Paradise on the Pavement

Kitaab Bazaar or the Patri (pavement) Book Market in Darya Ganj, in the walled city of Old Delhi, is an institution in its own right. The pavements of this oldest commercial hub of the Capital, which bustles with activity from Monday to Saturday, continue to be the venue of one of the largest known markets for used books every Sunday for the past 50 years and more. The market stretches along the pavements of the spine of Darya Ganj, Netaji Subhash Marg, for more than a kilometer, from Delhi Gate to the Iron Bridge. It houses more than 200 bookstalls every Sunday and attracts about 25,000 devotees on a normal business day, and is as much a part of the city’s identity as Paranthe Wali Gali, Kinari Bazaar, or indeed, India Gate, Red Fort, Parliament House or the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

For the Capital’s bibliophiles—indeed, bibliomaniacs—who haunt the hallowed pavements of Darya Ganj compulsively every week, missing their ‘Sunday’ is a major catastrophe, and there abound tales of domestic strife and family feuds that have arisen around their obduracy over it. The tales seem exaggerated, as they did to me before I became a part of it, but what happened on that first Sunday beguiled me into the cult of the Kitaab Bazaar fanatics, which I remain to this day.

My first impression of Kitaab Bazaar was that of an infinite ocean of books as far as the eye could see. I was first lured there at the age of 19 by the prospect of being able to indulge in my passion for buying books at prices that would not strain my college allowance. Regulars to the bazaar proudly declare that one may find any book in the English or Hindi language that has ever been published in any part of the world. And indeed, the place seemed like heaven to me on that first Sunday when I was initiated into the fellowship of Delhi’s book lovers.

Having been told that, (a) the place was the Mecca of book lovers, and (b) that it was advisable to reach there in the early hours before the hordes rushed in, one winter Sunday in my 20th year found me confronting the vacant pavements of Netaji Subhash Marg at 8.15 in the morning, waiting for the appearance of a bazaar that officially opens at 9 am and goes on till 9 pm.

I had not long to wait, for by 8.30 am, the bookseller with their stacks and stacks of books started arriving and unpacking their wares, and proceeded before my fascinated eyes, to transform that bare stretch of pavement into my notion of paradise!

Finding myself almost the only customer at that hour, I prepared to browse to my heart’s content, and soon realized that the claim of being able to find there any book in English or Hindi that has been published anywhere in the world was no idle boast! The sheer number and volumes of books of every shape, colour, size and subject was overwhelming, to say the least.

Forgotten friends would turn up in different clothes (covers), and just as I would reach out for them delightedly, some tantalizing newcomer would beckon invitingly. And very soon I was in the grip of a bibliomanic frenzy—much like an alcoholic running amok in a well-stocked cellar!

Grabbing greedily at Agatha Christie whodunits; browsing reverentially through Tolstoy’s unabridged War and Peace (and then, looking incredulously at the unbelievable price, hastily buying and stowing away the hefty volume in a polybag); augmenting Dad’s collection of Wodehouse humour back home with four well-chosen gems; even finding some items that had been missing from my childhood collection of Enid Blyton series—I was soon staggering around, weighed down by the unbelievable finds at unbelievable prices.

My saner self told me that it was sheer idiocy to go further down the market carrying a donkey-load of books, when I could very well do this another Sunday—actually, every Sunday, if I so desired (and I have been doing it most Sundays that I can manage). Common sense told me that I was already chin deep in trouble, as I now had the task of getting this load of more than 20 books back home, which was a round 20 kilometers away, and that too by DTC bus—the alternative was to blow up on the fare of an auto rickshaw all that I had saved on the books!

However, insanity, my guiding light for the day, egged me on to a final bookstall, and there the miracle happened! Browsing as usual, I suddenly saw a very familiar and popular book on childcare, the sight of which made my heart skip a beat. This was a used copy of an out-of-print book that had been my mother’s parenting bible.

I had lent the book two years ago to a friend whose sister had been expecting her first baby and was desperate for ‘some good literature’ on the subject. The friend had left Delhi with her family about six months after the incident, without bothering to return the book, and I had been dreading the day when Mom would inevitably miss the book amidst the hundreds of books in the bookshelves at home.

Now was my chance to replace the book without her noticing … after all, she was hardly ever likely to want to open it again, since all three of us were grown up. I rested the bulging bags of my purchases on the ground and reached out for the book. It felt absurdly familiar in my hands. And opening it at the cover page I found Mom’s name scrawled across the top in her own handwriting! Madam’s family had obviously ‘disposed of’ unwanted items before moving and Mom’s book had found its way back home via the Kitaab Bazaar.

So, now I am a firm adherent of the bazaar, and never again will I doubt that one can, indeed find here ANY book in English or Hindi published anywhere in the world!

Love in the Indian Joint Family

Everybody loves a love story, especially a real life one. But, while stories of people who had the courage to break the bounds of convention hold universal appeal, there also exist real life stories of deep and abiding love between people who live out their lives within the shackles of convention, in soul-destroying conditions, and yet, find the strength, through their love, to create a special world of their own that nothing can impinge upon. And here the allusion is not to poverty or material hardships (that’s a separate story for another occasion), but to unnecessary, created ones, stemming from insecurities that engender intolerance, jealousy, envy and set in motion chains of sordid, unsavoury events that are carefully kept within wraps to safeguard the family’s ‘honour’ in public.

