mehanat se na kabhi daro / dharti ka aanchal bhar do / aur patthar se hira / miti se sona paida karo / kaam karo ha kaam karo / subah karo aur shaam karo
(Don’t be scared of hard work / fill the womb of the earth / make diamonds out of stone / and gold out of soil / work and work away / through the day and night)
—Bhookh (1978)
‘When I first reached Delhi and stepped out of the train, I thought I was dead. There were lights, cars, buildings, so many sounds! I believed this is what heaven felt like!’ says Pratap Chand Sharma, a 91-year-old man, as he circles the tiny patch of grass around the Sri Ram Temple on Atlas Road. He laughs when I ask him why he came to Delhi from a hill town in Himachal Pradesh almost 70 years ago. ‘Roti, kapda, makaan’ (food, clothing, shelter), he answers.
‘Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan’ is a reference to the populist slogan coined by Indira Gandhi ahead of the 1967 general elections as well as the 1974 eponymous film directed by Manoj Kumar. Against the backdrop of corruption, unemployment, and poverty, the slogan was as much a reflection of the demands and hopes of ordinary people to access the basic necessities of life as of the promise of socialism. Socialism, as a way towards the future, necessitated not only coexistence with technology but also becoming a machine in the system: If you had to survive in the city, you had to become a machine. If you wanted the welfare state to look after you, you had to become a machine.
It was the possibility of transcending poverty that brought Sulja Prasad from Allahabad to Delhi. When he arrived in Delhi in 1978, ‘roti, kapda, makaan’ meant feeding his family of four and building a home. Seventy-year-old Prasad takes me to his room in the corner of the same temple, where most of the space is used by the temple for storage. Prasad has a single bed to himself, with much of his belongings tucked away under the bed. He bends under the bed to remove a neat folder from which he picks out a few sheets and lays them down on the bed carefully. A small family photo falls out of the folder. Prasad picks it up and holds it away, squinting at it. With a blank look, he speaks to me like nobody has asked him about himself before.
Prasad and Sharma go back a long time, and they continue to meet every day when Sharma goes on his daily walk and crosses the large backyard that Prasad looks after as the caretaker of the temple. Their objectives of coming to Delhi, when they did, were the same—finding work and chasing the promise of a ‘better future’ in the city. What ties them together, however, is their provider or what they refer to as their maalik—the Atlas Cycles factory in Sonipat. The factory represents the behind-the-scenes of Nehruvian Socialism, where the state outsourced the welfare of its citizens to a private organization in exchange for the latter’s access to state resources. ‘The maalik would tell us, ‘mehnat karna tumhara kaam hai, aur tumhara khayal rakhna mera’ (working hard is your job, taking care of you, mine). We were treated like family members. The factory had all the possible amenities—a canteen, a rest house, frequent office parties. Atlas was something else in the middle of nothing’, Sharma reminisces.
Sulja Prasad walks with me on the temple road towards the Atlas Cycles factory, a walk he’d been looking for an opportunity to take for a while now. The road looks newly asphalted, its dividers posing sharply with a fresh metal finish under the scorching May sun. On the side of the factory, there are tiffin service carts, and on the other, a market for automobile repair. The entrance to the factory boldly announces its name ‘ATLAS’—the glory that the road derives its name from.
On stepping inside, I find myself facing a large utopic building in its modernist form with its concrete exterior painted a warm yellow and adorned with glass windows. The two-storey building is designed as a large mansion, curved around the edges rather than marked with sharp straight lines. It is set amidst floral landscaping, almost enticing you to come inside. Perhaps the idea was to make it seems as close to home as possible. At the first glance, one would never the building as a factory. Right outside, next to the gate, is a public notice stuck on the wall—an order restructuring the board of directors of Atlas Cycles with immediate effect. The guard ushers me out, saying, ‘Aap akele females ko aisi jagah par nahin aana chahiye’ (a woman on her own should not be in a place like this). That’s when I know the building is dystopic, not utopic.
The large influx of refugees post-Partition meant an expansion of the city limits of Delhi, with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) being roped into mass producing various forms of housing projects. Exercising its eminent domain, the state acquired large agricultural tracts, incorporating about 106 villages into the city, spurring the creation of ring towns around Delhi. The residents of these villages were deprived of not only their means of production but also any kind of participation in the future planning of these areas. A part of Delhi district, Punjab province, till 1912, the city of Sonipat is currently part of the National Capital Region of Delhi. In the 1957 Master Plan of Delhi, Sonipat town, situated at that time in Sonipat tehsil in Punjab, was viewed as having ‘good prospects…for the development of progressive urban communities’. The Master Plan envisaged the shifting of workers and their families from Delhi to Sonipat, which it viewed as being ‘already on the way to becoming a progressive industrial town’. Of the eight tehsils surrounding Delhi at that time, only Sonipat had 10 per cent of its population dependent on production other than cultivation. It is against this backdrop of planning urban expansion and industrial growth in a nascent nation state that Janki Das Kapur, a cycle-shop owner who had migrated from Lahore to Rajauri Gardens in Delhi, was allotted land in Sonipat to set up a production unit.
