‘Syeda’s story is also Delhi’s story’: Why Neha Dixit wrote about an ‘unknown’ working-class woman

The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian, is the nonfiction debut of Neha Dixit, an investigative journalist based in New Delhi. It juxtaposes the life of Syeda, a Muslim migrant worker, with transformative moments in Indian politics and history, through a tightly-knit, intricate narrative.

Following a thirty-year journey across cities and neighbourhoods in North India, Dixit depicts a community’s unending battle with the instability of urban poverty. She sketches a portrait of not only her titular figure but of contemporary India as we’ve come to know it. By tracing the times of Syeda and her family through events ranging from the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 to the CAA-NRC protests of 2020, Dixit sheds light on the invisible labour and sectarian violence that has informed India of today.

In a conversation with Scroll, Dixit spoke about how her background as a journalist influenced her writing process and what her extensive interviews with migrant labourers in Delhi taught her. Excerpts from the conversation:

You’ve mentioned that The Many Lives of Syeda X has been nine years in the making. Can you trace its beginnings to a specific incident, moment, or memory? I’m curious to know where it all started.
I used to work for a television news channel. I did two years there, and I realised what I didn’t want to do in life. Because there was a sort of corporatisation of the newsroom. We were constantly told that we had to write about the urban rich, and not to do bleeding-heart stories. Don’t write about poor people. If you want to sell pressure cookers or chimneys or kitchen appliances on prime-time television, then you can’t be talking about malnutrition. This was also in 2012, and then, of course, the anti-rape movement began in Delhi. I always – I don’t want to say gender – was interested in seeing various kinds of voices within mainstream media. Because you usually hear that male perspective. And that was always a problem for me. Secondly, after the anti-rape movement, suddenly there was hope to write about sexual violence, which, earlier, there was not. Something fundamentally changed because of that movement.

So, at that point, I was doing a lot of stories on sexual violence, because there was scope now to publish it. A lot of people suggested that I should maybe extend this into a book format, writing about sexual violence. But, what I wasn’t convinced was that when we covered sexual violence as reporters, we were expected to talk about it in a very formulaic way. For example, there was a case of sexual violence in Bhagana, Haryana where four Dalit women were raped by people of the dominant Jat community in that village. And the mainstream, global narrative was that in India, women do not have toilets, so they get raped. Because these women had gone out in the morning for their ablutions, and that’s how it was reported. But when I went to the village, I realised that actually, the Dalit community in that village had demanded a share of the public land. And so the Jat community wanted to teach the Dalits a lesson about their station. And that’s why the rapes happened. I have reported many similar stories.

For instance, during the Muzaffarnagar riots, all the women who were raped were Muslim farm workers in the lands of the people who had abused them. And after the incident, they had to go back to their own lands and find work. Even while reporting, you are talking about a person. There’s a backstory and after something happens, there is another life that awaits them. It’s not shaped by how you define them following a particular incident.

And in this case, I'm talking about sexual violence. The same is true when it comes to, a caste-based atrocity or any kind of sectarian or communal violence, because anything that is being reported is being written is primarily centred around these events – This person existed. This event happened. And now, this is where this person is.

But what is the full story? For me, I was particularly interested in looking at working-class women in Delhi. So, I started visiting some working-class areas, where there are a number of what workers call factories, but they’re legally not. Or these may be women who are working from home. So, I realised that because Delhi itself has a big unorganised sector, it also has the largest wholesale market. It has one of the highest numbers of small and medium industrial units. Multinational companies do not hire these women directly, but they subcontract the work – it goes to a subcontractor, it may go to a sub-sub-contractor and then it comes to these women. So, I started meeting these people and there was so much happening, so much migration and urban poverty.

A lot of times, initially, when I went and spoke to these women, they would not admit that they were workers. So they would say kaam toh nahi karte, par grocery ka paisa nikal jata hai (we make enough money for groceries ) or bachho ka paisa nikal jata hai (we make money for the children). And that also comes from a very patriarchal space because women are conditioned to tell themselves that, Oh, we are not workers, we are expected to do it, we just do it for the family. This viewpoint makes it difficult to demand workers’s rights for yourself. Around 2014, I actively started working on the book proposal and realised this was the story that I wanted to tell.

