Pets of the Poor

Of the many things that fascinate me about slum life, this one makes it to the top 3 - slum dwellers of Bombay keeping pet animals in their 10 by 10 rooms. In this case, in their makeshift houses by the highway.

The lives of the highway kids had always been especially difficult to understand. We had heard of how some parents take the kids to the nearby public washrooms and get them ready for school. Today we learnt about the same, firsthand.

This group that we spoke to, has access to an AC washroom which charges Rs 15 for taking a bath and Rs 5 for using the toilet. This family of 7, like so many others who live alongside them, keeps their belongings in the 'houses' by the road, and sleeps on the footpaths when it doesn't rain, or under the bridges when it does. When it is cold, they share 3 blankets between the 7 of them. Two nights back the 20-year old son got into a fit of rage and 'broke down' their house. The 14 year old in the house was collecting their belongings so that the sole earning member could come home and rebuild it.

In the midst of all this, a family car pulled up and started to hand out clothes. Everyone ran and snatched whatever they could. "New clothes" for tomorrow's Ganpati Visarjan festivities.

And then one by one they introduced us to their pets. A 6-year-old ran into her house and brought out a one month old puppy and the packet of milk it drinks. The little one here obliged us with a picture with their family dog. "He eats with us everyday. When we make daal and rice, we give it to him too."

The 'posh' brothel

The 'posh' Bombay brothel, Grant Road, Mumbai.

A 'gharwali' told us how her husband had left the house when she was pregnant with their third child, and never returned. She still wears the sindoor. After quitting a job as a housemaid because she couldn't earn enough to give her kids a good education, she started working as a bar dancer. But her hips gave away. So she turned to prostitution.
5 years in, a client told her to stop 'this business' and bought her a house where she could run her own brothel. "I was lucky to be able to get out of it after 5 years." she said.
"Do your kids know what you do?" we asked.
"I am sure they do. I have barely studied, yet I am earning so much in Bombay. What could I be doing here? But they don't want to hurt me, so they never ask."

"How old are the youngest people who come here?" we inquired.
"We don't take in very young guys. Then it feels like we are sleeping with our own sons. We are mothers after all." was the chilling response.

Another sex worker recounted the tale of how she was brought to Bombay at the age of 14 under the pretext of housework, and 'sold'.
"I fell in love with a client and married him. When I was pregnant with his child, he called me a 'randi' and said that it might be the child of one of my other clients. He would just take my money and go sleep with other prostitutes. When I found out, I aborted the 7-month old baby and left him. I don't trust men anymore.", she said.

Those of us who got such personal stories in less than an hour of conversation did so because of local language, which can be such a unifier.
"Where are you from?", I asked.
"Calcutta." she said.
"Bangali?" I smiled.
"Tumi o? (You too?)", her eyes lit up at the familiar language. "Cha khabe? (Will you have tea?)", she asked.
You learn when you are not supposed to say no.

First picture with the school kids

Almost been a year, and finally my first picture WITH the kids. This was after I was dragged into the class for pre-Gudi Padwa celebrations and force-fed bhel that they made and a pretty expensive cookie that they just had to share with me.

This lot helped me realize how much I love to teach kids. Sohail - the one on whose head my hand is - was one of my favourites who knew Honey Singh's Blue Eyes by heart but went Moo for the goat in Old MacDonald's farm.

"3 rupees for a ticket"

Aahad, Age 9.

Part of the first group of students who helped me realize that I am actually not as bad around kids as I thought I was.

Today while taking me to his slum he importantly informed me that the ferry would charge 3 rupees for the ticket.

"Ruko main deta hoon!" ("Wait! I will pay!")

And he whipped out 60% of his precious pocket money which he was saving for Chinese bhel.

At Bombay's Madh Island - the de-glam side of it.

Highs and Lows of the Slum Immersion program

With everything that I am learning in this new field of work, a lot of my opinions and perspectives have changed. When I went into the slum, my parents said two things - be safe. And don't come back a Communist.

Two weeks into the slum immersion, after I had observed some ways in which the people felt a sense of entitlement, I told my parents that I was scared I might come out a capitalist. That, coming from someone who has always hovered on the left side of the center, was quite something. But more about that later.

