I lived in Delhi for several years, fifteen minutes by tuk-tuk from the Majnu Ka Tilla area. On this small piece of land between the Ring Road and the Yamuna River, the Indian government allowed Tibetan refugees to build a refugee camp in the 1960s. While wandering around Majnuka, I also came to a strip of fields between the river and the Tibetan colony. 

Immigrants from rural India, who live here in makeshift huts, cultivate the land by hand. The unregulated river flows quietly under a misty sky, cows and dogs roam freely along the banks. But the water is black, full of chemicals, and it smells from afar; the fog is actually a thick smog and the soil is mixed with garbage. 

The visual beauty of a slow pre-industrial rural lifestyle in a poisoned, disrupted ecosystem struck me as a glimpse into the abyss. What do people who live in unlivable conditions and sell toxic vegetables in markets to those who pollute the river, think? I wanted to get closer to them.

The book is a kaleidoscope of images and fragments of interviews taken over the span of about a year. Originally, I thought I would do semi-structured interviews. After several attempts, however, it became clear that this was not possible. Most of the farmers here have almost no formal education, and any questions I posed were too suggestive. In the end, I just let them comment on the photos. 

Before I left India in the early summer of 2022, they told me that the Delhi government had ordered them to vacate the land. So with this book I am putting their voices into the public space where, of course, it has been completely absent.

Bibliographic data: Resslová, V. (2024). Our Old Folks Had Fields Here. Praha: Ausdruck Books_Hybrid Publishing Platform. ISBN: 978-80-908403-2-4.

Language: Hindi, English. Commentary: Aleš Čermák. Graphic Design: Terezie Štindlová.

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