The discourse of planning is intimately tied with glossing over conflicts and forgetting a strenuous past, producing a modified history that is narrativized according to the existent hegemony. Cities are embroiled in these narratives. In the case of the Atlas factory, this comes forth in its strong association with colonialism. Many erstwhile workers claim that the factory used to be a rice and sugar mill started by the British in the 1850s, which was handed over to Kapur just before the Partition. The patch of land, on which the factory stands, is believed to have been gifted by the British to a cobbler who had testified against Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad. This cobbler happened to be the kin of the Kapurs.
Other narratives1 trace Atlas Cycles to a small tin shed built in 1951, which within a year transformed into a 25-acre-factory and rolled out 12,000 cycles. When I ask Sharma about the past of Sonipat, the city he has now come to call home, he speaks like a true modernist: ‘They [inhabitants of Sonipat] didn’t know what to wear. Most of this area was occupied by nomads. They didn’t even know how to eat and make rotis—they’d just make fat pieces of bread and eat it with curd. When the factory came here, it bought culture along with it, because it bought people along with it. We taught them how to wear clothes, how to conduct trade and business, how to farm. It was because a certain economy arose here that capital was directed from the main city. Sonipat exists today because Atlas existed then.’
The rational man, which the rational planning project was aimed at, immediately othered cultures and traditions that didn’t fit into the purview of his own aspirations. Post-Independence planning incorporated the colonial concept of ‘civilized’ versus ‘barbarian’, presenting itself as the harbinger of happy adequate lives with the caveat that any deviation from the ‘rational’ would hamper the aspiration to become middle class and instead entail an impoverished lifestyle.
The imagination of the cycle itself was integral to the fabrication of the middle class. The cycle was a fashionable form of transport—it was youthful and romantic, projecting an image of its male consumer as neither affluent nor entirely downtrodden. While in post-Independence India, the cycle become a popular means of mobility for the working class, Atlas Cycles targeted the middle class more than the working-class masses and presented a certain aestheticized use of the cycle. For the woman consumer, the cycle was represented in media as an elegant vehicle that allowed for frivolous movement and that was modern and yet not too modern or excessive as a car. Atlas was a pioneer in targeting the women consumer through its advertisements. According to Kannan,2 ‘Atlas drove the image of the “modern” Indian woman able to handle the pressures and demands of traditional responsibilities as well as modern aspirations. Several of their 1970s advertisements depicted saree-clad women on bicycles as their husbands and children cheered them on, perhaps as a metaphor for the changing role envisaged for Indian women while building a modern nation.’
While the cycle as a commodity reconfigured urban mobilities, aspirations, and gendered norms, the emergence of the Atlas factory in Sonipat not only engendered the influx of a large number of migrant workers from north India but also spurred diverse informal economic activities, social networks, emotional ties, and rhythms of work. Precarious and constantly in state of flux, these constituted what Dharia3 refers to as ‘ephemeral atmospheres’, that is, ‘atmospheres generated by the temporary presence, transformation, and circulation of people, materials, and objects’. The production of spare parts and defective pieces within the factory gave rise to an informal economy of cycle repairs and low-cost cycle manufacturers. Apart from the housing quarters that Atlas made available for its employees, various housing colonies sprawled around the factory. The land opposite the factory became a space for various chai tapris to come up, along with other stores catering to the everyday needs of the migrant workers.
‘First there were just chai tapris when there were just workers. Then housing settlements and colonies were formed when workers began coming with their families. As the spending capacity and requirements of people changed, more stores started coming up based on whatever the workers needed: kirana shops, shops selling watches and shoes, and cycle works, the Haryana Cycle Works being the oldest. People would come from afar to buy a cycle—it was a luxury product,’ said Sunil Sethi, who runs the Sethi Tea Stall, one of the oldest tea shops in front of the Atlas factory. His own father used to work in Atlas before retiring and starting the tea stall. After making paddles in the Atlas factory for almost 12 years, Raghuram Dayal opened a watch shop in 1985. He describes the intertwining of the rhythm of the factory with the street outside: ‘Their [the workers’] day would begin at 8.30 in the morning, before which all the workers would be sitting along the tapris discussing God knows what not. The first shift would be over by 4 pm. In the middle, you would have the lunch break—the canteen had tea for 4 anna and roti for 5 paise. By 5 pm, the street would be bustling again—people would exit their first shift and the others would join their second. In this large web of people, everyone somehow knew of everyone. This [the factory and its vicinity] was a small city, within the city.’
The 2001 census declared Sonipat as an urban agglomeration, and a 2003 notification announced the development of the Sonipat–Kundli Multifunctional Urban Complex, whereby Sonipat would come under the Delhi Metropolitan Area and be incorporated in Delhi’s vision for a ‘world-class city’. The Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (HSIIDC) and the Public Works Department (PWD) of Sonipat were instructed to start earmarking land that could potentially be used for foreign investment, housing investment, and an education hub, which was further concretized by the Haryana Private Universities Act 2006. In 2003, the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act, 1975, also saw a few amendments with the introduction of terms like ‘private developers’, ‘self-contained city’, and ‘intelligent city’. The shift in the perception of Sonipat as the ‘upcoming Gurgaon’ and the real estate that would potentially be fueled by this was only at risk from the factories in the area. Citing financial constraints, Atlas Cycles shut down its Sonipat factory in 2018.
