As experienced on the walk back home from the Metro station
I’ve lived in my present home for 17 years. The Hauz Rani
urban village has always been right next door, but I didn’t really become aware
of it until my brother discovered Avon
Video Selection, where we could rent movie DVDs for as little as 50 rupees.
Suddenly we were going to Hauz Rani every other day, at least until that guy
started home delivery/ pickup.
Then the metro started. The Malviya Nagar station is
actually on the edge of Hauz Rani and Saket, and the closest to home, about 15
minutes away. For some time I took the long way home, along Press Enclave road.
I don’t even remember how I discover the shortcut –I think I saw some people going
along it and decided to follow- but I now go via the village.
There is a steep stairway (going up) which open out onto a
very large piece of undeveloped land where weeds and shrubs and urinating men
reign supreme, though there are some trees. On the right is a high wall, behind
which, on a slightly higher level, I assume, are houses. In the past month a
couple of food and paan shops have cropped up here, and they very conveniently use
the wall top as their sill.
The path bends right and the wall continues, though the
paving does not. Suddenly you have to battle through mud, kitchad and water logged holes. A little further away, and due to
the benign grace of some enterprising fellow (or a cow gone crazy, because the
villagers do keep cattle) there
appears, literally, a hole in the wall, portal to the Hauz Rani I know. The
wall is now on my left, and on the right are bright turquoise and pink painted
2-3 storey narrow houses. This lane, about 2 metres wide, is literally their
front yard, and since many keep their doors open, I’ve often caught glimpses of
old men reclining on charpais and of
women doing pochcha, squatting with
their sarees hiked up. Most houses
also have their toilets opening onto the streets, small 1m square
compartment-like rooms with only enough space for a Indian style WC. I always feel
compelled to look the other way whenever I see anyone entering or exiting, as
if I’m invading their privacy.
This is something I very often wonder: do the villagers mind
the sudden influx of passersby through their previously anonymous galli? Or are they happy, seeing
opportunity for enterprise? I’ve already mentioned the new khana-peena-paan shops, and there also a couple of small grocery
shops on the galli, though I don’t know if they came up only after the Metro
did.
I also never feel awkward
when passing through, however short my shorts are, unlike on the latter leg of
my journey when I have to go via a part of Malviya Nagar I like to call the Sardar Colony (no offence intended),
since the whole neighbourhood seems to be populated by Sikhs (and I’m not joking, houses have quaint names
like Pahalwan Niwas and the colony
gates have very prominent shield-and-kirpan
embellishments).
I think it’s because the Hauz Rani villagers are so busy
working or cleaning or playing (in the case of children), and there are always
youth in Malviya Nagar who seemingly have nothing to do, or are at least busy
taking a break whenever I pass through. As a result -and I’m not saying that
they misbehave, because they don’t, but they are obviously people-watching-
suddenly I feel as if all eyes are on me, walking alone on a very quiet
(especially after the hustle-bustle of the Hauz Rani lane) and wide 5 metre
road (this short-cut is not as busy, but I see new people discovering it every
day –yahan se bhi gol chakkar aayega kya?).
The part of Hauz Rani that I’ve just described, the face of
the galli, is all I associate with
Hauz Rani. So whenever I find out something new, I’m always very surprised. For
example, recently a small group of us decided to design an intervention in the
area for a competition, and I discovered that the village is actually much
larger, going all the way up to Khirki and the Saket malls, and that is has a
over-700-year long history. I found it so very disconcerting- I felt as if I would
now have to alter the image I had rendered in my head. In fact, when I say Hauz
Rani I still mean this area, even
though this is almost definitely an extension of the original village.
(I also found out why there’s a Hauz in the name, even though there’s no evidence of a lake or water
body nearby, which I had previously
wondered about. Click here to go to a
very interesting essay -'Perceiving ‘your’ land: neighbourhood settlements and the
Hauz-i Rani'- by historian Sunil Kumar on the hitherto lake and the changing relationship
between the village and affluent Saket.)
Below is my mental map of Hauz Rani and the Google Earth image of the same area. I've also marked out the route I take on another Google Earth image.
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