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"Go
ask some educated person what it means to be Indian. Don't waste
time with people like us. We work, eat and sleep on the street.
We don't have time for such big-big ideas.
"I
know August 15 is jhanda-din (flag-day). Netas need
such festivals twice or thrice a year apni izzat badhane ke
liye.(to boost
their egos). I heard something about the British leaving
India on that day. Our raj their raj, what
difference! British or no British, the rich remain rich and the
poor remain poor."
- Meena, 20, a beggar at Grant Road.
Talking
to the street population on what Indianness means to them is a
moving, illuminating experience.
The people speak spontaneously, without the mask of
well-thought-out words, and as one encounters anger and
disillusionment, aspirations and bonds of brotherhood, one begins
to admire the raw insights of their worldview despite their
wretched condition. For it is among this populace -- haughtily
written off as illiterate among those educated into cliched moulds
of thought -- that one encounters the occasional gem of wise
words based
on experience rather than ideology or philosophy. To those
interested in observing life in all its complexity, it makes more
sense to listen than to judge.
Despite
their current urban setting the people retain strong bonds with
the land they've left behind and use affectionate pastoral imagery
to describe it. "The five sons of a mother are
different but she loves them all. Even if one turns out to be a namak-haram
she will continue to care for him. Bharat is Mata to
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians. She gives equally to
all", says 35-year-old Bhanji, a peon in a doctor's clinic.
"Bharat
matlab gaon," says middle-aged Savitri who's been
in Bombay for
22 years. "Bambai
bhi Bharat hai magar aasmaan-jameen
ka farak hai.
(Bombay is also India but the difference is like earth and sky.)
Here if you want shade from the sun you have to sit under a
bus-stop instead of a tree."
"Being
Indian means friendship. Every citizen of India is my
friend," says grey haired Fernandes from Goa.
The
concept of democracy, however, is too complex for untutored minds.
People vote, but without illusions of a better day. "If a
well-dressed man gives me a hundred rupees, I'll vote for him
because unlike me he
is padha-likha
(educated) but if he gives me a gun and
asks me
to shoot, I'll ask for kum-se-kum (at least) one
lakh," quips 19-year-old garage helper, Prakash, displaying a
strange street logic.
Ragpickers
Deepak, 14
and Salim,
15 have
already developed
an unhealthy cynicism about the system. "Hamare
jaise kuchrewale ka vote
le kar
poora desh ko
kuchra bana diya." (By
taking the
votes of
ragpickers like us
they have reduced the nation to rags), says
Deepak bitterly.
"Aaj-kal
ek bhi asli Hindustani nahin milega. Sab duplicate ban gaya,"
adds his friend inhaling a joint. "Ek thali mein khate,
magar ek-ek ka khoon chooste jate. Khoon choos-choos kar sab
badmash ban gaye." (You
wont find a single authentic Indian today. All are fakes. They eat
in the same
plates then
suck each
others blood.
Bloodsucking has
transformed the entire race into demons.)
What
is the
source of such self-deprecating
cynicism? Are
their pathetic lives
to be inextricably intertwined with despair?
And is charas the only means of escape and fleeting
mental clarity?
More
important, does this dialogue force us to confront some truths we
would rather avoid? That activists might be undermining the impact
of the experience of
poverty on individual psyches? That our
focus on
collective action might lead us to mistake the wood for the trees?
Do we have the courage to look poverty squarely in the
face?
Undoubtedly
poverty is the experience that unites. Questions
on the
communal divide
cut little ice
with Rafiq,
in his
mid-twenties, running
a pavement stall near Kamatipura. "On the
streets, everyone
has to live like brothers," he says. "They give haftas
(bribes) to the police, so
do we; they get hooked on drugs, so do we; they fall
sick and die,
so do we. What's the difference between
Hindu, Muslim
or anyone else? After the riots there was tension in the
air, like after a quarrel between brothers. But now it's all
forgotten."
However
11-year-old Rakesh from Nashik is not so sure. "Khoon
ek, bhasha ek, magar jaat alag-alag rehte," he
says pensively.
"Of
course there are differences," says Shafiq, 14, who has run
away from his family of construction workers in Bangalore and
works as
a helper to a bhelpuriwala at Girgaum Chowpatty.
"They celebrate Diwali, we
celebrate Id.
They burn their dead, we bury our dead.
