TABOOS GETTING TRANSGRESSED

The preface of the book (City at its Limits) talks about the different phases of the life of a city, ‘Lima’. It revolves around the local issues and the way they are being dealt by the government as well as the local people. When a society is formed, it consists of various rules, customs, traditions, culture and of course TABOOS.  To avoid the local people from doing certain things or to establish order and peace hypothetically, often certain measures and boundaries are set up which subsequently takes the form of a taboo. These might be considered the boundaries limiting the expressions of one’s notions on a particular issue. Considering the case of Lima, there exists a protest in the minds of the local people regarding the change up of the city and transforming it into a beautiful but strange and unfriendly city. Cases of different taboos getting transgressed by the local people in order to get noticed and to get their demands fulfilled can be observed easily, if the city tries to challenge the limits of its peaceful existence. In the book, the author has expressed her personal views on whole of this situation and consequences of transforming a city into a new one. But then again this might have positive as well as negative responses from the local public. Same was the case with Lima, search of the old Lima in a way started to destroy the present one. The author tries to reveal the relation between taboo and transgression using her personal research and her own observations and connections to the city.

Shivajinagar in itself is a small city consisting of almost all the aspects of a city and portraying them in its own unusual manner. While working in Shivajinagr I came across various beliefs, traditions, and customs prevailing in the space which might take the form of taboos if taken to a next level. They may be from any walk of life, it may be religious, political, social, personal, etc. There are certain limits of one’s existence in that space and the moment someone tries to cross them it creates a sense of discomfort in whole of the society, directly or indirectly. This discomfort may result into public outbreaks of violence, anger, protest etc. In spite defining the limits and establishing certain measures there are no perfect grounds for judging someone’s interests or ideas or their way of executing them. After all there is no certain beginning or end. There is only a broken taboo.

PARAM JAIN