Bal Mitra Mandal

Every place has a story to tell. Unlike the usual novella, however, these are stories that are understood using all the senses and receptors available. These stories are living organisms, growing and developing with the constancy of a river. These are stories that I cannot relay through my paltry jigsaw of words, because if it’s a place you’ve never been to, you can never imagine what it was really like. But as every person trying to make the bare minimum impact with their lives would say, it’s all I can do. So, dear reader, let me take you to a section of South Delhi that’s a world away from our Sarojinis and Hauz Khas Villages. 

Welcome to Sanjay Camp. The pink line metro pulls in to the south campus station, about a kilometre away from the camp we are headed to now. As we descend the staircase, one should always mentally prepare to be surrounded and hounded by autowallahs eager to fleece every last penny off your person. Lucky for me, a veteran Delhiite, I was able to get an autorickshaw to myself for forty rupees, to head to the Singapore High Commission, the landmark given for Sanjay Camp. “Aapko painting karne jaana hai na?” I clearly wasn’t this man's first customer headed to “Rang Badlav Ke”, the event for painting graffiti on the busti walls.

Walking through the narrow alleyways that are throughout the settlement, you see a bustling independent ecosystem, a city within a city if you may. The densely populated camp has migrants from all over India. A woman whom I interviewed had stayed in Sanjay Camp for forty five years. She excitedly told me about her three sons and how she had raised them in this place. Her cosy little house had been painted in a way that spoke of professionalism. “Mera ek beta painting ka kaam karta hai, hotel mein” (one of sons works as a painter at a hotel; probably part of the maintenance staff) the lady states proudly, her toothless, hunched frame as if getting a few inches taller. She tells me she’s from the fisherman community from Jharkhand, to which I cheekily reply that I’d love some fish since I’m Bengali. She verifies the stereotype, claiming that Bengalis are a large part of their customer base back in Jharkhand.

Every adult is eager to have their walls painted by the volunteers. Having already gone further into the camp than the painters, I get called back a lot to ask the painters to come paint these peoples' walls. I laugh in response, trying in vain to explain that they’ll take much longer to get there. A maze of houses often leads me back to where I started from, as I struggled to stop myself from going in circles. The back end of the area opens up to a railway track. The scenic view could have been something out of the movie “Stand by Me”, if not for the mountainous piles of garbage and waste on either side, and the stench of sewage in the air. “They do clean this up sometimes, but it all piles up again. “, another elderly interviewee says, the annoyance clear in her voice. “Even drainage and water supply just arrived two years ago.” 

A little boy whom I had interviewed just before her was clearly eager to tell the woman about it, going on about “Daadi, inhone mera bhi interview liya” The kid loved running, telling me that he can beat me at an 800 metre run. Whether this was true or not is doubtful, for he couldn’t have been more than seven years old. I am making an estimate, since the kid didn’t know his age. He would eventually challenge me to a run where I get beaten hollow. Or pretend to lose, it depends on how one sees it. Interviewing the kids was an absolute delight. They often turned up in groups and asked me to click pictures. On asking questions I get a chorus of responses. Many of these children study at the Sanskriti School, right next to Sanjay Camp. I see reflections of my own childhood here, even though the surroundings look so different from the place I grew up in. These children too are big fans of “Doraemon” and “Taarak Mehta ka Ulta Chashma”, two shows that can be considered the holy grail of

Indian pop culture. These kids play bat-ball; and kabaddi, and promise me a box of sweets if they do well in their half yearly exams. I soon find myself next to the train tracks, where a passenger train to Kanpur is now blocking my view. I chat for a while with a local man, who’s frustrated at not being able to cross the tracks to get to work. Having grown up here, he now sells cell phone accessories in Moti Bagh. He clearly is worried about being late to work, and adamant on crossing the tracks, since using any other route would be too long and complex. I take his leave when the train starts to move.

“This used to be a forest earlier”, my final interviewee is another old woman. “We came here from Aligarh because of some family conflicts. I came with my father and my husband. We chopped wood and used rocks to build our houses.” Her eyes become distant as she recollects the now dense and widespread busti emerging from nothingness. I now reconsider calling the mere nineteen years of my life enough to make me "veteran”. I stored each of these stories in a corner of my mind, never to be forgotten, and bid adieu to Sanjay Camp, taking with me a Delhi I had never seen.