So when celebrities like Shabana Azmi or Rajeev Sethi say that to develop this place is to destroy it, the developers say:
No no no!
You’re watching the Godzilla movie in the wrong direction again!
Play it the other way, the right way, and Godzilla,
aka ‘jilla ki Bhagvan’ [Lord of the District]
is clearly building neighborhoods lovingly from scratch. See?
Don't worry, they say. We'll take care of these fragile poor. It’s the law anyway. We can't just displace these people, not really.
Meanwhile, these are the same proud artists who are sent abroad to represent the best that India has to offer.
The word the kalakars themselves have used to describe what they’ve done on this land is ‘kubza’ - to ‘capture.’
To ‘occupy.’
They told me: After forty years of occupation, this land should just be given to us under squatters rights.
This situation is like a kusthi dangal, where the image of struggle belies something deeper than what meets the eye.
Poured into the soil before a match is a sacred recipe of mustard oil, tumeric, ghee, and milk…
but in order for this mixture to become the sacred ground of ‘bharat mata’, of mother India, this batter must first be stirred, agitated, separated, pulverized and pounded by the wrestler’s feet.
The question you probably have now is: Well, what is happening there now, as we speak?
What has become of the community of kalakars?