Now when its clear that the Libyan leader Col Muammar el-Gaddafi is not the stuff heroes are made of, how can you continue to call Lahores most iconic landmark Gaddafi Stadium? Yes, Shakespeare said that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But that could be wrong. A few months ago I was driving through Khichdipur locality in east Delhi and could not smell any khichdi.
What difference would it have made if the place were called Biryanipur? But trust Delhi not to care for such existential questions. The city is littered with localities that have weirdly funny names.
I asked my rich friends in the upscale New Friends Colony and they couldnt say why NFC is called so. We live in a spirit of friendliness perhaps, said one of the friends.
If thats the logic, then are there more shaadis at Shadipur? Are people in Swastha Vihar healthier? Swastha means health in Hindi. Are rooftops in Sunlight Colony decked with solar panels? Do people in Maujpur, near Shahdara in east Delhi, have more mauj than the population anywhere else? Is Gole Market gole? Uhmmit actually is.
Another curious name is that of the Metro station near Seelampur, called Welcome. I thought that it might be Metros first ever station in Delhi, which is why they named it so. I was wrong. Investigations showed that Shahdara was Delhis first metro station, not Welcome, which is named after a colony called Welcome.
But the Oscar for the most creative name goes to a neighbourhood called hold your breath Nasbandi Colony. Nasbandi means vasectomy in Hindi. Last week I went there and was surprised to discover it to be a Muslim ghetto. This week I dedicate my column to the Nasbandi people. They live in depressing circumstances.
Hopelessness choked the air. Lethargy was invasive. Life was swimming in a dreary motion. Everyone moved slowly, knowing there was no future. The world of Nasbandi Colony was sterile. Like its name, which means vasectomy, the surgical process of sterilisation, there was no hope in the unborn. That had been taken away also.
Unpainted houses hinted of aborted undertakings. Tattered curtains, guarding the entrances, exposed the poverty inside. Bricks were layered one upon another but construction appeared to have been jettisoned midway. Walls looked temporary. Open drains lined their fronts. Lemon wedges. Plastic bottles. Rubber slippers. Cluster of mosquitoes. And greenish-looking oily scum floated in them. Hand pumps stood adjacent to these drains. In the absence of running water, they were a vital source for malaria.
The streets were strewn with refuse. Goats and people scampered on the sides. Flies reigned supreme on buffalo meat, over-ripened bananas, and infants in hanging baskets. Here decent people pined for dignity. Nasbandi Colony is just across the border from Delhi and yet it could be from another era.
Despondent-looking people sat outside their brick hovels that lined the way. They were all Muslims. Some houses doubled up as makeshift factories. Junaid Alam, from Bihars Darbhanga, makes metallic springs. His per day output of 10 kg translated to Rs 200, which is nothing. Tanveer, next door, earned Rs 70 by making 4000 brass buttons daily. Their manually run machines were independent of an on-and-off power supply available six hours a day.
Where was the Shining India?
Nasbandi Colony had no government college. Children are enrolled if at all – in madrasas. Some, like 15-year-old Mohammed Nasir, sell Buffalo Biryani for Rs 5 per plate. Parks are unthinkable luxuries. Cricketers play in a ground in the nearby Lalbagh. Grocery stores were half-empty. An abnormally hot bakery, churning out rusks on steel trays, employed seething young men.
Nasbandi Colonys present could not be captured without knowing its past.
It happened around twenty years ago. Sunhera Khatoon, the mother of three children, does not remember the exact year they shifted from Seemapuri, a Muslim neighbourhood in Delhi. Her youngest was a girl of 6 when Khatoon went for the operation. Six months later, as promised by a government policy, she was awarded a free 50 square yard plot at Buddha Nagar, in neighboring Uttar Pradesh. Many lapped up this scheme through which the government hoped to address the population problem. Around five thousand underwent birth-control operation to gain free plots. Buddha Nagar became known as Nasbandi Colony.
The governments population control plan anyway flopped. To get plots for cheap, the families had its women operated upon, not men.
Nasbandi Colony was like a forest when I arrived, recalled Khatoon. Keekars dotted the gehu and makka fields. Not just trees disappeared. Illegal Bangladeshis migrants used to live here. Many say that they were the first to settle. According to Parveen Chowdhury, a local woman politician who has contested the block elections in Nasbandi Colony, Bangladeshis were driven out during the last 4 years. Police vans would pick up entire families in surprise raids. Chowdhury could not say what happened to them later. Some discreetly returned to sell their houses before disappearing again.
Meanwhile Nasbandi Colony failed to live up to its promise. Within five years of moving to the colony, Khatoons husband died of fever. She attributed it to the filth and mosquitoes. Her rag-picker son mostly remains ill and stays home. She supports her four granddaughters by washing dishes in Lalbagh households. In many ways, Nasbandi Colony deserves its unique name. Its a failed state.
But coming back to Gaddafi stadium, when will your government change its name?
Mayank Austen Soofi lives in a library. He has one website (The Delhi Walla) and four blogs. The website address: thedelhiwalla.com. The blogs: Pakistan Paindabad, Ruined By Reading, Reading Arundhati Roy and Mayank Austen Soofi Photos.
