Zareyein-2

Zariyein>>>Khirki Village, New Delhi>>> East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya

Zariyein in November 2006 was primarily aimed at gaining a foothold and finding entry points in the amorphous space that Khirki is. The predominant question in our heads (as people given to research and representation) was how does one begin to and arrive at knowing a space that is so outside of our own lived realities. Keeping this question in mind, we sought collaboration with a few residents of Khirki to create a collective understanding and representation of this space using the medium of photographs and conversations.

Zariyein in Meghalaya in the months of June and July was different as it was allied with another research project that we have been doing in Shillong and the East Khasi Hills District of Meghalaya. This time Zariyein has become a means to unravel various strands of our research questions and understand and document various arenas that we thought were significant for this process.

Wheels and Wares- The Story of a Bus>>>
Over the last two months or so, we have been trying to understand the system of bazaar buses that exist in Meghalaya. Although these buses are a common phenomenon all over the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, we have been focusing on the buses that connect a particular region of the East Khasi Hills with Shillong. For several villages that lie in this region, the bus is a very significant aspect of their lives, and our research, very briefly put, is trying to explore how this is so. At the same time, markets in Shillong are also fed in to by this huge network of buses, all carrying produce from villages to the main trading centre in Shillong- Iewduh. However, this definition of the bus – as a focal point for exchange between villages and an urban centre- can be extremely reductionist. And it may also sound rhetorical to say that the bus, for many people who use it and are dependent on it, is almost like a living being which provides a sense of comfort and security, however true that may be.

In trying to understand the journey of the bus from these villages to Shillong, various nodes stand out – the point of origin of these buses, the villages en route to Shillong, Smit – a semi-urban junction which is the gateway to these parts of the Khasi Hills, the bus stand opposite the Anjali cinema hall and the Iewduh market in Shillong. Several people map themselves out at these various nodes – people from these parts of the East Khasi Hills who use the bus either for personal or medical needs or to buy and sell produce in the Iewduh market, people from these areas who live and work or study in Shillong, drivers/managers (conductors)/ handymen of buses which ply on routes in these areas, owners of buses, bus body builders. Wholesale traders and shop-owners at Iewduh, middlemen/agents for goods that are sold in Iewduh, shop-owners at villages along the bus routes. People like parking contractors who work in the bus stand in Shillong and other people who are dependent on the bus-stand in Shillong for their livelihoods. Elderly people who can throw light on life and modes of conveyance before the bus came to their areas or the history of roads in their area. Through conversations with these individuals who are in some form or the other associated with the bus, we have tried to understand various facets of this system and the inter-linkages that the bus creates between these villages and Shillong.

Bus>>> Images>>>
The people whom we handed out cameras to as a part of Zariyein inhabit various nodes of the bus. Their photographs, in totality, almost seem to represent the journey and the life of the bus through its various stages. Photographs of particular individuals refer to different aspects of the bus, the journey, the unique landscape that it passes through, various reasons for using the bus, the significance that it has for people who live along the route, the meanings that are associated with the bus by people who use it, the vast sea of buses and humanity at the Anjali bus stand, the spatial layout and components of Iewduh and the imagination of Shillong for people who belong to that area, the crowds, the shops, the vendors, the hustle and bustle, the waiting and watching - each set of photographs imbued with the individual’s personal style and choice of subject, each throwing up their own distinctive narratives.

So while Bah Deng Nicholas’ photographs travel from the bus stand opposite Anjali – of people in the bus, a recording of the temporary halt of the bus at Smit and photographs of his family in Pashang village, his frames filled with people at various stages of the bus’ journey, taken from every possible position- the road, the top of the bus, the people inside the bus, the outside of the bus, his camera looking up, down, left, right….Loi’s pictures ease away from the crowds of Iewduh and the Anjali bus stand into the gently undulating landscape of the East Khasi Hills and his village, Nohron. Like a few of Kunum’s photographs that touch upon his village, Mawlang.

William chooses the “day in a life of…” approach through which to look at the Anjali bus stand where he works. Moving from an almost surreal desolation of the bus stand early in the morning to the time when the buses start coming in, to various activities like loading/unloading of goods, the vendors and the tea stall ladies, a short detour to the Iewduh market and then back to the time when the buses have unburdened themselves of produce and are preparing for the journey back to the villages. Contrastingly, Prince urgently documents happenings in the bus stand, constantly driven by what he wants to tell through each photograph – who is selling what, to whom, why, what are different people doing- the person who is sweeping a part of the bus stand, the man reading a newspaper, the woman speaking on a mobile phone sitting on sacks of rice inside a bus, the porters urgently ferrying goods to their respective buses since it is almost time for the buses to leave…. half an hour, one and a half rolls of film. If Prince is in the thick of action, Jed’s camera gently glides through the background of the bus stand– individual buses isolated in his frames, a porter loading goods on a bus or children having fun sitting on top of a bus, a moment’s respite at a tea/jadoh shop or a boundary wall coming up in a part of the bus stand. Shngain roots himself in the toll booth of the bus stand of which he is one of the contractors, almost as if monitoring the entrance and exit of every bus through his camera frame, all his photographs taken from a single position – the toll booth, a few buses coming and going, and then an emptiness which is broken by an ice-cream man walking out of the bus stand with his cart, having finished business at the bus stand for the day.

Bah Hep’s frames capture the mélange that Iewduh is –a profusion of people, vehicles, comings and goings, buying and selling, noise – all within single frames. And Rubina and Spilin embark on a personal journey of their own, through spaces in Shillong that are familiar to them- their locality, their college, photo-worthy landmarks in Shillong like the Cathedral near Don Bosco Square or the Lady Hydari Park.

Zariyein>>> Work in Progress>>>
The narratives that grew out of these photographs were recorded by us using video- the reasons behind each individual choosing to take particular photographs, each narrative simultaneously giving us new insights and new frames of reference through which to understand the system of the bus. In that sense, Zariyein became a means to push the research questions with which we had set out. We plan to edit short video capsules out of these recordings, and these along with audio/video recordings of conversations that we had with people associated with the bus could be used to complement the photo-narratives.

The photo narratives are a new point of departure. We have assembled a selection of about 142 images drawn from all the sets of photographs. This assembly of images, in the form of a scrap book, is intended to throw up a sense of the journey of the bus from the village to Shillong and back. Two such books will be put into circulation over the next three months, one among people who live in these villages and another among as many people as possible in Shillong. Erness, Rishai and Droma, who live in three different villages in this part of East Khasi Hills, will circulate the book among people in their areas and try and generate discussions around the images. We have also been engaging with a group of young people from St. Edmund’s College in Shillong and we hope they will be able to do the same in the urban context. The idea is to use this sequence of photographs to record people’s associations with the bus in these two very different milieus. One of our tropes of enquiry for this research is to try and explore the imagination of the urban that the bus facilitates for the people who live in these villages and conversely, the imagination of the rural that the bus embodies for people in urban Shillong. Another intention behind these two scrap books is to try and open out this line of enquiry. People who view the book are free to add on to it in any form – photographs, writings, sketches, objects, observations, opinions- and to let new narratives of the bus emerge.