Book Review - Delhi: A Soliloquy by M. Mukundan

Delhi: A Soliloquy by M. Mukundan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of those rare, soul-stirring books that jolts the complacency out of the reader. Having studied and trained in Delhi (Ramjas College, UCMS, Safdarjung Hospital), hung around K Nags swilling Campa Cola (long haired, jhola toting, wearing bell-bottoms and shirts with ‘go-go’ collars), scoured Nai Sadak for books, experimented with various manifestations of cannabis in the lanes of Chandni Chowk, wooed my wife-to-be (Rose Garden in Hauz Khas, South Ex, corridors of CP), getting married in Arya Samaj Mandir BKS Marg, cuddling my newly-born daughter in Holy Family Hospital, and eventually working as a Palliative Care Physician, I can claim to be a true Dilliwala . On my first two-wheeler (a Bajaj) and later in a Maruti 800, I watched in dismay as the idyllic roads of Delhi turned into polluted streams of bumper-to-bumper traffic jams. Grand old trees gave way to the concrete jungle of present times. Love it or hate it – it’s my Dilli and having witnessed the turbulent times described in the book, I can closely identify with the defining moments in the Delhi’s history – the Emergency and the ’84 riots. The author has distilled the essence of India’s capital – a recent historical look through the eyes of an immigrant from Kerala – religion, caste, poverty, politics, slums (the so-called JJ Colonies), parochialism, riots, pogroms, socioeconomic disparity, all interlaced with communist undertones. The narrative starts from the early sixties when the present day megapolis was still a growing city

… Andrews Ganj, where the city itself ended. Beyond it were wheat fields, interspersed with cabbage and radish patches…The cauliflower patches on the right side of the narrow road leading to Kalkaji were also in darkness. No one went there after nightfall because it teemed with robbers and thugs…

Today middle-class aspirations include owing a car, flat-screen TV etc but back then

A Murphy radio was the dream of every middle-class family

Before the so-called economic liberalization in the nineties, three decades earlier, life was a struggle

he woke up to the rumble of Delhi Milk Scheme vans filled with milk bottles driving past the house. He had permits for two half-litre bottles since they were a family of four.

The author chiefly on the woes and existential concerns of the poor and down-trodden

For a man with no money, hunger was a real problem. But Vasu was one of those who belied that one doesn’t need money to get food or end hunger. How did birds and animals eat? Did they have money?

These cameos convey the atmosphere of utter poverty and indifference. In the alleys of Old Delhi

A crazed-looking woman limped through the crowd, dark blood clots between her legs. No one noticed her. No one gave her a scrap of cloth to cover her nakedness. A beggar without legs and arms propelled himself forward on his back, wriggling between the wheels of rickshaws and legs of pedestrians, balancing his begging bowl on his chest.

Food for thought

The yellow-tinged mutton-rice inside big copper pots was covered with flies. Mutton-rice or fly-coated rice? A man with a henna-coloured beard stood eating his rice from an aluminium plate, watched hungrily by a beggar. Once he had sucked out all the marrow from the bones, he discarded them into the waiting hands of the beggar, who gnawed hungrily at the bits of flesh still left on them.

More from the walled city of Dilli

A child was caught pick-pocketing someone and was flung to the ground. The crowd began to kick him in his chest and stomach. Blood spurted from his nose. His howls of pain set the hearts of the doves on the minaret of Jama Masjid aflutter with fear…

The birth of Bangladesh and the refugee influx

It was like the overflow of sludge and rocks that follows a landslide. Journeys that began as a flight from death turned into funeral processions of poverty and hunger…Beside the road, and below the trees, they appeared as sores and grew like pustules. Little children with misshapen torsos, pale yellow skin and sunken eyes thrust their arms out at pedestrians and passing cars. Most of them were naked, and the boys were circumcised.

The reign of terror that was unleashed by Sanjay Gandhi and his cohort of semen-thirsty minions was an echo of Nazi pogroms against Jews in the Fourties

‘Nasbandiwale aaye hain. Bhaag jao, bhaag jao’, the naliwala shouted…After running for some time, the pigs stopped. They swished their curly tails and stood panting. Though the pigs littered more than human beings, Sanjayji’s forced vasectomy programme did not include them. No municipal vehicles drove up with a roar to round them up and take them away by force… ‘The lives of the shit-eating pigs are safer than ours,’ Sahadevan (the protagonist) said…Until now, there was only hunger, poverty, and communal and caste conflict. Nowadays it was vasectomies, arrests and incarcerations. People disappearing had become a daily occurrence.

Blooming of the lotus and the burgeoning Hindutva wave

There are people in Delhi who feed cows when humans are starving. For them, cows are more important. You know that. They don’t know the value of human beings. It’s such men who turn into fascists. I despise them.

The housing shortage

Most Malayalis, after coming to Delhi, gave up on their dream of owning an independent house. A DDA flat was all they could hope for. Matchbox-like flats built one on top of the other. Within months of moving in, there would be seepages and leaks. The corroded water pipes would break in one’s hands

The socialist symbol of existence

A ration card was not merely for buying wheat, rice and sugar at subsidised prices, and candles and firecrackers during Diwali. It was also an identity card. An authoritative and credible testimony that he was alive on the face of this earth. Without a ration card, it would be impossible to prove that he was a resident of the city.

In short, an EPIC!

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