IN A CITY, PARTS DO NOT MAKE A WHOLE 

The work, Gurgaon Glossaries (by Prasad Shetty, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Khanolkar: 2013-15),

compiled ‘terms’ by which the city (of Gurgaon) was ‘settling’. ‘Terms’ here are not only new words

and phrases, but also new ways of doing things, new things, new relations and new practices. Also

‘Settling’ is a process by which people in a city come to terms with each other’s lives and their

landscapes. It is a process through which a city ‘happens’. During settling, several new practices

emerge, which are unique and may appear unusual to someone from outside the city. Settling is not

a process in which contradictions get resolved; instead contradictions are able to co-exist. It is a

process by which things get worked out – the elaborate mechanics, which keeps the city in a

perpetual state of becoming. As settling continues, spaces and practices change, and sometimes

older ones disappear and newer ones emerge.

The form of the glossary allows multiple imaginations of a city as it is able to construct multiple

micro, meso and meta narratives. The multiplicity of these narratives have the capacity to

complicate the easy readings, get out of the problem-intervention-problem rat-race, and generate /

sustain an interest in living-in and loving the city. The glossary form also offered nuanced readings of

the city where many more creative ways of engaging with the city could be found. While making this

Glossary, attempts to find a beginning or an end, to categorize or formulate a grand narrative and to

follow a singular method to collect terms seemed impossible. Every new term reconfigured the

beginnings, endings, categories, methods and grand narratives. While the form of the Glossary

allows for categories and grand narratives to be made, it also simultaneously has elements that

dismantle them to be reconfigured in yet newer ways. The Glossary reiterated that cities get worked

out beyond plans, conspiracies, policies, activisms, concepts, discourses and interventions. The

glossary in many ways is unbounded with unending possibilities; incoherent providing multiple

imaginations; and unstable where positions cannot be easily articulated.

The glossary became an anchor to discuss cities and many discussions were held across different

venues in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Shanghai and Sao-Paulo. These discussions were held with

many kinds of city dwellers including scientists, architects, poets, philosophers, film makers, visual

artists, theater directors and writers, academics of all kinds, students from across disciplines, etc.

These discussions produced several questions on the methodology as well on the city. Some of these

questions were: Is the act of creating a glossary of micro-narratives an insurgent act? Is the modern

project over? Does this fetishise the method? What happens next, what is the future of this work?

Are these also in the realm of provocations and speculations? Is it about an urban experience? Is the

urban experience un-homely? What is the difference between kholi and ghar? What happens when

the material from now takes over the work and the plot? Does this material encapsulate the depths?

What happens when the ‘now’ becomes so thick that one loses oneself in it? Is this a collapse of

history? Is collapse different from erasure? Is collapse productive? How does one navigate this

thickness of now? Where does one start and can there be an ending? How does memory reconstruct

a city? Does memory complicate the present? Is memory a strategy? What will be a history of the

future? What is the difference in imaginations produced in the labor camps of Vasai and Dubai? Who

is changed when Subway sells vegetarian food in Ghatkoper – Subway or Ghatkoper or both? How

does a city produce a public? How does a city produce a specific ‘I’ and a specific ‘other’? Can the

city be dark in some parts at least – Does it need to be? Is city a comprehension or a collection? How

does one deal with the collection? Is it about creating a moment at that time, at that place and with

those people? How many centers does a city have? Does the private sector imagine the city as a set

of regulations? How is it possible to legislate cultures? Why does planning refuse to engage with

claims? Is New-Bombay a city with antibiotics – waiting to have side-effects? How does one imagine

a city periphery – as land ready to be exploited, as a dump-yard, as landscapes creating newer

centers, or as places that provide the possibility to have a (another) house? Wasn’t a city without a

‘home’ for a long time? Is the idea of a certain kind of family being projected into the idea of the city

to think about house and housing? Does the ease of getting a house outside the city produce the

dream of a house? Is the dream hijacked or pushed away? Does the dream have a market – an

economy? Where else does a dream get produced? Does the dream have to be responsible?

The Glossary also provided conceptual alternatives to think of how cities happen. These were: trust

and friendship; practice, encounters and working out; desire and kicks; claim and territory; and

image and form. This course is proposed towards developing these concepts for developing not only

a sense of and critique on city-ways, but also developing love and compassion towards them and

finding newer ways of engaging with them beyond the problem-intervention ways.

The course is proposed to make a new city glossary and to develop short stories of crime based on

this glossary. The focus is on the contemporary city. For the participants it will be an opportunity to

know cities and write stories. The studio will have substantial fieldworks and a large number of

readings, where each participant will follow one urban thinker and one novel.

Conceptually, the idea of ‘short stories of crime’ is based on three assumptions: First on the

emerging urban conditions: that there is a shift in urban conditions and its discourses since (broadly)

2010 due to global economic shifts, aggressive articulation of differences, technology no longer

being distanced and applied – but holistic experiences, the reconfigurations of work and social

practices in the society. These shifts have shaped a new urban and a new urban experience. Here the

urban conditions become the material to engage with. Second, on crime and immoralities, where

one sees that from organised crime to petty ones, from psychopaths to fraudsters, from sedition to

heists, from social crimes to economic ones; crime tests the edge of a society – its limits of

infrastructure, of morality, of institutions, of practices, of values, etc. In many ways, it also becomes

a threshold for the next era to emerge. It also opens up the innards of the urban along with its deep

desires. An investment into the mechanics of these crimes will point at the emerging urban. Here

crime becomes a route to understand the emerging urban condition; Third, on semi-fiction, where

the assumption is that fiction has an unburdening nature – it can become reflective and exploratory

without having to explain / defend itself. It has possibilities of lending itself to all fields of knowledge,

but without getting hijacked and becoming a reportage. Moreover, it is enjoyable to produce and

consume it as well.

The glossary is expected to grow in the next five years with more terms and more conceptual

alternatives to think about cities along with producing many many stories.