Melodies Of Unheard Voices

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Here is a gift to the city of hearts – Delhi – by the people who really live here, have been repeatedly abandoned by the metropolis, but their affection for the city endures. Trickster City is a collection of short pieces on Delhi in translation that evolved from the writing workshops conducted by the Cybermohalla labs by Ankur Society and Sarai-CSDS. The writers belong to the underbelly of the metropolis. They are teachers, delivery boys, shop assistants, school dropouts, and those pursuing graduation through regular classes or correspondence. The fascinating part about many of them is how they maintain blogs, work on manuscripts and drafts for future books.

The problems of urban resettlement or unsettlement, demolitions, census and police encounters are not new to us. Yet we who have voter identity cards and read English newspapers largely ignore this world. What is new in this collection is our learning of the responses of the the actual people who undergo these hardships and have to do these activities. The collection is full of heart wrenching descriptions of real situations: slaughterhouses, losing a diary, STD booths, train rides and so on. Yet it never delves into melodrama. Shveta Sarda, the translator, has brought to us the real stories of people who live in the underbelly of the city.

The book has eight sections but do look up the translator’s note and the short descriptions on the writers. The translator has retained the poetic expression alongside the harshness of the language.

A pigeon has brought this letter to you. It’s not possible for you to ask it questions, but it is possible that you try and guess to whom this letter, without a name, without an address, has been written. From A welcome to those who come.

I tried listing the pieces I really liked and saw myself copying the table of contents.

Delhi used to be a place that sheltered everyone, where people came without the fear of being shunted away... Before coming here we did not realise this city has always been festooned with destroyed and demolished neighbourhoods. From Having seen it from close.

How often do we engage a worker or buy from a shop assistant and ask them what is their life is like? What do they think and feel? Trickster City makes alive those stories; long after you have read the book the stories haunt you, sensitise you. The quality of the prose is a little uneven but there isn’t a single piece that does not talk to you. Yet never is the tone didactic or screaming, it remains matter of fact, even deadpan.

In a few months Delhi will be full of visitors. We would want them to see our new beautiful city. That is when you may want to gift your friends this book. Just to remind ourselves that the new edifices are mounted on lives which have been demolished multiple times but have not forgotten how to articulate their stories. And hopefully next time when we look at the newspaper we would not see in them mere stories but lives.

Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Sepia Leaves, Rupa and Co.