Imagining the wiki city

From PhalkeFactory

राह चलती सड़क एक ऊँचे आर्च से फिसल कर गायब हो जाती है, तो समझो शहर यहाँ पर ख़तम होता है. "या शुरू", और जैसे अपनी बात को सच बताने के लिए, तुम यह कहते कहते कहते तेज़ कदम पर उस गेट के पार, के आखरी टुकड़े पर जा खड़े होते हो, गेट को देखते हुए. मैं जब वहाँ पहुँचता हूँ, तुम्हें मौन पाता हूँ. तुम कुछ देर गेट ताकते रहते हो, और फिर मेरी तरफ मुड़ कर देखते हो, बच्चे की सी मुक्स्कान होंठों पर लिए हुए. फिर सर घुमा कर उस गेट को देखते हो, फिर मुझे.. चहरे पर लिखा है, तुम्हारा मन उन आँखों की चमकतीनाँव पर चढ़कर मछ्लीद्वार की उन बड़ी मच्चलियों के बीच भ्रमण करने लगा है, बुर्क़े की टोप से बाल लिए शेरो से आँख मिला रहा है, नाँव से झुककर,पत्थर के गजों की पीठ सहला रहा है.

The gates are almost forgotten structures at the end of the inner city, waiting for some restoration drive to take fancy to them, drive away the many settlers that have made homes on these margins, around them, and re gild their forms. Lions in bonnets, fish like wet eyes, and a quiet line of elephants that will not easily be metaphorised.. we both loved the animal gates we had seen. But we had come to look at other gates, in another city, where we had come to do some work to be able to earn, it was called research, but i have seen the tomes written by researchers.. the lines of books scanned by their little torchlights, i would feel shy to call the small work we managed to do, research. yet. what we had was work, and work said we had to make our way into the city, through these gates, and see which living road, led to what.. which goldsmith, took us to the tannery, which ayurvedic doctor went to church, which snake led to homeopathy. Meaning things that stood apart will yet connect often times, our neat categorisation is what had seperated them. So we started the the seperations, and then criss crossed lanes to walk from here to there, led by this or that person, and soon we were in the middest of the city.

the above is my partner,companion, co traveller's rather fancy way of looking at what lies before us. Honestly- at any of these gates, what lies before us? just outside, a largely undifferentiated mass( es) of live of the marginal, making a geography around these gates. shanties, labourer huts, mud, thatch, corrugated sheets, cement bricks, a lot of lurid paint from time to time, breaking the drearier silences. Inevitably, a large, choked drain across the geography. You can be at the gate of the puranas, or the gate of the lions, it comes to the same thing. Then the gate, and by the gate, inside the city, a comparitive order- the long arm of the law reaches till here, and protects property rights. the small jewellery maker can keep his shop , as can the oil seller. Small self forgotten men they look like. Small faces, small builds and a severly limited range of expressions, most of those on the more severe side. I spent some time imagining what that face might look like, smiling, as we sat outside the shop. Yes, of course, he had heard of Phalke, there was a clock tower, a main road and various suchlikes names after him. A medical college, too, for some reason ( that he had embodied the body, on screen? ha! and so knew some of the body's secrets.. he had captured the body on glass plates and fixed it? watched it move, frame by frame, noted its reflexes and then, tried to create a symphony out of them that linked in with a story)

Yes, there is a planned city in here somewhere, but like every planned city of yore, it is somewhere deep ahead, in the centre, a city arranged by a man's life, by all accounts a pioneer in this country's film industry ( this being one of the most powerful industries in the world, that should count for a lot: of course the poor blighter died a pauper). Below are descriptions, they should be honest, physical descriptions, because that is all the gates look like. No kite shops by the gate of flight and if there are, then they will be there at the gate of ageing also.


The gate of flight

The gate to the puranic story

The mechanised being, his gate

the gate of ages and ageing

The gate of alchemy

the gate to the botanical garden

the gate of those dreamers who trace, translate, repeat

footnote: a letter to italo

make it like the skanda purana, in tamil also called the scrap purana- written over hundreds of years, stories added and added and added to it, small ref to skanda purana here, for this http://www.nasikchitpavan.org/history-of-chitpavans.php