railway line they commuted via i.e. Central or Western Railway, Central Railway being popularly understood as Maharashtrian and therefore 'Cooperative' while Western Railway understood as the noveau riche` crowd of Mumbai and therefore 'selfish and fighting lot'! Local Trains, at some level, serve as a kind of learning community - developing worldviews with expanding and shrinking horizons within the confines of the compartment. What is critical in today's urban, according to me, is the very concepts of 'time' and 'space'. In my current ethnographic works, I have been recording observations along the seafront and the railway station in Mumbai city. Simultaneously, I am trying to understand the very notions of 'public' and 'private' and what constitutes 'heritage' in the urban. What would be interesting to highlight in the film festival is the idea of locality, 'public space' and the value of sharing and urban communities. 'Sharing' is not primarily for any altruistic or higher value purpose, but for the very purpose of habitat, ecology and survival. You may already be aware of Sarai which is quite involved in issues relating to the urban - wwww.sarai.net They would be quite interested in this festival. I believe a city would be the best place to host this festival and most importantly, to target the youth who are being marketed and marketed to in today's times. I am attaching two narratives which I had done as part of my research on local trains. With regards, Zainab The Singer and the Acrobat Today's was a difficult journey, difficult because my mind was mostly preoccupied with the skepticism of whether I would be able to get off at Byculla station with relative ease or not! I stepped into the train at 5:30 PM in the evening. It was a Monday evening. The train was bound for Ambernath; it was a fast train which meant that it would not stop at the in-between stations and would only halt at junctions like Byculla, Dadar, Ghatkopar, etc. Evening travel time, after 5:00 PM by trains is popularly known as 'peak hours' or 'rush hours'. I am not a seasoned train traveler and am definitely not the long distance traveler. So, I have no clue how to juggle around and deal with the crowds during the rush hours! By the time I got into the train, it was already packed to the tee. The ladies compartment was full of women who were returning home from office. Here is when one gets the chance and the flavour of the concept of 'Saheli' (female friend) among women. In Marathi, a female friend is called 'Maitreen'. During the evening rush hour (which means that there is also a morning rush hour), working women normally travel in groups with their Sahelis and Maitreens. These female companions are either office mates or co-passengers whose journey timing and destinations is the same everyday. Seasoned travelers are well aware of the train timings and destinations in the evening. The Sahelis and Maitreens chat along all their way back home. The conversations and discussions are usually about the day's happenings. If the Sahelis are office mates, you can imagine the amount of 'bitching' (such an appropriate term nah?) that takes place - 'usne aisa kiya aur usne waisa kiya!'' (this fellow did this and that fellow did that). It is fun listening to who did what and all the twists and turns that the bitching takes. When I stepped into the train, I stood guard near the door. I was among the rare passengers in that compartment who wanted to get off at such a short distance. Most of the women were long distance travelers. In the compartment, an old woman was singing and dancing. She was not what we would think of as a 'typical old woman'. She might have been in her mid-forties. Her hair was dark and she had freckles on her face and on her slim waist. She was singing a Hindi song and dancing on that song. The song she sang was: "Kya karte the saajana, tum humse door rehke? Hum to judaai mein, chup, chup ke roya karte the!" [What were you doing my beloved when we were away from each other? During the period of our separation, I would sob in hiding …] This old woman had a peculiar way of dancing. She was not exactly dancing. She was acting out the song, as little children do when they recite poetry for a recitation exam or competition. She was moving various portions of her body while acting out. She sang the entire song. There was no sense of shame in her while she performed. She was singing and dancing and this was her routine way of earning her daily meals. She kept saying how she hoped to make at least twenty rupees in this train journey. She said she was confident of eking out this amount today because the compartment was packed and her goddess was showering her blessings on her. While she was singing and dancing, two women standing by the door were watching her. One of them was a middle class Maharashtrian working woman. She kept scorning at the lady. She hated the lady's movements and she kept making faces which suggested that to her, this singer's dance movements were nothing less than vulgar. From her facial expressions, I could make out that this lady seemed to be saying to herself, "What a shameless old woman! She should just get lost from here!" When I look at someone like this old lady who was singing and dancing without any sense of hesitation, I feel that she is an individual who is unpretentious and who does not have shame in doing something like this to earn a living. I did not think of this lady as shameless; in fact, I found that I did not have the guts to look at this lady all the time. I thought this old lady had her sense of dignity. At least, she was not begging. I did not look at this old lady myself because her presence was very confronting to me. I felt that here is someone who has enormous courage. She is courageous because she can sing and dance in front of so many people with the least inhibitions. She did not