Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Friday,September 24
12:45 am i Commonwealth Games Village
Vikram Chauhans eyes are bright. He bustles around his beloved hydraulic street cleaner,which till a few minutes ago was whooshing along one lane of the highway. There are three already inside the Village; two more on the way. The one outside has the most road to cover; the goras are coming in the morning,and they like clean streets. His trousers and shoes are covered in black mud from where he stands,on the roads verge.
At Gate 3,the service gate,ASI Surinder Singh watches workers stream in and out,a tolerant smile under his white moustache. He likes the activity. Besides,the Village flats are wonderful hes seen them. Like hotels,he says. Central airconditioning,and colourful granite everywhere. And what a price! But still more than any copper can afford. Or most journalists,he adds meaningfully,perhaps thats why theyre writing stories about how horrible they are.
Mohan Rajput,early twenties,tall and goateed,in a steal blue t-shirt,brushes past Singh,his shoulders slumped in exhaustion. Hes been with the CWG for a year,as a volunteer,he insists,his eyes suspicious,tracking the Mitsubishi Lancer thats come to pick him up. The past few weeks have been tough,he adds the added security is the worst part. As the car whizzes off,the ubiquitous floodplain mud splatters the trousers of a man with tattered trousers and shiny plastic ID around his neck whos sitting on a stool eating rice out of a steaming plastic tray. He has to go back in; work in the Village has been given 48 hours.
1:45 am i Noida Link Road
The stone facing of Akshardham Metro station looks and smells wet,at least the parts that are visible between the giant Haldirams Opening Here Shortly banners. Beneath those,Ramesh looks relaxed,swinging a metal tool of obscure purpose back and forth as his workmen sure-footedly clamber over scaffolding. He has an awning to do by morning,but itll get done,easy,there are six people with him and another dozen inside the station,doing this and that. He says hes been told to get the station world-class in less than a week: Bayen haath ka khel. Fairy lights all over the façade keep on getting in the way,though. Nothing is quite ready yet,he laughs,but someone came to inaugurate something inside last week.
Three elderly DTC buses speed by. A short distance away,they disgorge loads of very young men in camouflage who peel off immediately towards the Villages gate,semi-automatics slung over their shoulders. The CRPF has arrived. Instead of striding through the wide-open gates,they bunch up to the left and go one-by-one through the metal detector archway.
A little further down the road,theres the hum of earth moving machinery fixing the approaches to Lok Nayak flyover. From where he sits with his bidi,the off-duty construction worker can hear the hum and see twin glows,from Nehru and National Stadiums. Closer,IG Indoor Stadium squats low to the ground,lit up like a futuristic shuttleport. A thin trail of smoke,from asphalt work,softens the curves of its silhouette.
Bidi smoke,the construction worker explains,keeps away the mosquitoes,which are huge and ill-mannered,much worse than the ones he knew back home. Home is Bengal,he doesnt want to say exactly where. He doesnt want to tell anyone his name,nor whom he works for. He clearly shares the makeshift shelter behind the bus stop,but claims he doesnt. What he does admit is that hes just come from the Village,and is heading back after a smoke and a quick nap. Its easy work,he assures me,and well-paid. I ask him about sanitation,what everyones worrying about or at least,Lalit Bhanot of the organising committee,who blamed labourers for the occasional messy photo. He grins and shrugs.
2:25 am i Ring Road,near
Indira Gandhi sports complex
The beautiful green portable toilets were installed a few nights ago,but are still unused,says the man stencilling directions to them. The intersection,run-down till a few weeks ago,is crowded with people at work,landscaping traffic islands,painting fences,marking lanes. One of the policemen on duty is looking out,though,for foreigners: goras have been poking around with cameras,he says disapprovingly.
Across the road,someone is slowly dragging a long ladder along. The light of a Dilli Taiyar Hai bus stop reveals that hes wearing some sort of grey uniform. Down the road,one of the new,ornate,streetlights has stopped working. Rakesh the street sweeper sits against a fence a little further on,waiting for the welders working on a new railing to break off for a moment. The hiss of their torches cuts through the bass rumble of trucks heading into IG stadium,the steady pulsing throb of pumps. He knows all about what the dozen men manning the pumps are doing: theres a channel under the grassy verge,and it needs to be drained,and sandbags put in,or the newly-laid turf will collapse. It came in from Barakhamba the previous night,he says,stacked on a truck like tiles, pressed into place by another dozen men. Walk on it and your feet sink straight through. Rakesh watches that with satisfaction. Aisa hua Commonwealth, he says,a delighted,cynical gleam in his eyes.
