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Inmein to koi raunak nahin hai, khushboo nahin hai Dauran, batao, tum hi batao ye kinke ghar hain?

(There is no vibrancy here, no fragrance to be found Dauran, tell me,  you tell me, whose homes are these)

Urdu poet Owais Ahmed Dauran had penned this couplet at a time when, during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, he was compelled to seek refuge in the home of a mehtar (a member of the scavenger community) in my village, in order to escape the repressive machinery of the state.

When I visited the mehtar’s home some time ago – a dwelling that, much like the filth and refuse of the so-called ‘elite’ households, had been cast out to the fringes of the settlement and concealed from public view – the sorrow radiating from his hearth seemed to settle profoundly in my gaze, and an odd, unsettling stench seemed to infiltrate my very breath.

I sat there for a long while, reflecting upon Dauran saheb while observing the courtyard: a gentle, dappled shade fell upon it from the tree overhead; in one corner – within an enclosure fashioned from rotting bamboo strips – a foul, muddy stench rose into the air; and along one side, partially shielded by the house wall yet simultaneously laying the courtyard bare, clothes hung from old wooden pegs.

Amidst all this, I experienced a sense of restlessness within myself – a yearning to truly perceive my own existence – and so, I found myself enquiring…

And mehtar – who was engrossed in crafting decorative items, perhaps for a wedding, out of thin, skillfully whittled strips of bamboo – replied, “Ah, so you are asking about Mai and Babu? Had they been still alive, they would have told you themselves… For as long as they lived, they went about carrying the red flag with the sickle and hammer symbol…”

While the mehtar was speaking, for some reason, what I appeared to be hearing was this: “Dauran Saheb’s comrades have passed away; now, only I remain – along with this one-room house, which was allotted to us years ago under the Indira Awaas scheme.”

Even though a government scheme may have, at some point, transformed their humble hutment into a brick-and-mortar house, the “caste” of this dwelling remains known to everyone to this very day.

And the stark, visible truth is that this brick house has now begun to reveal the frailty of its construction in countless places; here and there, bricks have gone missing; elsewhere, a half-dislodged brick clings on precariously, crumbling at the edges; and cracks, crisscrossing the walls, are gradually reducing the entire structure to a state of dilapidation. Meanwhile, the soot rising from the earthen stove situated in the tiny veranda has already smeared its blackness across the original redness of these bricks.

Dauran saheb must have recited that couplet while gazing upon a very different incarnation of this house; yet, even years later – despite the arrival of bricks to replace the bamboo poles, mud, and thatch –  the profound truth embodied in that verse hasn’t truly changed.

I have alluded to this house on a previous occasion, but today........

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