Photograph by Twisha Deb
A place where to be. Is there a place where to be? Scraps of food for to be…needed for to be…is there at all a “for to be”?
A television to see…What about eyes? Cooking utensils for company and the parting hands waving in thin air…thin air is all that remains for to be. An oblong god upon the ground where the little girl unveils the theatre of ruins. The girl becomes a woman as soon as the television is switched on. There are ripples around her belly…a blank stare to engulf the shambles…eyes in shambles…for to be…
Then the little boy…oh the little juggler with his stick, standing as old as time and his dear old grandfather, dead of starvation. The stick stands in a ration-less world…for to be…the bathrooms and bedrooms are all alike here…so much so as if almost none at all…
A mobile still rings in all this…there is still a reaching out to a voice outside this maze of shirts and scraps. Is there anybody there? She asks holding the hand of her little daughter…walking amid the dirt…there is a buzz on the phone…Beyond is the other…
Skeptic stares…fingers in mouth and a labuoring posture that softly resembles a salute…an insistent scalp where postures and gestures unite…a place for to be…
A trampled toy elephant held in ageing hands…eyeless in the scraps…the little toy penis is still upright…Does he still have an erection in this toy land? Erect for to be…
A bandaged smile on her face, the adolescent girl and an innocent bucket hanging for company. Shirts make faces and the camera is all eyes…Can it hear too?
A half-broken mirror with its half shadow still shelters the girl…cools her off. She stands off centre, covered by the old dressing table which now has a head…her mother’s…wrinkled eyes atop the dress-rehearsal. Is there a police cordon where the final is scheduled?
There…another triplet among the polyphonic shirts, sacks and bowls. There they stand as if all standing will explode one day…at the centre of a dead calm like capped dogs moving through funeral processions.
Here the soil is hard…full of stony reserve and cracks…eyes with more than just slits…for to see…the soil breathes on the head of the little boy, caring for himself, twirling his fingers through his dense hair…or in despair who knows? There are two zeroes in a strip at the back of his shirt…at degree zero for to be…
The boy-become-man tightens the rope…holds on to the cover…a fence? The wall overlooking shame? That’s the ladies toilet or the boundary perhaps. May be, that is where their home ends in endlessness.
A place where to be is not to be…still to be…being there…the vigil is on. A place for leaving where there is no leaving. They are leaving but they do not leave…They are there…for their there to be…
[Story of Bhim Chhaya slum that had been illegally demolished on 16th
of November, 2011, though it was included in the list of the slums
that could not be demolished, as per the meeting between the CM and
Medha Patekar. These people intend not to vacate their place in their
protest against this illegal displacement. Now even their ration has been stopped.]
No comments:
Post a Comment