I don't mind getting lost when I ride through a city. I just try to keep my compass orientation and enjoy the fact that I'm discovering new places that I would never plan to go, so I took the network of twisting potholed highly trafficked roads that meandered into the city keeping the sun behind me and to my right. After a road veered too far to the east for my liking I took a left on a smaller road which brought me to what I thought was a dead end. An unpainted, freshly poured concrete block apartment jutted up from a dirty lot which was used as garbage deposit and for some it was a home. The rutted track that circled around the apartment was in heavy use by jeeps, cars, motorcycles, even trucks. Slum dwellings of tarpaulin patches, cardboard, corrugated metal leaned against walls. It was a place of misery, of poverty. The curved modern lines of the unfinished apartment building told a different tale. They spoke to the desire in humanity to make a place of beauty of the place that they live. The new development, it seems to me, is that now lower middle class apartment dwellings in India are being designed so that the architectural ornamentation is integral, structural rather than simply externally decorative. The balcony wall has a curve in it. This is a level above simple decoration which is tacked on to a structure, paint or trim or the aggrandizing superstructures seen on some buildings. To me this smacks of the growing self confidence in American style capitalism.
As I gazed on this scene a man approached me. A man of about my age with bare feet. A man who still had strength in his body. A man who spoke to me in a language I didn't understand. It was a calm unbroken monologue. I told him I didn't understand but he continued. He didn't try to throw in any words of English. I think he spoke Marathi. I understood that he wanted money. Then he used a word I understood: Wada Pav. It's a kind of vegetarian burger, a spicy potato patty in a bun. It comes with scalded green chilli and some sort of brown crumbs. It tastes amazing. The guy was hungry. I pulled out my wallet and gave him twenty rupees and he thanked me and walked away. At first I went to leave the way I had come but then circled back and instead took the rutted dirt road around the building and through the lot. Beyond that was a Muslim market, beyond that a road which led out to a larger street with a traffic light.
Later I paid twenty rupees to park my motorcycle twice at two different malls across the street from each other because I initially parked at the wrong one. Both malls had a Starbucks where a coffee costs more than a good meal should.
The title 'displacement' was to refer to the size of the engine of the Motorcycle I was riding or the space I displaced in the newly explored landscape but instead it came to be about the displacement of the poor by expanding middle class residential areas.What is the problem with relocating a slum dwelling? After all it's a miserable hovel which is easily recreated at some other location. Not being a slum dweller, with no research I can only try and evaluate the situation based on my own experience, common sense and use my imagination to put myself in their shoes. I'd start with the fact that regardless of how inhospitable the situation appears the you would know where you could find necessities like water and some place to take care of your bodily functions - they may be unsanitary, dangerous and inconveniently located but you know where they are. The second is community. The third is location of food and medical services, both of which might be scarce and of low quality, but again, you know where they can be had.
While I imagine water to be the most immediate concern, I guess community is even more important in the long run. What is right and just is that people be able to maintain their communities while improving their standard of living. A mobile, educated, middle class seems to me to have lost any sense of community in their living spaces and seek it instead in their work, their hobbies or online.
The question for me is do these communities, valid as I believe they are, provide all that a real community does? I think wealthy industrialized societies should seek to alleviate the suffering of people living in poverty and as citizens we should pressure our governments to do so. Whether Canada, Germany or India, there is much that could be done to improve the lives and create opportunity for people living in poverty. In doing so I think we should remind ourselves to be respectful of existing communities.
1 comments on "displacement"
Nothing scarier than the paternalistic fiat ending with: "We're doing this for your own good!" People want the basics of life, of course, but they want them on their own terms, without losing their dignity nor, as Ethan points out, their bearings and sense of community. These are sometimes the only things people have created for themselves out of nothing, the only things of value upon which they can depend. To trade them for a promise of stability and plenty takes a giant leap of faith, all too often misplaced. And all too often with the oppressor believing his own lie.
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