The bridge across furore

A protester at the bridge

Clashing with the police, as anyone who has clashed with the police knows, is addictive. There must be some endorphin involved in the heightened sense of indignation: ‘hey jerk, I am doing your job and you are hitting me?’ Observe the frontline protesters, they are regulars. You will find many of them in gym gear or hessian tees and chappals, their wallets and mobile phones given away for safekeeping. Watch them closely and you can see their eyes glow as they go about sloganeering, stone-throwing and indulge in various acts of vandalism. For this lot ‘CHARGE’ is music to the ear.

I have been there.

Once a dark stocky with indifferent eyes landed a lathi so hard on my thighs that my ears winced. When I turned around to punch him my chappal broke and another one brought his steel-tipped boots down hard on my pelvic region.

Moron.

November 4, 2018

CHARGE. Like music.

None of these happened on the day the Signature Bridge was inaugurated even though things were quite volatile and the riot police was on hand. I stood somewhere at the centre of two large heaving, swelling, bellicose masses of protesters from opposite political camps feeling like a referee of some community boxing contest. Had things come to such a pass, I would have thrown in my lot with one camp, briefly at least.

But right now Arvind Kejriwal had reached the to-be opened bridge and one of my cameramen was missing. I had assigned G2, my second ground cameraman, to cover the ribbon-cutting ceremony at one end of the span. Later when I found him only his camera was intact; you see, good, experienced cameramen have an ingrained habit of body-shielding their expensive equipment from the onslaught of everything from slight drizzle to bullets.

When the chief minister of Delhi arrived with his deputy Manish Sisodia, hundreds of opposition party followers who had assembled there surged towards them spewing bile and shouting invectives egged on by their leader Manoj Tiwari whose grouse was a missing invitation. Their own party followers were held in effective check on the other side of the deck by the police who were working under heavily swayed orders. Despite some shoving by the sea of yobs, Kejriwal waved spiritedly while Sisodia looked around with his trademark beatific smile and the duo managed to reach the stage. Security, by then, had been beefed up so much that some of the chiefs from the engineering side were made to wait outside the VIP area. I wasn’t allowed to leave the area and had to scramble my way out beneath the stage and over the barricades.

Kejriwal and Sisodia

In the melee, I met a person who introduced himself as ‘PR for many politicians.’ Tad befuddling was not just this guy blowing kisses at protesters (‘meet me later,’ he told me) but the top cop present on site actually taking orders from him. The cop had earlier threatened confiscation of my aerial cameras citing security issues and I approached the PR guy who promised to sort it out. The permission wasn’t forthcoming even as dusk fell and I decided to take things into my own hands. But not before somebody apprised me about the placement of allegiances – including that of the kiss-throwing PR man and, by extension, of the drone-grounding cop.

Go to hell the two of you, I have a job to do.

“This will be my first vlog”

One heaving, swelling community boxing

Earlier that afternoon, under a cloudless cerulean sky, I was discussing camera positions with my crew. It was then my chief cameraman, Santosh, or G1 for the day, pointed out a youngster who was filming the banners placed on the bridge with his mobile camera. The banner was glossy, 200 metres long and over a metre in height. The content was construction highlights. Like any mother who beams when a stranger looks admiringly at her child I beamed too – the banner was one of the communication collaterals I designed for the inauguration.

“Looks like you take a shining to banners.” I told the lad. Banners see big demand in public functions – mostly afterwards when people tear them away for roofing.

“I keep a fairly well-followed blog,” he said. Something I couldn’t claim.

“But why are you shooting the banner?” I had made, besides the banner, films, print ads, backdrops, brochures and standees for the event. The banner was the least satisfactory, creatively, and I was intrigued.

“This banner shows the construction from the beginning till the end,” he pointed out. “Shooting it is almost like a film itself. This is going to be my first vlog.”

He continued shooting ignoring the rest of us. I knew the secret of a well-followed blog now.

The vlogger in action

When you undertake projects of great magnitude – and political controversy in this case – one doesn’t expect people to laud your work. Heck, not even notice it, for that matter. But this was the first meaningful praise I got for my work that day. There was one more which came after the event later in the evening which lifted me from being recondite, relegated to the periphery. From a quarter so unlikely I have forgiven myself for being stunned through the episode.

Late evening I had surreptitiously landed my drone cameras and was acting chilled for the hawk-eyed cops. A small mob walked by raising political slogans. They suddenly stopped and everyone looked in my direction. A pleasant smiling guy at the centre, who turned out to be the MLA of Timarpur, a nearby area, walked over to me. Pankaj Pushkar. 

“I was told that everything you see on this bridge was made by you,” he said. I am sure an oviparous hen would have looked more collected than me.

Though I did understand the gist of what he was saying by dint of timely translation from colloquial Hindi to a more simplistic one by Santosh, part of it still went by recherché.

Pushkar said something again and his followers all gave me a round of ovation. The MLA shook my hands, hugged me and left.

I stood in a happy daze listening to the fading slogans.

Petrichor

After the 2AM rain

The fourth of November was a good day.

Not only was the iconic Signature Bridge inaugurated but also the person I was with for over a year put up her first post, a satirical blog, which, over the past few weeks caught on like wildfire amassing several thousand followers. But I remember the day mostly for the dawn drizzle. 

Delhi had been gasping under severe pollution for several weeks, the denizens writing off up to a decade of their lives as per studies by the Energy Policy Institute, University of Chicago. We, the shooting crew at a construction site, probably more. At 2 AM that day I was called to the site – a good 27 km away in Wazirabad from Hauz Khas where I stay – as there was some hiccup in setting up the screen for the laser show. More than extricating from warmth, the bigger bummer was wading into life-threatening particulate matter earlier than expected.

My regular cabbie Surender Singh is a habitual cusser: profanities are hurled at everybody from the vehicle he is tailgating to the one honking at his tail. For everything from AIIMS to the right to INA in the left. But in Delhi it works. I was still mildly interested when he began honking incessantly. Peering out half asleep, I saw thick, heavyset droplets splattering themselves across his windshield and running away distended through the corners.  

“Fucking rain,” he muttered.

Fucking what?

By the time I reached the bridge, the quick shower had come and gone. Petrichor hung in the air probably from all the dust on the gigantic pylon and stay cables. Maybe the easy breathing or the semi erection from the sudden chill, everybody looked happy. Smiles abounded and energy brimmed even at this odd hour. Loud thudding of giant hammers and scraping of metallic chains pulling up metal trusses. I breathed in deeply the few halcyon hours.

Love, from the air

Many days have gone by since the Signature Bridge was opened. The other day my regular aerial cameraman Vikram (who was A1 on November 4) sent me a video clipping of some transvestites baring themselves to traffic on the bridge. Perfect breasts and ass, they didn’t look like the usual image of a haggard hijda at traffic signals. I felt happy that were having fun on the Signature Bridge. Everybody should have fun on the Signature Bridge. Newspapers reported that a top cop was on their hot pursuit – apparently some law is broken when you bare your bums.

It was the same cop who awaited instructions from the fly-kissing PR person.