8/8/2019 Bastard Child -Chandni Chowk

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Bastard Child

- Chandni Chowk

Sabeena Mathayas

It is tough not to be drowned by the plebian tsunami crashing against the walkway leading me out of theOld Delhi metro station. The signatures of democracy that have attempted to unite the heterogeneousmasses are an eidetic assault : chaat waalas and paranthe waalas , counterfeit commodities and genuinegenius, broken streets and crowded lanes, scattered synagogues of faith and scattered sectarians of faith, bedlam chaos and numbing silences – it’s hard to stay the individual. I meander through thebelievers prostate before the temple of Lord Shiva and reach the little gali that will lead me to the mainstreet and Town Hall. Each hawker in the two by four capsules he calls a shop, shouts, grunts andmumbles as he reaches out into the swelling crowd before him to fish for customers. My shoulderblades avoid the assault but another beside me isn’t as lucky as her attention is arrested for the rip -off trousseau collection one such hawker tries to sell. I meanwhile, remain packed with the other sardinesin my can and wait for the crowds to progress out the other end of the gali .

It’s when I see her.

Again.

She ’s been here for as long as I can remember – old, in a corner, hand outstretched, slumped against thepatina infested sewer pipe, eyes vacant, reeking of urine and alcohol. Wires maze above her and alongthe ancient haveli’s mughal architecture, obscuring the view of the posters on the wall that advertisethird party insurance and cures for baldness and impotence. Her stench is unbearable; distinct, waftingabove the crowds. Her outstretched arm is stiff. Anonymous. Decaying. She might be dead. The crowdsare getting heated up. They’re pushing forward, colliding against me as I t ry to resist their insurgentflow. I want to touch her. Just to check. I can feel the surge of nausea and the bile on my palate. I reachout to touch her fingers.

That’s when she grunts. Stretches. Yawns. Moves. Lights a joint.

I almost fall backward but the tide carries me forward.

I am in Chandni Chowk.

8/8/2019 Bastard Child -Chandni Chowk

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It was once just a street in the old imperial walled city of Shahjahanbad. Built as part of thedevelopmental projects of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his daughter Jahanara Begum Sahib,Chandni Chowk was the diadem shaped like a crescent moon, running from the Lahori Darwaza (LahoreGate) to Fatehpuri Masjid with a reflective pool at the center and a canal as part of the water supplysystem that divided the street. But 360 odd years of cataclysmic history did a lot to alter its fairy tale

conception. The Katl-e-Aam by Nadir Shah and his minions as they swept through the jewel encrustedstore houses of Dariba Kalan, the bloody murder of Guru Tegh Bahadur by Aurangzeb, the regalprocessions that were held up until the Delhi Durbar of 1903, the trials and triumphs of Begum Samru,the protean genius of Mirza Ghalib, the Great Rebellion of 1857, the demise of the great Mughal empire,the destruction of the reflective pool, the falling of Ghantaghar [clock tower], the partition bloodshedand encroachment waves, the marriage of Nehru, the birth of Musharraf, the chit fund millionaires – abreathless history that sweeps over you just like the Delhi loo. It makes you sweat, cooling as much as itsuffocates and yet its existence immanent.

In human history, blood has always drawn more blood. Today Chandni Chowk still stands witness to the

India’s chronic tryst with ironic destiny. Multinationals and their skyscrapers may run up stock indicesand decorate the skyline of Delhi but Chandni Chowk is the illicit axis of commerce and pluralism.Primarily a grey market- there are no limits to the products available, no guarantees, no warranties, noquality checks, no authenticity and therefore plenty of room for haggling and becoming a billionaire. Nomatter which katra, kucha or haveli you enter into, there is a teeming populous haggling for a rip-off designer sari at Kinari Bazaar, for a dubious diamond that will finish an adulterated gold ring at DaribaKalan, for Chinese electronics at Bhagirath Palace and Lajpat Rai Market, for pirated and used books atNai Sarak and export- rejected fabrics from Katra Neel. If that doesn’t climax your experience, you couldcomplain – complain about the wires over your head, the noise that bursts your ear drums, the ghosts of history prowling the streets, the confused secular identity with 22 temples and shrines, the political

propaganda every quarter outside Town Hall or perhaps the rural migrant soldiers of fortune: spitting,doping, drinking, working, brawling and jamming streets.

I bend my head away from the blinding sunlight reflecting off the gilded domes of the GurudwaraSheeshganj and continue my unchartered navigation through the cluttered streets. I feel a crude handgrabbing my shoulder blade. The heat and aggression of the nucleus of a nation in transition swellthrough me as I whip around to face the hawker who’s tried to fish me. But it’s the old lady. She offers

me water and a sweet milk cake. The hot loo cools the sweat off my brow as I stare at her and accepther gift. An odd hand movement over my head in the form of a blessing, and my doped old lady hobblesaway into the badgered army of survivors.

Chandni Chowk is the dreg at the pith of a nation – but it is also its love, its myth, its soul, its home, itshistory. Under all my skepticism, this grain of belief.