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Wall Magazines
Wall Magazines are twelve page A-4 sized photocopied journals conceptualised, editorialised, designed, produced and distributed in the locality by practitioners of all the labs. Wall magazines are put up on walls in public places, and distributed in meeting places like the grocer's or barber's shops in the locality. Discussions at the labs are around which topics to pursue, what tone to adopt - ie, what the vantage point ought to be. Wall magazines are a movement from an experience of being addressed by the world of the adults towards being in a position to gift something to the locality, and evolving a mode of addressing the neighbourhood. The wall magazines brought out from the LNJP, Dakshinpuri and Nangla lab are called, respectively, "Ibarat" (Inscription), "Aamne Saamne" (Face to Face) and "Kuchh Kaho" (Say Something).
Translations of Ibarat 01
Issue dated: November 2001
So here it is, our first presentation to you of one of the ways of seeing our colony. In here are some stories, some poems -- familiar and new. Some photographs that we took. Some pictures we drew.
The first issue of Ibarat: In memory of Ayesha
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Translations of Ibarat 02
Issue dated: July 2002
We promised a new Ibarat every month, so here we are again. A little delayed, though, because of several reasons - the realisation of our dream to go to Bombay, school examinations of the Compughar team, relatives' marriages, and power failures from time to time.
We were really happy to read your suggestions, which you wrote on the blank sheets we had placed on the walls alongside the last issue of Ibarat. Suggestions about the need to increase the font size, inclusion of the names of lanes we had missed out, other topics from the basti on which subsequent issues may be based. When we read them we felt you really do consider the Compughar as your own.
The topic for this issue of Ibarat is 'work'. When we all sat down to discuss it, we realised there were many facets to work, and that these are related in myraid ways to every thing. For instance, their relationship with god, with place, with tools, with time, etc. It is about some 'works', this Ibarat.
After we carried bhai Mohataram's interview in the last Ibarat, it became much easier to have conversations [for publishing] with other people. Many people volunteered to tell us things related to them. We hope that, as with the last one, you read this Ibarat with affection.
Our request to you is to not spoil your own toil. What we mean is that you take care of this Ibarat because we try to search the history of our basti (settlement) or that which is related to it and put that in it. If we don't know our basti ourselves, then the government or its workers will not let us get introduced to its life. This is a result of our collective efforts, then why not let this be the ladder to create an identity of the basti.
Don't forget to give us your suggestions. We will return again with another Ibarat. Till then, Khuda Haafiz.
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Translations of Ibarat 03
Issue dated: August 2002
Aadaab.
"We're back". Remember the "Bombay Trip"? When our team, all packed, was waiting to fulfil its dream of going to Bombay from the basti, there was on the one hand the sadness of leaving behind our parents, and on the other the immense happiness of going to Bombay. Do you know that before we got there, we never thought that Bombay was not a city magical, but another city like Delhi, albeit with its own markings. There, as in Delhi, people breathe, children work to feed themselves, and women can also be seen working. Each person is busy with her/his own work and we would never have got to know this if we hadn't gone to Bombay.
Going there has given us some courage, in a way. Now we feel we are more open to undertaking certain tasks by ourselves, individually. Many of our misconceptions were done away with, like the one about how girls are sold there, or that there is lumpen behaviour on the roads, that we would get 'spoilt' by going there.
The desire to go to a new place, there definitely was. But we never thought it would be realised. Anyhow, how did we find roaming the streets of Bombay, seeing the people there, thinking, reflecting, understanding, talking, visiting different places... so, come with us, we'll take you to Bombay with our writings.
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