Some of the funniest, sweetest, and scariest moments of that one month are worth recollecting.

NOT Lalbaug cha Raja.

Going out to see Lalbaug cha Raja during Ganpati festival. Not realizing that we had seen the wrong Ganpati till the picture was put up on Facebook and pointed out as Mumbai cha Raja by a friend. The family still does not know of the mix-up. And it doesn't matter, because they believe they saw Lalbaug cha Raja. And faith is ultimately what matters.

Rekha and the kids riding the metro for the first time on our way to the Ganpati. They were ecstatic! At the same time , I was petrified because Rekha was a week away from her due date and walked over 2 kms on the way over and back. Every time she took a step, I panicked that she might deliver right there. 

This was Rekha a week before she gave birth. Obviously one can't tell that she was this far into the pregnancy. The baby girl born to her a week later was severely underweight.

“Mee kothimbir kaapte”- the only grammatically correct Marathi sentence I fully learnt in my one month in the slum, despite Neelam’s best efforts. This kothimbir went into an experimental daal we made with jaljeera, which turned out to be very tasty. It was the second best thing I tasted after the sev-bhaji which I also learnt to make.

Getting the salt-filled modak that Rekha made, which as per tradition, is supposed to be lucky. I bit into it and didn't know exactly how to point out that it had salt instead of the sweet coconut filling. When I finally did frame it into a diplomatic sentence, everyone burst out laughing.

The innumerable attempts made to get Neelam to address my body lotion (that she loved and stuck out her palm for every day) as "cream" and not "kim"!

Lecturing Rekha on how unfair it was that 14-year old  Poonam was made to do all the chores while 12-year old Rohit spent all his time playing - because he was a boy and she was a girl. And seeing Rekha change that by the end of the month.

The scariest moment had to be when a rat jumped on me in the middle of the night. I used to sleep with my sheet covering me from head to toe, to make sure there was no contact with rats. That night, I nudged at what I thought was Neelam's hand on me. And found more movement instead of the usual withdrawal. I opened my eyes to a huge rat sitting ON me, near the waist. Irrational as my fear might be, that was the lowest low of the whole month. Had it not been for a policy to not cry in life unless I am watching a Shah Rukh Khan or Disney animal movie, I would have burst into tears that night. The thought of it still makes me shudder.

My fondest memory though, would have to be that of Rekha helping Neelam sing the national anthem. Rekha failed 5 times in class 2 and dropped out of school. There was not much that happened in school that she could 'teach' her kids. I could hear the pride in her voice when she was teaching the anthem to Neelam. That she too could teach something to her children. 

I didn't have the heart to tell her that many of the words were wrong.

Sex and Lies

Whether it was by default or design,  majority of us fellows had found host houses with single mothers. Very few had gone into houses with men. So most of us were looking to the select few to tell us what happened to the conjugal lives of couples in one-room houses.

One report that we got was from a house with a man, a woman and a child. Our friend and the child shared one bed and the husband and wife shared another, both in the same room. In the middle of the first night, she heard the woman moaning. I suggested that the woman might have been doing so in her sleep. "Then I heard the man moaning.", she said.
We were appalled that they would go at it even in the first night that they had a complete stranger living in their house, right within earshot. And in the line of sight, had my friend decided to open her eyes.

Next we heard of a man and his wife who lived in a two room house with the man's sister and mother, a 12 year old son, and a baby. The sister complained that the man had 'no shame', while the wife breastfed the baby and the man fondled her in full view of the 12 year old child running around in the room.

Suddenly Rekha's story of her neighbour's 6 year old son undressing 7-year old Neelam and suggesting they lie on top of each other made more sense.

Another fellow went out with her host family where the man took her aside and confided in her that he had another woman on the side. Next day, the wife took her and the child out to meet a man she said was her boyfriend. And also the father of the child - a piece of information that her husband was unaware of.

Parallel marriages, extra-marital affairs, forced sex, deception and lies seem to be rampant in these loveless arranged marriages. Listening to all of this made us feel like we were in the middle of a Kafkaesque theater.