New Zealanders have a funny way of thinking about moving houses. Why move yourself as the house can come to you?
As most of the houses are made from wood, they are easily to transport. It is not uncommon that people look for a piece of land first and then choose the house they want to move. I wonder if they’re able to ship them overseas as well; no more home-sickness for NZ people.
In two weeks time, I encountered two houses ‘on the road’ to their next destination. See below –>
Three weeks later and ten thousand miles away from the little village I visited, the details of my visit to Sahaspur haven’t left my memory yet. Being the first white visitor in fourty years is a special experience which is hard to visualize. Some fragments I captured, some fragments I wish I’d caught.
Starting from Maharani Bagh at the juicestall near the red light, you enter through narrow pathways, Kilokri – a locality marked by its density and chaotic stacking of houses in South-East Delhi. Unpaved roads decorated by fruit and nut carts, lead to spaces in which you wonder whether you are in- or outside. Touching with your left hand and right hand different wall textures, the space in front of you becomes more narrow while the only light comes from above – two facing roof tops left a space 20 cm to mark the separation of the two houses.
These exterior interior spaces lead eventually to more spacious rooms where kids are playing next to activities of washing, praying, cooking and sleeping. And working ofcourse, however a lot of labour activities are not visible on the streets. If you look carefully and listen to sounds, you might discover much more activity than you inititially think of. The chance that a ventilator in a basement is the sign of a workshop, is pretty big. Knocking on a door of a house which seems to be abandoned, opens a complete hidden world. Surrounded by fluorescent lights, three men are needling little mirrors and other decorative elements on deep pink cloths.
They told me that wintertime makes people very slow and sleepy, often illustrated by drivers sleeping in cars, on bicycles and rickshaws parked on the side of the road. On the contrary, in summertime, most people are much more active – something which logically I cannot understand, knowing that my mode of activity would be pretty slow during 40 degrees celsius. But, than again, forget about logic in India.
Crossing Maharani Bagh, takes you through MiraBai Polytechnic, Immur Nagar and the rich neighbourhood of New Friends Colony. The density of Kilokri transforms into spacious lanes with guarded mansions, orderly fenced off and protected from unlicensed vegetable salesmen and other mobile shops. Opposite the gated communities – which means a distance of five meters – the ‘unallowed’ people live – making a living with polishing shoes, chopping meat, selling tea or washing cloths. After the gates, a new densed area arises. Surrounded by goats and butcher shops, we take a left and end up in brick-building-land. Everywhere I look are red bricks and the further I go, the more chaotic the stacking becomes. Looking right from me, I see a cow in an open space filled with trash while on my left hand an illegal dye and wash-company appears.
I continue my way and have to start looking where I put my feet, without ending up in a puddle pool of water. The bricks turn into various materials, from plastic to grass, chickpeas, rubber bands and wood. However the shape of the houses transforms, the tv antenna – a steady element – proudly marks the domestic space. When the dirtroad stops, the water begins. I realize that most of the neighbourhood of Joga Bai is built on the river bedding of the Yamuna and I can only imagine what happens during monsoon season.
Coming from the metro stop Kashmere Gate, you’ll walk through an old neighbourhood – once glorious, now dusty and decorated with black staines. With static buildings on your left and right hand, the street lingers further into the city, under bridges, via different street textures such as concrete, asphalt, mud with a mixture of urine, by various housing localities, statues, religious icons and imperial buildings to a train-underpass with on the left side a small yellow kiosk contrasting a light pink wall behind it.
Turning your back to the kiosk provides you the view of a small entrance on your right side, which takes you into a military graveyard. Besides the son of captain Samuel Watson – who died on an early age in 1824 – among other military infants who got burried here, another more apparent and lively space opens up. Trough the decoration of shiny Christmas strings and laundry-items you’ll find kids playing cricket, mothers cooking and elderly people stretching out on their beds outside. This is ‘home’ for at least ten families, who are living with the dead for most of their life time. It flashes through my mind whether the dead prefer to be among dead or living people, but since that question stays unanswered, it leaves my mind quickly.
When I pass the entrance again on my way out, I leave a neighbourhood, not a graveyard.
More information / photos: http://blog.sarako.net/?page_id=13
While everyone was celebrating Xmas, I managed to get the price of my daily ride down to 30 Rs. Instead of going to my ‘usual’ rickshaw stand, I walked a few hundred meters further which immediately decreased the starting sum of the bargain – 40 instead of 50. So, in a week time, I downgraded my foreignness with 40 %, 37 euro cent to be precisely.
My theory of trying to show myself as much as possible in my neighbourhood in order to get the number of gazes down, does not work yet. Maybe you would think I would feel discouraged, but nevertheless I came with another idea. From this morning on, I added another neighbourhood-integration possibility, namely ‘the gym’. The discovery of this space took me some time, since the space is hidden behind billboards and advertisements. But when my eye caught the reflection of an oily bodybuilder, I knew I was close. The entrance of ‘Exert, the gym’ is shared with a call center annex property dealer, but when you leave them behind on the ground floor, you bump into a wooden desk with cans filled with muscle enhancers. With close to it, Vicky, the owner. Vicky would have liked me to start right away, but it was clear I needed some preparation to start my training and I told him I would come next morning.
At ten o’clock sharp I entered ‘Exert, the gym’. The first comment I got from Vicky was that I was late, since I told him I would come at 9 a.m. Indians are more punctual than Brazilians, one of the few obvious differences between the two cultures I recently visited and something I have to get used to. A quick look at the schedule last night – from 10 a.m. till 1 p.m. women only – convinced me of the fact to come at 10, reducing the amount of gazes to a minimum. However, a side effect which I overlooked in my considerate calculation, was the 100% devotion of Vicky to turn me into a bodybuilder in the five weeks that are left, which resulted in some strange looks from the other ten women in the gym.
The machines do not have the quality where I’m used to – once I start running on the mechanical treadmill, I keep accelerating – but the guidance of my personal trainer compensates for that. Hopefully I will gain some independence in the next few times I will be there, so I can practice my exercises without anyone looking over my shoulder or correcting my posture, but I’m sure Vicky will let me go to this next level. This might even enlarge my chances to become less of an invader for the rest of the gym, and finally my neighbourhood.
In my mission to get more integrated into my neighbourhood, I must say, there are still a few obstacles left, with language as the main issue. I am not sure if I succeed to ‘inburger’ myself completely – Verdonk would probably still give me an insufficient mark for my selective efforts – but the first steps are made.
More picts: http://www.flickr.com/photos/okaras/