have a great voice neither was she a very good dancer. Her accent was wonky! One could just about manage to understand her Hindi. To many, she would have been a nuisance because she was mirroring every woman's image in each one's own eyes. She was a mirror for all our pretensions that we wear on ourselves in order to survive in this city! She made a lot of us appear naked in our own eyes. And yet, she really didn't mean to do all this. She was just being herself!!! After she finished singing her Hindi song, a young playful lady, standing next to me, gave her a rupee and complimented her. She truly seemed to have enjoyed this old lady's performance. The old lady took the coin, looked up (there was no sky! Only the ceiling of the train compartment could be seen!), thanked her goddess, and announced, "Now, I will sing a classic Asha Bhonsale song in Marathi!" The playful lady standing next to me squealed in delight and said to her maitreen standing next to her, "Aiyaa! This is a classic! It will be so much fun!" I felt that this lady provided a breathing space, a space to unwind in the midst of enormous crowd. She was not really an artist (I failed to fit her into my conventional mindset of artists!). Mumbai City does not exactly have an artist square, except the one outside Jehangir Art Gallery at Colaba where three to four artists sit down and make portraits and several little crowds and groups stand there, watching the sketching process and the people posing. Each one among the crowd likes to give their own comments, as if knowing a lot. Yet, it is such a unique space where people just come and stand; they stop running and they get awed and they stand still and they watch! An artist square gives a sense of leisure and space in the midst of the speed and blind traffic! An artist square is a sort of breathing space, a reminder that life need not always be a rushed business, that success does not only mean running with the time and trying to compete against it! I wish Mumbai City had artist squares, several of them, without specialized artists, with just everyday, simple, experimenting, ordinary people who are being themselves! Anyway, coming back to the train journey. It was time for me to get off. I moved closer to the door. Two ladies were standing there. I asked them, "Where do you want to get off?" One of them said, "Vikhroli!" I said, "Then move aside and let me get off at Byculla." The other young girl standing there realized that was a novice. She said to me, "Don't worry, we will let you get off when Byculla comes." She smiled at me. I realized that some system of unspoken understanding exists about getting off at various stations which I am not aware of. As Byculla approached, this young girl dexterously swung around the pole to make space for me to get off (and the train was in motion before it stopped completely!). When I got off the train, I found her hanging outside the train, by the pole! I was a bit horrified and worried for her, but then, in my heart of hearts, I knew that she must be used to such acrobatics, everyday! They are now a part of her system by which she lives and survives in this city. This is her adjustment mechanism to the trains. I wonder whether death scares her at all? "Are you going to take this space home?" --- Observations on Space and Human Behaviour At Kandivali station, Radhika, Santoshi and myself got into the train. Three of us are currently working together on a research project where we are examining the situation of water supply in Mumbai's slums. We were returning back from focused group discussions which we had organized in two slum communities in Kandivali. There was a disorganized rush all of which was trying to get into the train. Radhika and Santoshi got into the train from one door. I normally like to get in with ease and so I got into the train from another door where the crowds had eased out. Radhika and Santoshi found seats for themselves close to the door where they got in. I was about to seat myself into one of the empty seats near the door where I got in from when Radhika and Santoshi shouted, "Eh, come here," calling me to join them. When I got to there, they realized that they should have let me sit where I was trying to earlier because now, their seat (meant for three persons) was packed with three people. Radhika is fat. She was occupying the corner, window seat (most coveted seating position). Santoshi is slim and she was seated in between. On the outside, a third lady was seated. When I reached the seat, both Radhika and Santoshi felt obliged to give me space to sit. Santoshi began moving inwards towards Radhika, trying to make a little space for me to sit in. Ideally, I should have asked the lady on the outside to give me space to sit, but here I was, together with Santoshi, acting like an encroacher. I felt a bit to embarrassed about this encroachment I was making. The lady on the outside felt uncomfortable, but she decently allowed me to sit in and then she moved to another empty seat. Had there been someone else in her place, she would have created a hue and cry about what Santoshi and I were doing and it would have flared up into a complete conflagration. A crowd got into the train at Goregaon. A woman came and sat next to me. She asked me to shift in so that there would be enough place for her to sit. Radhika reluctantly moved in, but the lady on the outside was still uncomfortable. She aggressively asked all of us to move in for a second time. Radhika was totally irritated by now and she said, "Where will I move in further? There is a rod out here!" Santoshi checked for the rod, almost trying to ascertain whether Radhika was telling the truth because Radhika can be quite impish and vindictive when provoked and confronted. The lady now told Radhika with all her might, "Just shift in and you (she said pointing to Santoshi), you just move in