Next to Gate 19,a half-dozen men are gathered in a semicircle,their arms in the air. Swinging towards them is a man-high,ten-foot long plastic oblong. They grab it uncertainly,lower it gingerly onto freshly-dug up pavement. Darting about behind,around,between them,is a fortyish man in a spotless white shirt,khakis and rimless glasses,yelling advice. In one hand he holds,and occasionally waves for emphasis,a piece of paper with two line diagrams. Printed across the top is General Assembly Instructions for kiosk. Leaning against a car nearby,his son is calmly running a finger down a checklist. A truck parked next to the Toyota holds a jumble of plastic parts. There were no kiosks last night; theyll all be in place by tomorrow night.
3:20 am i Barapullah Bridge,above Siddharth Nagar
A few kilometres south of the bustle near ITO,west of the Village,the long span of the new Barapullah Road curves across southeast Delhi,a four-kilometre stretch that cuts 45 minutes off an East Delhi-Lodhi Road commute. Humayuns Tomb looks close enough to touch,and the night above Delhi is quiet. Except for the two men with pens in their pockets,yelling at each other paunch-to-paunch. Somebody didnt take a crucial call a few hours ago,and now work has stopped because theres a big truck carrying dozens of enormous concrete blocks sitting here,and nobody knows where on the bridge theyre supposed to go,especially since major structural work is done. One of the men pats the railing to emphasise that point,and curses briefly it was whitewashed a day ago,but its been too wet for quick drying.
One of the welders is happy for the break the argument provides,though he wishes there was tea. An elevated road is a dreadful place to work,nowhere to get a drink,nowhere for a snack,no pavement where you can curl up securely for a nap on a 24-hour shift.
Big trucks and construction machinery block one lane every few hundred metres. They all have Haryana numberplates; theyve worked before this on the heavily-trafficked Gurgaon Expressway. Leaning against one of them,the big,fair man in the red cap that says FBI thwacks the big metal rod he carries around against his palm automatically. He doesnt like working through the night. Shakal-soorat se kaam chalane wala malik lagta hoon ya chowkidar? he demands.
Two of the road-workers he supervises laugh nervously. Short and dark,they speak broken Hindi with the accents of the Chhota Nagpur plateau,and unobtrusively ensure that the genset they lug around stays between him and them.
Mohammed Ilyas waves as he whizzes past,heading home on his bike after an extra shift guarding Barapullahs Ring Road exit,the star on his shoulder catching the street lights.
Ilyas will tell anyone who listens that his trek westward is suddenly zippy,a joy. Everyones eyes turn to follow the bikes lights,dead centre of the lane. In the quiet above Delhi,it feels like you can hear it the entire four-km length of the bridge.
4:00 am Jawaharlal
Nehru Stadium
Under a sign that says This Way Common Wealth Village four men are manhandling tubing to pump cement into a support beam thats meant to reinforce the last stretch of Barapullah bridge before it dips into the giant new parking area. The cement mixer is too large for the lane,making their job particularly difficult. Behind them Gate 6 of Nehru Stadium is locked tight. Three small figures are tidying up the debris in front. On the watchtower next to the gate,a tiny,moving light: the CRPF man is recording a panoramic view of the stadium on his cellphone.
Over at Gate 1,Inspector Deep Chand has heard that Pakistan is sending a team to check security. His eyes crinkle in amusement.
Theres security everywhere; passes are being checked,even for regular site workers,official delays or not. He looks on as a fleet of trucks roar up to the gate,labelled on the side MCD,C and D,ILamp;FS. He decodes this effortlessly: malba trucks,come to take away the building debris that piles up incessantly all night. From either side of the gate comes a man,one in Delhi khaki,one in CRPF blue vest. Chand nods approvingly. Lockdown, he says. Poora secure hai.
4:45 am Railway bridge,
Defence Colony
The electricity had gone off,waking him up,so Mangi left his room in Kotla Mubarakpur and followed the glow in the sky to the bridge over the railway,and joined the small quiet crowd looking at the lights of Nehru stadium.
Below him in the parking lot,he can see three groups of painters. A truck pulls up next to one of them,with plants in plastic bags at back. A group of men in uniforms that Mangi,from Imphal,recognises as regular army,are looking up at the collapsed footbridge. One of them has a notepad.
Mangi sighs. He wishes the stadium changed colour at night,blue to purple to red to green,the way it does in the early evening.
Will there be lights there even after these Games are done? he asks hopefully. Nobody seems to know.
