Through an open KHIRKEE

Through the open ‘Khirkee’
An insight into the modern village

Khirkee is a small village on the outskirts of Saket. “Khirkee”, as the name suggests, showed openness to all the visitors who flocked into the place. There were children, women and men who gathered for a presentation made by the students of School of planning and Architecture (SPA). Being one of the invitees, I decided to explore and discover this small hamlet. There was a section where the photographs of kids (which were clicked by the students during their research) were pasted. The kids jumped excitedly showing their friends and parent their snaps. Many of them pulled them out and took them home as souvenirs. Many of them were busy posing so that people can click their photographs. The small hamlet of a population approximately 1750 was elated with the thought of getting interviewed and photographed. I thought of informally talking to them as I had to wait for Rohan. By talking to them, I realized that there was something inside me which’s constantly telling me to write on their behalf – their stories. The hamlet was a hub of migrants who were either thrown out by their homes or their countries. There were also some people who came into the village in search of better opportunities or livelihood. The kids mostly went to either schools or Madarsaas which suggested that they were being moulded so that they can bring better livelihoods to their families. I was loitering around the path in search of a person to begin with my quest for knowledge about that hamlet. After almost fifteen minutes, I finally decided to start with an old woman who was staring at me for quite a long time. 70 year old Chandravati Saini was the oldest resident of Khirkee village. She was a bit reluctant and shy to answer my questions. She had a lovely garden from which she gifted me a beautiful flower. She wanted to repaint the hamlet of Khirkee with the colours of nature – Brown and White. 30 year old Prakash is residing in Khirkee since his birth. He works as a temporary sweeper in the mosque complex. According to him, people can’t read Namaaz in the mosque because it has been taken over by the ASI. The colour with which he associates Khirkee is silver because of the silver carvings at the doors of the Masjid. The 33 year old presswallah Laxman Singh is originally from Bharatpur, Rajasthan. He’s been coming to Khirkee to serve its people along with his wife since twelve long years from the neighbouring Sangam Vihar. He couldn’t think of a colour to repaint Khirkee but finally settled on the colour pink. He gifted a piece of charcoal as a token of love. 48 year old Md. Asif escaped from Afghanistan in May 2010 and couldn’t think of any colour to repaint the village except gray. He feels very awkward to see the reserved nature of the people residing. 38 years old Dinesh Mongia owns a video parlour, which is supposed to be the favourite hang out place for boys of 14 – 19 years of age. He wants to repaint the hamlet green because of the prevailing Muslim majority. 11 year old Jyoti Thakur was the youngest of the lot I spoke to. She studied in class V in the neighbouring ‘Shantiniketan Public School’. Sometimes, she enjoys playing badminton in the evening with her friends Reshma and Jannat. She wants to repaint the hamlet brick red because of the prevailing love in the hearts of people of Khirkee. There were few foreigners who were also trying to communicate with the locales. The people were so warm and open to the outsiders like the ‘window’ which’s open to different types of climate. So, this was a small gist of what I saw through the open ‘Khirkee’ before Rohan came down to meet me.

16th November, 2010..
7: 14pm