Outlook Anniversary Issue: Dreaming A Paradise

Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. If Buland Masjid was created as a paradise for the hopeless, the destitute, it has succeeded in becoming a paradise for the hungry. Food is everywhere, even to be stumbled upon in dark alleys.

In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch describes the Metoecia, or the Feast of Migration, a celebration of migrants leaving their boroughs and uniting in one city. Here in Buland Masjid, every day is a feast. The migrants have brought, with their rituals and traditions, memories of cuisines of their distant lands. Food is the connection that brings back the sense of the tender touch of love, hearth and home. Men haul carcasses, baste, cook. Dough is pounded vigorously. Rotis, naans, breads, tandoors. Bakeries turn out rusks and biscuits. Vendors crowd the narrow streets peddling strawberries, pastries; popcorn machines release the smell of warm butter; a man guides his cart outfitted with an unfathomable contraption which emits flaming sunbursts and rolls out perfectly formed nankhatais.

This is a gastronomical hub. Kiosks and tikka stalls abound, the atmosphere is laden with smoke and tempting aromas. Hunger prevails and so does food. The rituals of the cornucopia of plenty begin early. Barely has one ceased before the other commences. Kilos of white foaming milk are poured into an enormous kadhai in the early hours and stirred with a large ladle all day. Boys take turns to stir. In the evening, huge steel glasses of this mixture are enthusiastically consumed. The sensual aromatic of breads and meats mixes with the odours of offal and refuse, the gaseous releases from the open sewage drains.

But hunger still drives this dwelling of survivors.

On a particular day of wandering, in the dead of winter, with the acrid smoke, through a slight fog and mist, a wall, painted a pale sea green with a large mural. A painting of a rooster. The rooster, more than perhaps the masjid, is the appropriate symbol for this colony, where the main trade is one of the oldest in the world—the butcher’s. Meat and the work of meat is the driving force of life in Buland Masjid.

There is a strange accommodation, a peaceful tolerance, a pact between all manner of animals. Goats, chickens, ducks and dogs, all in their own place, waiting, watching, and in the midst of it all, the rooster, crowing, calling, king of his world. And on a pale paint-washed wall, this fresco by an artist who went beyond his brief, to portray this symbol of survival.

The rooster becomes a symbol of fecundity, of courage, of prosperity, a homage to survival. In this place where beauty finds little space to flourish, an artist paints on his canvas in ambitious strokes. It is so alien, this artistic attempt, that it draws my imagination to a memory of another world, a memory so incongruous within this environment, of another pale paint-washed wall, far, far, away on the outer wall of a sacred monastery in the cold, dry desolation of the icy heights of Ladakh: the rooster rooted in the wheel of life depicted in Buddhist paintings. His symbolism in many other worlds. He announces the dawn and dispels the evil spirits of darkness. He is unlike the painted chicken at the dhaba in Ambala that proclaims, ‘Meet me anywhere, but eat me at Deluxe dhaba.’

I ask after the artist, but no one can tell me anything, no one knew where he had gone. He came, painted this and left. One day, returning to the colony after a long break, I saw to my dismay that the mural had been erased. In its place was a new shiny cock, a flash paper poster, already torn at the edges.

The artist, and now his creation, were gone.

The life of a child in these squalid surroundings, deprived of light and space, would seem constrained, yet they seem at a joyous accommodation with their surroundings. A boy hurtles down the narrow road screaming at wayfarers to get out of his way. His feet are outfitted with a pair of smart red roller-skates. He is new to this art, and his face bears a mix of terror and wild delight as he rolls along, struggling to keep upright. He hits a pothole and barely escapes a crash, avoiding a bucket attached to rope which has been lowered from a tenement on the third floor. A man stands on the road, putting loaves of bread into the bucket, gives a tug to the rope and it is hauled up slowly. The boy survives and continues his careening down the road, now negotiating a cart filled with brightly coloured salwar suits, surrounded by excited young girls and women. In the heat of an August afternoon, he runs into a vendor on a cycle rigged up with bright festoons as he makes his way through, selling little versions of the tricolour.

You turn a corner and suddenly a small room stuffed with little boys, a few little girls and teenagers, a gaming room that would be well placed in a dystopian version of Star Wars. Their eyes locked on what are almost antiques, consoles discarded and bought in bulk by an enterprising gentleman who thought of the children of his colony. The boys jostle, push and stare transfixed as the lucky few manage to get to the controls and engage with these fascinating others worlds of exotic demons, villains, monsters and superheroes.

There are plenty of chance encounters that can arouse and illuminate a child’s mind, pushing it to discover hitherto unknown, unseen, wonders.

Suddenly, one evening, hoardings, adorned with the strange form of a beautiful hippopotamus. His jaws wide open, drooling water and saliva. ‘Daryayu Ghora!’ River Horse, the hoarding proclaims, ‘Pehli baar dekhiye!’ For the first time. This fantastical image, so engaging, exotic. A circus has come to town, lending an air of Coney Island to its surroundings. A brightly coloured tent sits in the middle of a clearing. Little boys in their kurta-pajamas and skull caps sit under the benign gaze of the huge hippopotamus that stares down at them from a large hoarding. A little away, within the precincts of the big top, the mighty beast awaits his evening meal. He emerges slowly, snout first, a pair of tiny eyes, little rounded ears, and then hauls his powerful giant body out of his generous water pool, and makes his way towards his feeding cage. The large crowd that has gathered to see this strange creature gasps as he sways past with an imperial gait, and watches in silence as he delicately picks his way through his lavish meal. A frisson of expectation, a sense of suspended anticipation, emanates from the crowd, contrasting sharply with the quietness of the gentle beast. He finishes his meal, slowly turns around and makes his way back, occasionally stopping to gaze at the crowd, before finally disappearing into the dark waters. Here in the middle of

Shastri Park, this water-loving creature, so far from his native Africa. His presence stirs the languid imagination.

Buland Masjid does not lack the impetus for such flights of imagination. Another balmy afternoon, sleepy school children struggle to keep awake in class. Suddenly, looking out the window across the field, they see, to their astonishment, a graceful white flying craft gently float down into the playground. They rush out, screaming with delight. A microlight has made an emergency landing. For the children, this beautiful, engineered, delicate craft of flight is a marvel, an enchanting mechanical bird of paradise, here, on their grounds.

Adorning a terrace is a huge painting of a man in a top hat, black coat and bow tie, waving a wand: Shah the Magician. ‘Come, learn magic tricks.’

Yes, within this world of poverty and squalor, there is a bit of magic that tweaks the human spirit, pushing it to seek the possibility of an existence beyond the mundane.

Dreaming a Paradise portrays the resilient migrant community of Buland Masjid in Delhi as they build lives and livelihoods amidst poverty, revealing the stark divide between India’s affluent promise and the harsh reality faced by those on its margins.

Chitvan Gill is an Indian writer, independent filmmaker and documentary photographer, who chronicles Delhi’s margins and urban migrations. Her recent book Dreaming a Paradise documents the human story of Buland Masjid through reportage and images

This article appeared as ‘Dreaming A Paradise” in Outlook’s 30th anniversary issue ‘Where is Elsewhere?’ dated January 21st, 2025, which explores the subject of imagined spaces as tools of resistance and politics.