But these
things happen
two-three times
a year. In
everyday life
we eat
together, sleep together, smoke together, drink together. In a
drunken brawl no one
bothers about who is Hindu or who is Muslim. If we
have to fight, we fight."
Differences
are acknowledged but camaraderie is the far more
unifying experience. The difference between Indians and
others is perceived in
a simple, almost
primitive way. "Duniya mein gore log hai,
kale log hai,
aur chinti aankh-wale log hai. Doosre sab Hindustani hai!"
(There are white
people, black people, and chinky-eyed people.
All others are
Indians!) it says Michael,
a vendor on local
trains, matter
of factly.
"You
can go to Delhi, Calcutta, Madras... all that is India. But
when you need
a passport to travel, it means you're going outside
India," says 10-year-old Dattu whose uncle is in
Saudi.
The
`outsider' is someone who looks different and lives far away, in a
country where an Indian becomes the foreigner-outsider. Were Dattu
to join his
uncle in Saudi he might encounter people
whose aspirations
are not too different
from his own. But it's also possible that
like Rakesh he might
conclude that
there are
differences after
all. However, if
he and Michael were to interact with people
from other
cultures the bond of shared experiences would form the basis of
mutual acceptance and respect, regardless of differences.
All
questions are
lost on commercial sex workers
Kalavati, 19
and Mumtaz, 21,
who have probably never been questioned on
anything but
their narrow lives.
"Have you come to reform us? Tell us about
AIDS? Tell us
to stop taking drugs? Then what do you want? Yes, I'm
Indian but so what?" says Kalavati rather
aggressively.
"Yesterday
two Arabs
came to me. Before that a
bhaiyya from
U.P. visited me and today I took a man from Yeotmal. I take
all men as men. I don't think about all this deshi-videshi
business," says Mumtaz. "Why
don't you talk about real problems?" asks
Kalavati's 'husband'
Bhimsen. "The
world's biggest problem is drugs. If you
get rid
of drugs, India or no India, the streets will be paved with
gold. So many good boys
living on the roads get spoilt. It they weren't
on drugs,
their strength could be put to good use. Their youth is wasted and
by the time they become men they are dead."
With
street people, one is brought down from the cloud of lofty
ideas to ground
reality and
practical wisdom. No preacher
or ideologue
speaks the language of experience as clearly as the street-wise
and as one moves from
the street to the slum one finds oneself in
a sombre
reflective mood.
Gitanagar
is an
organised slum at the southern-most end
of Colaba,
whose residents
have successfully battled
the Indian
navy to
regularise their settlement and have a licensed ration shop as
well as water connection.
But for eleven days the pipes have been
dry and
questions on
Indianness appear frivolous or esoteric as
people rush
around in feverish urgency to get their chores done.
"Please
excuse us, we can't talk to you just now. Water has just
come after eleven
days. We've
been buying it at Rs 10 per
gallon from
buildings where the watchmen are kind. Sometimes we have to go as
far as Colaba
Post Office for water. Our boys fetch
water on
bicycles before going to school in the morning. You can
write that this is our
India," says Sumitra Chauhan.
In
about twenty
minutes the taps have run dry and
the women
come chattering into Rama Bhor's house, opening up a bottle
of Thums Up for the visitor.
Hospitality comes as naturally as
cooking or
washing clothes.
"We
have a temple, mosque, gurudwara and church in Gitanagar,"
begins Lakshmi whose
husband is a driver in Dubai. "All the children
go to school
and in the evenings some educated ladies come and give tuitions at
the church. A few students have also gone to college but they
don't get jobs
afterwards so what's the use! Better to do
khoon-pasine ka
kaam." ("work with blood and sweat.")
"Aaj-kal
log padhe-likhe
to hai, lekin jamane ko
kya harami
bana diya," says
72-year-old ukmanibai. "Hamare jamane-wale
anpadh the,
lekin achche-achche din dekhe hai. Padhayee mein kya faida?" ("Today's
generation may be educated but what a mess they've made of the
world. My generation may be uneducated but we've seen good
times. What's the use
of all this education?”)
The
last word
belongs to Rama Bhor, in whose 10x10
hut we
are sitting. She
is in her fifties but has heard her parents
talk about
colonial times.
"My father was in the army and he used to
say that
British India was better than this India," she says.
"Today if one man tries to raise himself with honest work,
ten people will rush to pull
him down. Today's police are worse than the Angrezi police.
They take haftas,
the BMC-wallahs take haftas, even the watchmen take haftas.
We are living in a hafta
raj."
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