Why Syeda? I imagine there could’ve been a thousand different books about a thousand different Syedas with different stories – how did you know that you wanted to write about this one?
I stuck with Syeda because as she was telling me about her life in a non-chronological fashion, I realised that it is also the story of India over the last thirty years. An India where we see excruciatingly high levels of urban poverty, with the kind of income inequality that exists, the kind of migration and internal displacement that is happening – internal displacements not just for work but also influenced by violence of some sort. It was also the fact that are witnessing majoritarianism coming up in India – a Hindu supremacy that is unabashed and unchecked. And of course, I also realised that the story of Delhi is often told in the sense of power corridors, whether it’s in contemporary politics or the nostalgic romanticised past featuring the Mughals and the rest. Syeda’s story of the last thirty years is really the story of Delhi because we have the highest number of migrants that come to the city every day and never go back. So that’s why I decided to stick with Syeda.

Of course, I made sure that all the other people also I spoke to are in the book and through them, I can talk about their specific lives and what they are dealing with. So for example, Radiowali. Through her, I got to tell the story of the electronics factory, and how a woman like her is creating her space, exercising her agency, being judged but continuing to do her thing – and also creating a space for women to come together. It’s similar to the story of Lalita, for example, who has dealt with so much caste atrocity back home. What are the complexities of caste when you come to another place? Like Ambedkar said, people from villages should move to urban spaces. He wrote, “The love of the intellectual Indian for the village community is of course infinite, if not pathetic.” He also said, “What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?” And through Lalita’s character, you understand how people negotiate what they want in life, what they prioritise and also how they struggle at the same time.

The idea of location really struck me in this book. As a migrant worker, we see Syeda trying to reconcile herself with her new surroundings. From giving up “Banarasi fursat” and dealing with “Dilli ki behudi”, we see Syeda become a “Delhi-type” person who slowly discovers leisure once again. We also see her travel from neighbourhood to neighbourhood for work, often encountering a variety of difficulties. In your work, how does geographical location intersect with marginalised identities?
So, this is largely based in Northern India and we are looking at states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which have the highest number of migrants. These states have very low per capita income and very poor socio-economic denominators. So, that’s one thing. And the other thing, you know, is that Delhi is a country in itself. I grew up in Lucknow and a lot of times, my mother calls me up and says that some uncle of mine is coming to Delhi soon. And I tell her, you know, it takes two hours to reach somewhere. So it’s actually not like Lucknow, where half an hour is really far. So that sense of time and distance changes.

Also, places like Chandni Chowk are famous for their food and their history, and for people emigrating to Delhi, it’s their first stop. Since it’s Asia’s biggest spice market, and also a big wholesale centre, it’s the first place where people find a job when they arrive. But how do people live in those same spaces which are romanticised as something else? Or the fact that Begum Samru’s palace is now an electronics market. Who would have thought? When I was roaming around in Bhagirathi Palace, I was thinking about the once-grand architecture and how there was no space to walk around anymore. After all the lore of Begum Samru, nothing exists of her, because there are people working there.

Another example is North East Delhi because it borders UP and has so many small and medium manufacturing units. Similarly, Gandhinagar, for example, is a wholesale market for denim, and one lakh denim items are sold every day. So for me, because I also did not grow up in Delhi, understanding Delhi was really useful through this report. The only other popular narratives we hear are that Delhi is aggressive and that it's the power capital of the country, but very little about the people who run the city.

Absolutely. I’m really struck by what you said about Begum Samru’s palace. And I’m thinking about when – spoiler alert – Salman dies, right? You write about how, in 2020, all of the mosques we associate, as readers, with Salman, are damaged – how their sanctity is taken away a little bit. It really gives you a sense of the city as a space where culture is constantly changing and being changed by who’s in it.
I also understood religious monuments in a very different way. I grew up in a very religious environment, so I ended up disliking everything around religion. I don’t practice any religion and I’m not a believer, but I understood that a lot of religious monuments across religions – whether it’s a gurudwara or a temple or a mosque or a church – become spaces that provide people from marginalised classes with a place to come together and find solace or resources that people from the privileged classes can afford to find elsewhere. They manage to make their own communities talk to each other and offer support – a kind of infrastructure that is not available from the state or the government. Which is why they keep going back to these spaces.

You’ve faced a lot of harassment and abuse from right-wing trolls as well as legal institutions for your work – as you’ve mentioned in the book. I wonder if this has, in any way, affected your writing process. How do you get around your self-censor?
For me, unfortunately, in the last ten years, there’s been a lot of harassment. It started with online trolling. I also have legal cases against me for my work, and then there were physical attacks with attempts to break into my house. This is the eighth year of my legal case. But the thing is, in spite of all this, I’m not in jail, right? I could be in jail, but I’m not. I want to say that the kind of harassment that I have faced is – I’m not invalidating it – but I’m saying that, although it has its own sort of repercussions and takes a toll on me in various ways, a lot of people are facing it in various capacities, across classes, castes, and genders.

