SARAI READER 06: Turbulence
Produced and Designed at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi

Editors: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi
Awadhendra Sharan + Geert Lovink

Associate Editor: Smriti Vohra
Translations: Shveta Sarda

Editorial Collective:
Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi
Ravi S. Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan + Geert Lovink

Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Design Intern: Mrinalini Aggarwal
Cover Design: Mrinalini Aggarwal
Back Cover Photo: Monica Narula

Published by
The Director
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India
Tel: (+91) 11 2396 0040, Fax: (+91) 11 2392 8391
E-mail: dak@sarai.net
www.sarai.net

Delhi 2006

ISBN 81-901429-7-6

Any part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the publishers for educational and non-commercial use. The contributors and publishers, however, would like to be informed.

Sarai Reader 06 is part of
'The Documenta 12 Magazines Project’

608 pages, 14.5 cm X 21 cm
Paperback: Rs 350, US$ 20, € 20

In Turbulence

At some point during the closing half in the ‘extra time’ of the Italy vs. France match in this year’s FIFA World Cup final game on 8 July, the world changed. Again. The synapses in the brain of a man named Zinedine Zidane went into a state of momentary turbulence. A wave of rage surged into a headbutt that we mourned and saluted, seconds later, glued to television screens halfway across the world. The world seemed to change that instant, as it always does when the angel of the unexpected flaps his wings in the middle of a great game. Many prayers went unanswered that night.
All this was happening as e-mails bearing notes and queries about the book you now hold in your hands, or scan with your eyes on a screen, flew across the world. This book, a book titled ‘Turbulence’, was on its way into the world. A turbulence caught, distilled, held between covers, in these many pages, in this much ink, in these images, in this much white space.
Who knows what else was happening that night? What ripples had radiated out of that momentary collision between two footballers in Berlin? Or which wave had carried that headbutt with it, to crash on which distant shore of the global unconscious?
Someone had gone to sleep after a solitary vigil over a cache of explosives in Mumbai. An Israeli soldier stood at his checkpost, somewhere along the border with Lebanon. A Hezbollah fighter spent a restless night thinking of his girlfriend. Perhaps a party of Bengali tourists in Srinagar sang songs just because it was too cold for them, and perversely, because Italy had won. Somewhere deep within the earth, below the ocean floor, not too far off the shoreline of Pandarang in Java, magma crackled. The seeds of a million cells of turbulence, inheritors of tsunamis, descendants of riots and curfews, progeny of hurricanes, modernity’s questioning bastards, were germinating fractally, branching out into new constellations of storm. The world was at unrest. As it is, every night.
In the week and days that followed, bombs exploded in Mumbai, grenades were hurled at tourists in Srinagar, a war began in Lebanon, a tsunami hit Java, once again. There was rain. There was fire. There were signs of birth and death. There were quarrels and street fights, there were parties, the Richter scale quivered, there were demolitions. The twenty-first century rumbled on, as usual, turbulently.
If there were ever to be a ‘weather report’ for our times, an audit of the climate in which we have grown accustomed to live, it would use the word ‘turbulence’ often. We inhabit the vortex of storms, and smell sunshine. We are always prepared for rain. Our cities are sites of flood and fire. We live between tremors, power cuts and voltage surges. Agitations emerge and abate on our streets and on the airwaves, as if by accident. Books are burned, blogs are blocked, bourses dance mad tarantulas. We fly with seat belts fastened. Predictions are pronounced and dissembled in seconds. Bets are placed and lost, wagers made and found wanting. Insurance companies invoke acts of God. The more things change, the more they change.

sarai READER 06
Turbulence

In Turbulence - Editorial Collective - vii

Unstable Structures: Improvisations with Infrastructure
Contingent - Emeka Okereke
Turbulence before Take-Off: Life Trajectories Spotted en Route to a Brazilian Runway - David Harris
Casting Village within City - Yushi Uehara
Tapping In: Leaky Sovereignties and Engineered (Dis)Order in an Urban Water System - Karen Coelho
A 'Legitimate' Business Activity: Unofficial Stock Exchanges of Vijayawada - S. Ananth

Notes from Beseiged Neighbourhoods
Nangla’s Delhi - Cybermohalla Practitioners