The widening of the roads, the introduction of the expressways, and motorized commutes from Delhi has diminished the space for cycles within Sonipat. The work undertaken by the PWD, post the 2010s, has primarily been on a massive scale, keeping in mind four-lane roads in most cases. This model of city-ness precludes walkability and cyclability of urban spaces. This trend is part of a larger process of marginalization of cycles and shrinking cycling infrastructures in post-liberalization India. On the one hand, two wheelers and cars have replaced the cycle as a marker of middle-class aspirations and lifestyle, and the cycle as an everyday mode of transport is primarily associated with the lower class. On the other, cities are increasingly being planned and reconfigured for automobiles. Joshi and Joseph4 point out, ‘The road, as a modernist planning project, requires the making of a corridor for “free-flowing traffic,” which leads to the complete negation of existing uses of urban street space.’ Within this discourse, the cycle is deemed illegitimate, if not illegal.
The street, which in India has been an extension of the interior, is increasingly being pushed back inside. A similar change has occurred on Atlas Road, which has been redeveloped and widened over the last couple of years. Shops have been pushed back from spilling on to the street, doing away with spaces for social congregation. The street has been swallowed for parking the plethora of cars collected by various garages and motor work stores that have come up over the last 10 years or so. The cycle repair shops are disappearing. The Atlas factory, at least in the monumentality of its physical structure, has remained constant in the last 70-plus years.
In the housing quarters of Atlas, one abandoned house is occupied by Prem and Mamta, a couple from Hisar who had come to Sonipat in 2010. Prem became a security guard in one of these units. Mamta, a vivacious woman in her thirties, tells me, ‘It was the most exciting time of my life. For every festival, we would have massive celebrations, all of us ladies from these quarters and from the neighbouring ones, and our husbands’ friends’ wives would come together and have fun!’ She adds how the road was never deserted at any point in the day when the factory was operational and that all the people walking on the road would be known to her. Downsizing had begun in 2011, and by 2014 many operations had been suspended. When the factory finally closed down in 2018, Prem’s dues weren’t cleared. This makes Mamta and Prem believe that they are entitled to using the quarters that are assigned to them.
‘If they come and ask us to vacate, we will ask for our dues’, says Mamta, while preparing lunch. She is waiting for her children to come home. ‘It should not have happened,’ she adds meekly, ‘maybe it should have happened after my children settled down—we only would want them to have the best education’, emphasizing on education. ‘It formed a brotherhood for us and gave us an identity’, Sharma explains to me, as we walk along the Atlas Road. By now he has said hello to about six people and two have come up to him and touched his feet. ‘I often wonder, if Atlas wasn’t there, who would I be? Yes, things came crashing down in a matter of the last ten years, but you can’t discount the work that Atlas has done for this city, for all the people, for the country’, he adds. His pride in Atlas stems from his loyalty to his provider.
Sulja Prasad’ identity and sense of belonging too are intertwined with the Atlas factory. He has his house and family in Allahabad, yet he refuses to leave Sonipat. He fears that as soon as he leaves, the factory will begin again, and he won’t be allowed inside. There is naivety in his fears, but he is an outcome of the state that in the pursuit of planning had become the parent. But planning is a spirit with an insatiable appetite. It eats up people, places, and pasts, and gives birth to cities. And before you know it, it even devours the cities it has birthed.
—Aayushi Gupta
I am grateful to Sulja Prasadji, Pratap Chand Sharmaji, and Sunil Sethiji for sharing their time and experiences. I want to thank Anandit Sachdev and Saeed Ahmed whose courses gave me an opportunity to explore this topic, as well as Sarover Zaidi and Samprati Pani for recognizing the potential in this essay. I would also like to thank Ayman Syed for being a part of the fieldwork for this project, which was conducted in 2023.
Aayushi Gupta is a final-year architecture student at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat, and a mixed-media artist. She is interested in how cities transform and are held within collective memories.
Cover image: Old Atlas Cycles calendars displayed in the factory’s guard room.
All photographs courtesy of the author.
Notes
- Ramya Ramamurthy, Branded in History, India: Hachette, 2021.
︎ - Divya Kannan, ‘The Journey since 1947-III: Can the Bicycle Come Full Circle in India?’, The India Forum, 14 September 2022, https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/journey-1947-can-bicycle-come-full-circle-india ︎
- Namita Vijay Dharia, The Industrial Ephemeral, Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2022, p. 4. ︎
- Rutul Joshi and Yogi Joseph, ‘Invisible Cyclists and Disappearing Cycles: The Challenges of Cycling Policies in Indian Cities’, Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 5(3): 23–40. ︎