Indian society has always prided itself upon its system of family support. However, this support often comes at the almost prohibitive price of avid interference, intrusion and imposition, not to mention the never-ending power games. While cases of exemplary support from in-laws do exist (albeit rarely), and those of exploitation of elders by the younger generations are publicized far and wide, the travails of young couples locked in the stranglehold of family pressures, guilt trips and unreasonable expectations often go unsung. Almost the only place these are aired is on family soap operas on the idiot box, to be treated with disdain by ‘sensible people’. So, it is quite on the cards that a number of readers might find the incidents discussed here either improbable, or even exasperating, just like people’s reactions to the movie ‘Patiala House’—while most positive, go-ahead people panned the movie in unequivocal terms, the story of the depressive, defeated, dutiful son struck a chord with a number of people who are themselves unable to break free of similar situations due to a (maybe misplaced) sense of filial duty.

The anecdotes referred to here are real life stories. However, the names have been changed, as have some minor details, since the protagonists have put their duty towards their family foremost all their lives and have agreed to let this story see the light of day only under condition of anonymity. And while the cases mentioned here have successfully navigated the shoals of family pressures and expectations, there are many, many others who have been forced apart … either into the divorce courts, or into legal separations, and sometimes, even to suicide.

Sadhana from an affluent Delhi-based business family relates how she and her husband were startled by an urgent banging on their door, minutes after they had entered their room on their wedding night. It was her husband’s sister, furious with her brother for wanting to spend time with his bride, and with the ‘usurper’ Sadhana for suddenly becoming so important in his life. The lady and her mother continue to do their utmost to wreak havoc in the couple’s married life, even after almost 15 years of marriage!

Incredible as it might sound to a rational mind, there are innumerable such cases that no one talks about—in metropolitan cities, no less. Bela from Mumbai shares how her extremely orthodox and ritual-loving mother-in-law brought her into the house after marriage without performing any of the traditional threshold rites. Thereafter she stood guard over her for about 12 hours, refusing to let her son be alone with his bride, till she was forcibly evicted (laughingly) by some helpful relatives. And in this 12-hour period of vigil she even managed to plonk herself in the middle of their marriage bed and take a two-hour nap, while the newly-weds and all the relatives stared at each other in shock!

Rama, the daughter of an affluent Delhi businessman married her college sweetheart after seven years of waiting for him to become ‘self-supporting’ and started her married life in a two-bedroom government quarter in South Delhi—the bride of the second of her parents-in-laws’ three sons. In spite of the fact that the sons were all earning well and could very well afford larger living space, the in-laws were adamant about ‘living together’. Rama and her husband were assigned a ‘bedroom’ made of plywood boards in a corner of the lobby, with a queen-sized bed and a rickety wardrobe. And to add to it, they were not allowed to shut the door—if they did, the in-laws would start hammering at it hysterically!

Aruna was married into a ‘traditional north-Indian joint family’—in Detroit, USA, of all places—in the late 1990s. She was expected to cover her head in the presence of elders, not speak to her husband in public (much less, touch him), and to take over the entire running of the household (albeit without any authority or decision-making power) from the day she got married. To top it all, her father-in-law, a cancer patient for the past seven years—a fact that Aruna’s parents had been unaware of—succumbed to his illness within a year of her marriage, earning for her the stigma of ‘manhoos’ (inauspicious), and causing untold misery in her married life.

The couples in these cases—and innumerable others like them—have managed to find their equilibrium after the inevitable misunderstandings, heart-burnings and tumultuous times, sometimes lasting as long as 10 years. Some have found their answers in spirituality, others in a blind adherence to astrology and the occult sciences, and yet others in mastering the art of ignoring irrelevances. Life goes on, and people learn to work their way around the most difficult situations. However, an interesting observation in most such cases is that the elders are usually people who migrated to metros from small towns or to Western countries from India. While never having lived in joint families for any length of time themselves, they are, nevertheless, determined to cling, limpet-like, to the lives of the younger couples.

Says noted Delhi-based psychiatrist Dr Kamal Kumar, “It is usually their fear of finding themselves ousted from their sons’ lives, the way their own parents were ousted from theirs, that makes them try to maintain a stranglehold on the young couples from the day they get married.”

“Another factor that comes into play,” he adds, “is the fact that the parents have always lived by their own rules and upon their own terms, and are thus, unable to tolerate any signs of individualism in the younger couples. They want to rule the roast as always and deny their children even basic acceptance as a couple”.

However, economic factors too are often seen to play a role in such situations. Dr Kamal Kumar agrees: “In quite a few families, mothers and sisters are actuated into their destructive behaviour, not only by possessiveness towards the son/brother and intolerance for the ‘outsider’, but also by a determination to retain control over the next ‘earning member’, as the son is perceived in traditional societies.” As an Economist friend remarks: “You can call it ‘primitive capital accumulation’ in its most elementary form: absolute control over the means of production, both monetary and human.”

But despite the exponentially rising rates of divorce and legal separations, it is to the immense credit of these innumerable couples that they, even today, in these ‘changed times’, cling to their commitment to each other in the midst of such conditions … for them their love is, indeed, forever.