Aurat [Woman]

Janam performed extensively in the so-called resettlement colonies of Delhi. These were set up after the state of national Emergency (1975-77), which saw a major reconfiguration of Delhi’s urban topography. Slum clusters in many parts of Delhi were demolished and their residents relocated (with all the attendant violence and corruption that such a process entails) to far flung areas. Mangolpuri in west Delhi is one such resettlement colony, which was home to some 200,000 people in the early 1990s. These are two pictures of two performances in Mangolpuri. In the first, the Woman (Moloyashree Hashmi) is raised by the actors as she raises the red flag at the end of the opening poem (a translation of ‘I am a Woman’ by the Persian poet Marzieh Oskoui, killed in the late 1970s). Other actors in the picture include Sudhanva Deshpande (left) and Brijender Singh (foreground, back to camera).