And this has been the environment, not just in the last ten years, but in the last thirty years for somebody like Syeda. And of course, self-censorship factors in – of course, I think about what I’m going to write, but let me put it on the record that I have never stopped myself from writing pieces that I want to. But again, I’m saying this from a position of privilege because I have the support of my family, friends, and fellow journalists. But if I look at somebody like Syeda, other people like her, or even people who are in jail right now, I don’t think – and I don’t mean this in a dismissive way – I should indulge myself in thinking about this. But, of course, I do think about it. I am scared as well. For many months after the break-in attempt, whenever I walked on the road, and saw anybody walking with a bottle, I used to feel really scared that they were going to throw acid at me. I got help and worked on myself. These difficult things happen, but my house hasn’t been burnt down. I’m not in jail. Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Rupesh Kumar Singh and many others are.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the process of writing this book. With a book project like this, how do you think about the relationship between narrative/storytelling and factual exposition? I’m really interested in the epigraphs in bold that separate certain sections in your book: they refer to legal changes in Indian history, and we trace Syeda’s life alongside these larger structural changes. Why was this the form you chose for the book?
I’m a reporter, before a teacher or a writer. So, I did what I knew how to do – find something, talk to people, and get interviews. Each time I have mentioned an event in the book, I’ve done the basic rule of journalism, which is corroborating it three times. So if Syeda had told me she was at a certain place and something happened, then I would find at least two more ways to corroborate that information. That was how I had gone about checking everything to the best of my ability. Also, that’s why I mentioned in the author’s note, that since a lot of these stories involve violence and trauma, when they were recounted to me, they were not chronological. For the longest time, I did not know Syeda had another son who eloped nor did I know that he had terror cases before that. And not just Syeda, but every woman in Karaval Nagar was also observing me. Some of them chose not to speak to me, some of them spoke to me, and some of them spoke to me selectively. So as a reporter, it took a long time to corroborate what was happening. If young people are picked up by police for questioning and are tortured, there is most likely no documentation of that. Not even in the station diary. So, there are things I cannot corroborate through documents. But then, at least three people are telling me that this has happened.

I chose the narrative-heavy style because I realised that for a story which has so many things happening, the only way to tell it effectively is through a narrative. I wanted to tell the story in a more lucid way that makes it more accessible in the public domain for readers. I’m not an academic, I’m just a reporter. This is what I know and this is how I’ve done it.

How has this book project been different from your other work? What are the practical considerations behind the process of a longer project versus a shorter one?
I don’t think I’m the right person to answer because I took nine years! I did all my reporting first. I did 70 per cent of the reporting before I started writing. Then while I was writing, events happened.

For example, the 2020 riots. So, I went back to investigate. A lot of times it took me a while to arrange all my reporting in a chronological fashion. And I kept going back to the people to ask questions. For instance, how do I know about all the films that they have seen? It’s because one day, I realised that they have these posters at home. So, I started talking to them about Bollywood and Salman Khan. And then I asked Syeda whether she liked films. And she said, “I’ve seen everything, I’ve even seen Pakeezah”, reminiscing about how her first home in Old Delhi reminded her of the film. I asked if she’d watched these films before her marriage, and she said she had, and that Tezaab had been in the theatres. A lot of it was just going back and asking questions. I asked Syeda how her interaction with women in Sabhapur was, and she said that some women asked where she was from, and when she told she was from Banaras, they did not know what Banarasi saris were. And Syeda was was surprised. She remarked, “How dare you not know about Banarasi sari?” So, some questions were afterthoughts that I have gone back and asked people.

I’m really glad you brought up cultural references. because cinema, performance and music seem to be a significant part of the lives of Syeda and her community. \We see them make sense of their lives through popular culture and Bollywood, and there seems to be a specific fascination with the Khans in their community. How is Bollywood intertwined with the contemporary Muslim identity in India?
I wouldn’t say, just for the Muslim community. Popular culture and Bollywood is the most accessible, it’s what keeps people going on a daily basis. Because when you are trying to survive every day, what is the only source of dopamine? Trash like that. I’m calling it trash, but I also indulge in trash and that’s what keeps me going. So, I would not say that the Khans are only big for the Muslim community. They are for everyone. I also write about how, earlier, Muslim actors changed their names. The Khans didn’t. And thankfully, in the last thirty years, they’ve been popular across castes and communities. I also specifically went and asked these questions because it was very important to me to understand what people were doing in their free time. You’re going and working for sixteen hours and then what do you do? What is the rest of your life? What happens around labour? That’s why I went and asked those questions and I realised that it’s intrinsic to people of all classes.

