I tell them that there are many who take up wide problems but no one takes up narrow and small issues, therefore I have to be narrow minded…’ (p. 132). Similarly, another diary entry of Narayan Uke dated 02.11.1946 mentions that Dr Ambedkar was busy most of the day with the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in an important meeting and how the latter praised his book What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables.
Yet, the space was carefully designed to ensure that the ‘masses’ were separated from the ‘classes’ thereby building social inequity into the very architecture of the space. Neither the Europeans nor the Princely State, the author observes, were willing to imbibe the ‘idea of equality as a central tenet of being modern’ (p. 68). Later, in its bid to become a global city, Hyderabad witnesses the construction of a giant IMAX theatre with a six-storey-high screen, a four screen multiplex and other recreational facilities.
India of course is largely a population of ‘informal workers’, with no formal contracts, no unions representing them, living precariously on subsistence wages in small enterprises in the cities. With these enterprises shutting down, what were they to do? There were no buses or trains—the Shramik trains came much later—they decided to walk back to their villages.
It is the mundane materiality of groceries, virtual schooling, work from home, and housework that remind us about the behind-the-scenes effort that people, especially women, make on a daily basis to carry on with the business of life, even in times of upheaval and uncertainty. The author goes beyond the residents who inhabit this relatively prosperous street to include in her creative ambit the grocery delivery boy Shyam, who decides to walk home to the safety of his village however illusory that safety might be
The pervasiveness of patriarchal atrocities come across as unusually stifling as stories such as ‘Dastoor’ elucidate how they thrive under the garb of custom and tradition. Such a hostile environment is exacerbated by rampant alcoholism, abject poverty and lack of employment whose intersection is reflected in many of these writings. Consequently, one also comes across women fighting and trying to forge an identity of their own and ‘dukka’ or toil becoming a defining aspect of their life.
In doing so, it weaves the spatiotemporal coordinates of interbeing where body, soul and universe are mutually entwined. The wife’s (Ira’s) deep connect with the luminous world of nature is manifest in her tender attachment to her brio-filled mulberry tree that fructifies, provides pleasant shade, attracts chirping birds, and vibrates with lively monkeys. Ira’s empathy with the refulgent tree annoys Sudhiranjan, her pragmatic botanist husband, and makes him so jealous that he poisons it secretly.