Many cities, many voices

A review of 'Masani Sahara Dilli'

Sailen Routray

Mashani Sahara Dilli is an important book for many reasons, one of which is its sheering honesty. This Odia novel tells us stories that are marginal to the aspirational India we are supposed to inhabit these days. These are narrated from the vantage point of Anurag, a Government of Odisha officer who is now posted in Delhi for work. He lives alone in the city (we do not know where his family lives, the novel is mostly silent about it) and explores Delhi primarily through his interactions with its subaltern characters. One of the first persons he seeks out is Ramdulal, an elderly Dalit shoe repair person, who has a stall not far from where Anurag lives.

Over his stay in Delhi, Anurag becomes friends with Ramdulal, visits his stall even when he does not have any work to share cups of tea, sometimes visiting Ramdulal’s home in Sarita Vihar which he shares with his children, his wife being there no more. Over the course of his acquaintance with Ramdulal, Anurag gets to know of his decades long struggle to get a foothold in Delhi, after leaving his village in UP’s Rae Barely district. After spending nearly five decades in the city, he has finally put down roots in Delhi. His son works as a mechanic. His daughter takes care of the house and the household. 

Ramdulal’s story provides the backbone to the structure of the novel, albeit a makeshift one. Through multiple visits, Anurag gets his life story out for us, one episode at a time. This story is perhaps, unfortunately, a common one. A Dalit adolescent orphaned by the murder of his father by upper caste men over a trivial matter, Ramdulal suddenly has to fend for himself after his mother also dies of the shock. Finding it difficult to make a living as a shoeshine boy working in trains, while living in the home of his maternal uncle, he leaves for Delhi where over a period of time he finds community and family.

Through Ram Dulal’s story, the novel also provides a micro history of the slum areas of Sarita Vihar locality, where after his first few explorations in the city, Ramdulal settles down. He finds a mentor in Chandulal, who helps him clear a plot of land and put down roots. Around the same time, Ramdulal falls in love with Chhabeli, an orphaned Dalit girl who works as a sweeper in the road on which Ramdulal has a stall, and they decide to become man and wife. 

Through descriptions of the visits that Anurag makes to the Sarita Vihar slums, we get a sense of the ethnographic history of this area. Around half a century back, the area was almost a jungle through which a stream flowed. Dalits and Muslims first settled in the area, slowly cleared the forest, bearing the brunt of wild beasts such as the boars who roamed the place and often attacked people. 

This ethnographic eye is visible when Anurag describes other encounters as well. On a park he comes in contact with a group of young and middle-aged plumbers from Kendrapada with whom he becomes pally. He also gets to know a community belonging to a caste known as ‘Ganaa’ from Western Odisha, who started migrating to Delhi from the time the British shifted the capital to the city in 1911. We also come to know of other aspects of micro communities such as the living conditions of those inhabiting the servant quarters of bureaucrats on rent and the festivities of the Nepali community in his neighborhood. 

But all through this, the story that acts as the backbone of the novel is that of Ramdulal. We get to hear of Ramdulal’s history from multiple vantage points. Sometimes the point of view is that of Anurag whose telling occasionally slips into that of the omniscient third person narrator. On other occasions we hear the narrative as a first person account from Ramdulal himself, which suddenly gives it an intimacy and immediacy we often encounter in Dalit autobiographies.

Through the reactions that Ramdulal’s story produces in Anurag we get to know that Anurag is himself Dalit, who often encountered discrimination in school in his village as a student. The same experiences continue in his office in Delhi now, where casteist colleagues often disparage him because of his jati background and create difficult conditions at work. 

As a Dalit who is conscious of structures of oppression, Anurag is often impatient of the apparently simple minded Ramdulal who believes in gods and goddesses and visits the local temple regularly, which seems to be the center of sociality in the area, anchored by an orthodox priest. But through a process of continuous engagement, Anurag and Ramdulal come to know each other’s lifeworlds and motivations better. 

This book is perhaps autobiographical in nature, at least in parts. Basudev Sunani, the author, was posted in Delhi for a few years (as he mentions in the dedication of the novel to his wife ‘Sanu’), like Anurag, the protagonist. The latter’s voice seems substantively identifiable with that of the author himself. He often comes to stand in for the author. 

We see Delhi through Anurag’s eyes. The only reason why a character is introduced in the novel is because Anurag comes across him in Delhi. Therefore, this enforces a certain episodic nature on the narration. This has perhaps led to the division of the book into chapters with titles. Despite this, however, the book can feel meandering at times. This has perhaps more to do with ineffective editing than any structural reasons. 

Nonetheless, the novel does manage to hold one’s interest all throughout and is an engaging read. This has to do with the natures of the stories themselves for which the novel acts as a vessel. My biggest quibble is with the title itself, which literally means ‘Delhi – The Graveyard City.’ Perhaps it was better titled as ‘Delhi – The City of Rebirth,’ as it is filled with stories of grit, survival and flourishing against great odds, stories that only an urban space like Delhi seems to make possible. 

Bibliographic Details: Basudev Sunani. 2020. Mashani Sahara Delhi. Bhubaneswar: Vishwamukti Publications. 384 Pages. Rs. 450. [Cover by Jayant Parmar]. 

Note: This piece was first published with the title ‘Migrants and Micro-Communities’ in The Book Review 46 (7).