That’s really interesting because in the book, we see leisure become important to Syeda where she finds a kind of sanctuary and female community in Radiowali's house. How did leisure show up as a political force in Syeda’s story?
The kind of politicisation that we hear of or that is spoken highly of, I find it very masculine in nature. It’s a very masculine way of talking about your personal politics because you always have to sound profound, articulate, and serious – you’re not meant to talk about frivolous stuff, only about saving the world and changing lives. And none of that conversation should be diluted by seemingly frivolous things. But for example, in psychotherapy now, people are advised to knit and crochet. And this is the same thing that was demonised for women when they would sit in the afternoon and do their knitting and talking. It was branded as gossip. Through reporting and otherwise, I found that the best changes, or the best kind of efforts to bring the change come from that relaxed, comfortable space where you feel safe with the people around you and you can talk freely about what’s ailing you. It’s only when you feel that you have a space that is safe enough that you feel confident to go ahead and change something in the outside world. The gendered nature of the conversations about politics becomes very apparent.

I’m also struck by how you write about the masculine nature of unions, how the idea of the union is also very much predicated on agency and autonomy to access the outside world in a way. And in a couple of instances in this book, the site of the protest also becomes a space of transformation and self-acceptance. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts to share on how and why protest sites become such transformational spaces.
I think that the site of a protest is first and foremost, a place to meet like-minded people – especially for people who don’t protest regularly. And only when you meet like-minded people, can you have debates and discussions where you can disagree and still be with those people. So you collectivise, you come together, you find people from various walks of life interested or worried about the same things that you are. And that’s when you open up and even think of the possibility that something can change in your life. For example, the CAA-NRC protests. It’s the fact that women were able to come out in a public space and sit, which wasn’t previously really allowed. Even with the farmers’ protests, the fact that so many men, women, young and old people came and sat outside Delhi for so many months. The fact that you’re cooking together on the road, trying to work with the same amenities, figuring out how to help each other, because you believe in the same thing. That, to me, is why protests are transformational for anyone who’s a part of them.

I have an anecdote for you. In 2012 or 2013, I brought my mother – who had never been to a protest before – to a protest against the DU four-year program. At some point, we got detained at the police station, including my mother. And my mother was so thrilled. She was telling all the cops, “They’re changing it to four years of college. How difficult it’ll be for girls to study!” And then she went and told my extended family – which is extremely patriarchal – that the police had detained us, and she was so happy about it! At a protest, you feel that you’re a part of something and suddenly you feel that you can also contribute in a positive way. You can also find the confidence to help.

I’m wondering what part of Syeda’s story was most difficult for you to write, to narrativise, difficult in whatever way. I’m asking about logistical difficulties because you’ve mentioned that you had to put together all the information into a readable narrative. I’d also like to know about the emotional effects of such endeavours.
First of all, Syeda was like, “Why are you writing about me? What is there to write about me?” So to convince her and to keep asking her questions about various things, and to get her to trust me was difficult.

After a year and a half, we both opened up. She asked me things about myself and I answered honestly, and she also started opening up. The bit about Shahzeb, her estranged son, was very complicated because she still holds it against Shahzeb whom she hasn’t met in all these years. There is a lot of patriarchal resentment against the man because he ran away with a woman who he wanted to live his life with. There was also a lot of irritation at her end, for example, about why I was asking her about the agarbatti she was making out of cow urine. For her, it wasn’t such a big deal. When I asked her about all the jobs she’d had in her life, she got irritated and asked me, “Would you ask a contractor for all the addresses where he has worked?” She felt like I was asking her unnecessary questions and wanted me to listen to the story she was telling. So, the smaller details were harder to get. For example, when Syeda was telling me about her father’s involvement in nautanki, she didn’t understand why I asked her questions about when he met Gulab Bai, and whether she had ever met his second family. The details that I was interested in as a storyteller, she wasn’t interested in.

What have you been reading and watching recently? I saw in the author’s note that you’ve listed some books that have been particularly influential to the project. Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence has been a really important book in my life as well!
The book really helped me in terms of understanding oral history. Because the training as a journalist is always that I find the document, and find evidence. So, The Other Side of Silence really helped me understand that there are aspects that are relatively unacknowledged in terms of documentation or history.

The other book I recently read was Coolie Woman by Gaiutra Bahadur. It’s about indentured women labourers who went from India to the Caribbean in the early 20th century. Gaiutra traces her great-grandmother, who went from Bihar to the Caribbean. The only women who went away on these ships were single women who were pregnant, sex workers, women who wanted to escape abusive husbands, or women who were kidnapped. And once they reached the Caribbean, they were assigned a man so they couldn’t be on their own.

The one that I’m reading right now is The Great Nicobar Betrayal, curated by Pankaj Sekhsaria, and it’s about what is happening right now in terms of displacement in the Nicobar Islands.