Their India has No Borders

From left: Yashaswini, Ekta and Paromita

To 30-year-old Shankar, amigrant worker in Bangalore who came from Jharkhand, Mumbai is nearWest Bengal and Bangalore is in the North-East. If someone were totravel to Mumbai by Shankar’s map of India, he would land up in Kolkata.

Shankar’s map was part of aninstallation art show that concluded in the city on Wednesday, showingthe maps of India as seen by migrant workers in Bangalore. Theinstallation was a 14ft-by-18ft space enclosed with asbestos sheets.Wires crisscrossed the tiny room, and from the wires hung maps ofIndia, drawn according to the perceptions of the migrant workers.

Shankaris only one among thousands of migrant workers in Bangalore who have avery different perception of where the cities where they work arelocated. Their India is a world away from the maps of India thateducated Indians know of. It has none of the directions, orientation or location of places as we know it.

Start Thinking

“We want Bangaloreans to stopand think about migrant workers, who live amongst us,” says Ekta. Alongwith Yashaswini and Paromita, she spoke to 70 migrant workers on OldMadras Road before tracking their journeys on the maps. While Ekta hasfounded Maraa, a collective that looks at art and culture in the publicdomain, Yashaswini and Paromita are independent film makers.

“Ourperception of location is meaningless to migrant workers,” says Ekta.For them, locations, distances and directions are all very differentfrom the true picture. Their ideas of places are all drawn from theirlives, as they travel from city to city to earn their livelihoods, sheadds.

For instance, if Assam was westwards from his home, amigrant worker would mark it in West India. And if Bangalore felt farfor him, he would mark it outside the country. Borders hardly came inthe way and distances are measured by the time spent in a journey,including train delays and stopovers at transit points, they say.

Whenthe workers say long distances or far way, they mean places such asJharkhand, Bihar, Nepal, Punjab, Andhra, and North Karnataka.

India in a Room

Whilethey work here, their families are in villages back home, even as faraway as Nepal. Many workers live in asbestos shanties that are as smallas 10ft by 10ft. They live huddled within the small space, creating amini India right here in Bangalore, says Ekta. Spluttering rai (mustardseeds) mingle with the smell of Andhra chutneys in a room adorned withphotos of Amritsar’s Golden Temple in the same tiny space.

Asthe group spoke to the workers, the latter also shared their stories ofthe weather, people, smells, cultures, personal, nostalgic andfantastical, of places — by their memories of what they saw, felt andremembered. They go beyond the geo-political maps of India and presenta new, spatial experience of places.

The project is part of aworkshop called Maps for Making Change, which was started by Centre forInternet and Society, to examine ways of using maps to help socialcauses.

Read the original in Bangalore Mirror