This publication is a collection of photographs and fragments of conversations with Delhi farmers from the years 2022 and 2023.
It provides a space for those whose voices do not make it into the public media, which they do not trust anyway – they do not want their faces to be seen and their names to be published. But they are happy to be asked how they live.
Improvised shacks lean against the concrete flood barrier that separates a narrow strip of fields from the Tibetan colony Majnu Ka Tilla. Sewage from factories and home sanitation systems, which people from the shacks have never had, runs directly into the Yamuna through open drains. The river flows quietly under the smog-shrouded sun. Dogs play and cows lie on the banks.
People no longer remember when they came here. They don’t believe they have a choice, and have long since given up on the idea of a future. They cultivate the sandy soil mixed with rubbish by hand, not by machine. Then they sell the vegetables tainted with heavy metals and chemicals in the Delhi markets to them, whose waste is turning the river into a toxic zone.
The effect finds itself back on the doorstep of the cause.

The book is writen in Hindi and English.

About author:

Veronika Resslová specializes in visual arts, applied linguistics and Bohemian studies and practices vajrayana Buddhism in the Karma Kagyu lineage. From 2017 to 2023, she lived in Delhi where she taught Czech at Delhi University. Since September 2023 she has been working at Universidad Complutense in Madrid.