[Urbanstudy] second posting : Ramya

[sadan at sarai.net]

Dear all,
Sending a posting by Ramya  Swayamprakash. She has been working on mill 
lands of Mumbai. send comments/remarks to <ramya.swayamprakash at gmail.com>
wishes,
sadan.

Ramya writes,
As a part of my research for the Sarai Fellowship, I saw Ramu 
Ramanathan's Cotton 56, Polyester 84, translated into Hindi by Chetan 
Dattar.
The play uses the medium of drama to bring to the fore the highly 
politicized problem of the sprawling mill lands of Mumbai and the impact 
of their 'development' on the workers and the city itself. Bhau and Kaka 
are the marginalized mill workers as well as the commentators of this 
socio-cultural debate. Although one sees more actors from Bhau's life 
(his wife, son, his son's girlfriend) being an active part of the play, 
it is quite difficult to discern who among Bhau and Kaka as a narrator. 
The stories of Bhau and Kaka are inextricably intertwined.
A cleverly and effectively designed background mural forms the basis of 
the play. The three dimensional background depicts the drowning out of 
the spaces that once housed these mills under the looming and fast 
advancing skyline of the city. The foreground of the play expatiates 
this transitory background with its constant flurry of characters. 
Throughout the play the circular seating space that marks the communal 
reading area is also the meeting place of the actors and a place where 
actors stock their minimal belongings. It is in this area that a 
majority of the action of the play takes place.
As the play progresses the lives of Bhau and Kaka go through a myriad of 
struggles; the play is like a nostalgic documentary that leaves the 
spectator back in the present without making any predictions, offering 
solutions. Shifting between the present and the past the play also talks 
about parallel effects like the rise of the mafia as the mills declined. 
Bhau's son becomes a part of the mafia as Bhau's is no longer earning.
The shrewd business man who whilst playing to the stereotype (!?) of 
being a Gujrati and an opportunist, tries giving Bhau and Kaka jobs in 
other fields but they decline. He is shown as their nemesis who after 
the collapse of the mills set up a profitable establishment of power 
looms in Bhiwandi and offers jobs to Bhau and Kaka in them.
The play and my project:
As I sat there waiting for the play to beginning one just heard the 
familiar street sounds playing, buses, cars, taxis, street vendors. 
Having been to Girangaon and just walked around the place, the chimneys 
of the set, the sounds etc were eerily familiar. I say eerily because 
somewhere in my head it was a combination of what I had seen and what I 
have read in Darryl D'Monte's Ripping the Fabric: the Decline of Mumbai 
and its Mills and Neera Adarkar and Meera Menon's One Hundred Years One 
Hundred Voices- I did not know where one ended and the other began. And 
then the play began with Bhau and Kaka identifying the fabric of people 
passing by. it took me a little time before I realized that they were in 
fact talking about the yarn on the people's clothes. For a second, they 
reminded me of Waiting for Godot but as the play progessed, their 
existential crises seemed to give way to the simple( I use this word 
loosely) human will to fight and hope.
Somewhere in the middle, Kaka is used brilliantly to show the unending 
battle the workers face to get their compensation and whilst narrating 
his endless courtroom battles, he talks of the other jobs he has had to 
take as the mills collapsed-from being a rickshaw driver to trying to 
start his own business. And through the entire narration his eyes never 
twinkle once and just the mention of the 'spindle' and the passion is 
palpable.
Most remarkably this play brought to my eyes, the things I had only read 
and imagined. As the play progressed the characters of Bhau and Kaka 
were caught in a time warp who were unable to grapple with these fast 
changes to the city and their conflicting realities made it even more 
difficult for them to adjust to the moral relativity that this 
'urbanization' necessitated. The play brought to life all that I read 
and heard about the mill culture, for instance Bhau and Kaka's drinking 
habits, which were portrayed as being a part and parcel of the package- 
a reality echoed by the books and articles I have read. As it moved 
deeper into the characters, the subtler realities of the mills come out.
Bhau's son's life ambition is to succeed his father in the mills- an 
ambition that he realizes soon enough. Nothing brings him more joy that 
to accompany his father to the mills wearing his white topee. But 
unfortunately the mills closed down and like his father he became 
unemployed and with no source of income and with the easy option of the 
underworld beckoning he chooses the latter. His career in the underworld 
although lands him a lot of money, it puts him at odds with his father's 
ideology. He falls in love with his Bhai's younger sister and the two 
lovers try and find a level ground where their economic disparities 
don't matter as much.
Bhau's wife is one of the strongest characters in the play who in times 
of need starts her own kitchen to support the family. She is also one of 
the most vociferous members of the mahila mandals.
The play is able to bring out hues of a Bombay forgotten (as cheesy as 
it sounds); to me the play brings out the transition of a city where it 
was possible to succeed without having to step over someone else. On 
some levels it speaks of the importance of community living where 
immiserization was a part of class consciousness and which was fought 
not only through struggles but through dreams. Class consciousness in 
the Marxian sense was very much present and it was reinforced through 
strikes (strikes in the early part of the 20th century were massive, 
like the strike in 1928)
Throughout the play, there is a lot of song and dance specifically a 
marked leaning toward Marathi song and dance (although most was 
translated into Hindi). This song and dance indicated not only the 
importance of traditional entertainment forms but also the dominance of 
the Marathi culture in the area. Walking through the area it slowly 
seeps in even now (although the magnitude is far lesser).
Another aspect of Bombay that the play brings out is the communal and 
caste divisions which were strong. As equals as they were in being 
workers, low caste workers could not access high caste wells and the 
high castes would not use the water of the low caste. Muslims were 
looked at with suspicion.
To me, the play also marked the transition between a city which treated 
its citizens as stakeholders and the global city which treats its 
citizens as spectators. Through the constant reinforcement of the vision 
of 'world class city' and the replacement of an organic and encompassing 
growth by a 'global citizens'. This global has also meant 
depoliticiziation and degradation of political space into something that 
is meant only for the dirty politicians. De-politicization of the public 
space has meant the famous chalta hai attitude of Bombay, a slow 
emaciation of the citizen into someone who can only lament but does not 
believe that he/she can do much. Participation into the working of 
democracy is avoidable while the pursuit of money to be powerful is more 
acceptable.
The city now loves being global and the only thing that the young adults 
of this city know about the city's mills is that sometime in the distant 
past. I spoke to a teenager who did not know anything about the mills 
and who seemed to think that the chimneys in the mill compounds were 
made by these developers! Redevelopment although inevitable is seen as 
the passport to the global equality that 'Mumbai' (read the bourgeoisie 
who constitute a minisculic part of the city) aspires to achieve. Bombay 
must fast become 'global' and destroy its history in order to 
accommodate the present and the future.
-- 
~Ramya~
Text and voice 91-9869513903
Blog: http://quixoticgnat.blogspot.com
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