Just another brick in the wall

Through the eyes of Syeda, journalist Neha Dixit traces India's story, particularly Delhi's, over the last three decades-covering hot-button issues like gau rakshaks, corruption, CAA, and more

The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian

Author: Neha Dixit

Publisher:  Juggernaut

Pages: 303

Price: Rs 799

New Delhi-based independent journalist Neha Dixit’s debut book The Many Lives of Syeda X is the story of a faceless Indian Muslim working-class woman. Syeda X moved from Varanasi to Delhi with her husband and three children after the riots triggered by the demolition of the Babri Masjid. A poor migrant in Delhi, she juggled multiple jobs a day, and moved from Chandni Chowk to Sabhapur to Karawal Nagar. 

With over 50 jobs in almost 30 years, working more than 16 hours a day, she still ended up earning abysmal wages. In fact, each of the book’s chapters is named after the various industries that are highlighted through the different jobs that she did — and the many lives that she lived within them. “From a chatterbox who loved films, music, colours, she had become an irritable, bitter, quiet woman who kept to herself,” writes Ms Dixit. 

Ms Dixit provides a rich backdrop to Syeda’s story, supplementing it with facts and details about important historic events that were taking place in India at that point in time. Through the story, one encounters a varied cast of characters, including corrupt policemen, cheerful home-based women workers and gau rakshaks.  Other issues that find place in the book include demonetisation, protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens, the horrific Nithari case, “love jihad” and the banning of Valentine’s Day celebrations by various conservative organisations. As the story moves along, the prose is also peppered with many quotes as well as lyrics of Bollywood songs that were popular then.

This, in a sense, makes the book eye-opening not just for Syeda’s story but also that of India, particularly Delhi, in the last three decades — as seen through the eyes of the roughly 35,000 poor migrants who come to the city, never to return. “It shows the macro changes in India through a microlens. Syeda’s life is a portal to a harsh, often brutal, world hidden away from elite Indians. It is the story of untold millions and an account of urban life in New India,” Ms Dixit writes.

The book begins in Varanasi, where Syeda’s father, Rashid, worked as a saree weaver. Later, he began working in a Nautanki,  a popular travelling theatre that incorporated dialogue and singing and originated in the early twentieth century. In 1973, Syeda was born. When she was nine, Rashid died. After her mother’s death five years later, no one wanted to take over her “responsibility”. “It is considered okay to keep repeating to an Indian girl all her childhood that her parents’ house is not hers. Her husband’s home is supposed to be hers — except that it hardly ever is,” Ms Dixit points out.

Having studied till Class 8, Syeda was married off at the age of 15 to Akmal in 1988. “Syeda realised that the only way to get any respect in India as a woman was to get married and become a mother,” Ms Dixit points out. Within a year of marriage, a son was born to her when she was only 16. This was followed by another boy and a girl. Like most husbands, Syeda’s too turns out to be a “sad drunk,” putting most of the burden of running the house and looking after the children on her.

Syeda is a composite personality drawn from Ms Dixit’s exhaustive fieldwork. The book, which took nine years to complete, is the result of her interactions with around 900 people  — “a combination of hundreds of hours of unstructured interviews, group discussions, informal chats and structured questionnaires,” she explains in the Author’s Note.

Most of Ms Dixit’s fieldwork was conducted in factories, police stations, markets, relief camps, courts, hospitals, malls, industrial areas, slums, highways, urban villages and unauthorised colonies among other public places. Many of the events described in the book — such as disparate wages paid to the informal sector, the number of abortions conducted at a private clinic and frequent detention of the poor in police stations for questioning — do not have public records.

With several national and international awards to her credit over the years, it is hard to believe that Ms Dixit had never read a non-syllabus full-length English book till she attended college at Delhi University’s Miranda House, where she completed a Bachelor’s degree in English literature. Twelve years ago, she quit the media house in which she was working as an investigative journalist when a significant stake in it was bought by a big corporation. Thereafter, she reported extensively on sexual violence in urban areas, organised and unorganised sectors, during periods of communal violence and within domestic spaces. During this time, she met and interacted with a number of Dalit, Muslim, Adivasi and other working-class women, chronicling their experiences. 

After the Delhi riots in 2020, Ms Dixit’s visits to Karawal Nagar in northeast Delhi increased. During this time, she began to be stalked for over five months, receiving incessant acid-attack and gang-rape threats for her fearless reporting on the riots and Hindu supremacist organisations. After hundreds of threatening phone calls, there was also a break-in attempt at her house. “There is an unequal space where you are always supposed to give, if you are a woman…As a woman you are supposed to be a permanent victim. Never a hero or survivor.” That is how Radiowali, one of the characters in the book, somewhat sums up its essence.

The reviewer is  a freelance writer based in New Delhi. She writes on books, art, culture, travel, music and theatre