a bit like this," and I shifted positions too. Thus, towards the end, the lady had successfully made a comfortable seating arrangement for herself. She said to Radhika, "See now, there is enough space. I just asked you to shift in. You are not going to take this space home, are you? All of us are here for short journeys and we all need place to sit." I thought this was a very crucial remark, "You are not going to take this space home!" Yes, none of us are going to take the space home, and yet, the way we fight in trains is as if we are fighting for 'very, very precious space which belongs exclusively to us!' Behaviour in trains is no simulation. It is real life. Even in trains, we fight for space just like we fight for space everywhere, in all aspects of life, in one form or another. Seats got empty at Andheri and this lady on the outside immediately jumped to the opposite seat which was highly comfortable and quite spaced out. I shifted out and made space for three of us to sit more comfortably. Another lady came and sat next to me. Again I shifted in. She left in a short while and I shifted out again. Santoshi was watching me. She giggled and said, "Poor you! You have to keep adjusting!!!" It was actually quite a funny exercise where I was constantly shifting, sometimes to a shrinking space, sometimes to an expanding space! This morning I had been to the slums in Ramgarh. Ramgarh is located on state government owned forest land. The government does not want the slum dwellers to reside here and hence, periodically, the government demolishes their hutments, forcing them to evict. The government demolishes their houses; they go on another place on the same land and build their houses again. Ramgarh is located on a hill slope area. Earlier, people were living on top of the hill. Now, they have been forced to move down. Currently, some people have paid money to the government officials and they have been allowed to live on the land for another year or so. But there will be demolitions in between. I asked them what if the government throws them out completely from this area. They aggressively told me, "How can the government do this to us? We will not move. We will stick to our place and we will make sure that the government does not think it will be easy to move us out! After all, we have been living on this land since the last 15 years, who dare throw us out from here?" These people in Ramgarh also shift spaces like I did in the train today. Radhika wanted to keep her space in tact today even though she has been sitting there for less than 15 minutes! Each one of us in trains is possessive about our space/our seat, especially when it is a crowded train where there are more people scrambling for limited space. In a crowd, our true natures are revealed. We can give a very tough fight for space because each one of us wants space to be comfortable. Otherwise, we become irritable and violent creatures. In January, I was traveling from Byculla to VT at 6:00 PM in the evening. It was empty train. The train got on to VT and I moved close to the door to get off. Before I could get off, a huge deluge of women madly rushed into the train even before it had properly stopped at the platform and was still in motion. The women almost trampled me and in order to save myself, I stood flattened by the door! It was a MOB! It was a mad mob which was totally blind except to its sole objective: "Get the bloody seats to sit!" The women were returning to their homes and they knew that if they did not go in for a scramble for the seats, they would be left behind and would have to probably stand throughout their long journeys. That two-minute incident was almost like observing an actual riot. In a riot too, I imagine that people scramble in order to get the spoils, and get as much as the spoils as possible within the little time that they have. These women were also looking for their prized spoils i.e. the coveted window seats to sit before the train got crowded in minutes time. For a moment, I was totally dazed about what had happened. I felt like a mad flock to wild geese had suddenly been let loose and they were on a kill! But then, I shook myself and said, 'Well, this is only a bunch of women, getting back from office to home and they are looking for a space to settle in now and unsettle from later.' But the question which lingered in my mind was whether human beings can be this violent for space? Or is it about bottled stresses and emotions which get their spark in the evening when it is time to journey back to homes. What kind of space is provided in trains which helps this mob of women to settle in and then unwind either by themselves or with their Sahelis and Maitreens? On February 15, when I was traveling back from Kurla to Parel, a Muslim woman and myself were trying to locate seats for ourselves in a crowded ladies compartment. Time and again, both of us would miss having seats before someone else would cleverly capture them. At one time, this Muslim woman was about to park herself into a seat when someone asked her to push out because she had already made an arrangement with the woman vacating the seat that the latter would give the seat to the former. The Muslim woman had a tired look on her face and she was trying to stand patiently, waiting for a seat to empty where she could sit. This brief incident made me think about the issue of 'minorities and space - scramble for resources'. During communal violence and clashes, majorities are fighting against minorities claiming that too much space has been given minorities and that they must learn how to accommodate. Images of Gujarat, Israel-Palestine, slum dwellers and various other groupings in society which are clashing for space come to my mind when I see little clashes in the train for space - for those crucial, precious and prized seats. Wow! Is this what spaces do to us?