FRAGMENTS OF THE PAST

I only really started seriously recording in Byculla in 1990. I'd made tapes in 1986, when I'd first gone there. But I was convinced they were pretty bad, at least on my part. And then, I found them and listened to them, and realised I had unwittingly recorded the pavement dwellers right at the beginnings of their movement.
~
It must have been midday. Lots of scooters, bicycles, taxis and people talking. I was at the corner of Jhula Maidan. In front of me a large woman on the pavement preparing lunch for her daughters. I think it was either S heela or Celine or Mona who was my guide that first day.
“She says she's come from Bihar, and that in Bihar, where she was in her village, she couldn't feed herself or her family. So, she came to Bombay, started working as a domestic servant in different homes, and started earning enough money to feed herself and her children.”
The tape says October 30th, 1986. I know where we are. But not the faces. They're a blur, out of focus. And if I recognize the voices it's only with the benefit of hindsight. I ask Samina, for it is indeed she, why she and her husband choose to live right here on the pavement.
“It's close to work for both of us. So I can go up, do my chores, come down, feed the children, cooking, looking after the house. And my husband also finds a lot of work in this area.”
“Where is the area, by the way, where you do live?”
Right here, outside the gates of this building!”
Samina says she's been living here thirty years and her house has been demolished so often she's lost count.
And all I can ask her is: "what do you make your house with?"
Roars of laughter.
Next question: "And how do they demolish your hut?"
More laughter.
“They take ropes, and they tie the ropes to the bottom of this structure, and then just pull it out, so the whole thing just collapses. And then they pick it up, and they put it into the vans, many times they might even take all their utensils, and often, very often, the most traumatic thing is that even food, which is cooking, is all sort of thrown around, and those vessels are picked up and taken.”
“What do you do for water and hygiene?”
“Like everyone round here. I have to beg for it!”
Samina, Sakina, Banoo and the others find these questions ridiculous. Why would anyone in America want to know these things?
Has the Bombay Municipal Council ever done anything for you?" I ask
Howls of laughter. These are really stupid, I mean STOOPID questions these white people ask.
“Just a school, nothing else..”
“How much does your husband earn? Tell me how you spend your family budget?"
Oh, the clever questions these journalists ask! So clever. Does he have any idea what it means to be poor? I mean really poor!
“Well, let me just ask one very simple question. At the end of the day, or the end of the week, is there ever any money left over?”
“From where can any money be left?
I don’t think I knew enough to feel embarrassed at the time.
“Now, when did all of them, and this lady in particular, when did they finally decide that enough was enough, and they had to organise themselves to do something about these demolitions?”

The "Lady" in question defers to a tall, thin, rather rakish man called Rafique, who will reappear later in our story, in a very different guise.
“Two years ago.”
“What was the event that triggered them deciding to do something together?
“It began with the harassment due to demolitions being on the increase, which made them feel that they had to do something about it.”
“And what did they do?”
“We've started going to all the big officers and those in high posts in the government, and the Municipality, like the Commissioner, that we have all these difficulties, and we are still running around doing that.”
“But do the city officials ever do anything for them?
More howls of laughter.
“ I want to take them and rub their heads together!”
Rafique takes pity on me and says: “actually, all this laughing and giggling that you hear is a lot out of the frustration that they face, because most of them are going from pillar to post trying to pin people who will answer their questions about where they can go, and nobody's really answering them
I still don’t really get it.
“Does Samina and her friend though, do they consider that they have a right to be given land here, or elsewhere in Bombay by the Municipality?”
No laughter just a chorus of anger expressed simply:
“Yes!”
“The city wants our labor, so they should provide somewhere for us to stay!”
“Why do you think the city does tear down your huts?”
The ladies understand something about the ways of politicians, how they promise one thing and do another. The word kachra crops up quite a lot in the course of our conversation. Kachra means trash, garbage. Sakina says the rich people who run Bombay think she, they, the pavement dwellers are all kachra.
“For the wealthy people in the city, they want gardens for their children to play in, and they want places to park their cars, and they want their sidewalks to look pretty. And all of us represent garbage. And they want to clear the garbage, and they want to take us out again, and they want to dump us somewhere else
"And do you think you will achieve your goal?"
Adamant. “Yes! We will take with this hand. We will not plead with them. We will demand it..we're doing this for our children. We are ready to keep on fighting for this, so that our kids don't have to face this kind of problem in their lives!”
Next day, same city, totally different setting. I'm in a Five Star Hotel talking with a rather nervous and extremely hungry lawyer called Inndira Jaising. As yet, I'm not sure where the conversation is headed. But she’s been fighting for the pavement dwellers at the Supreme Court in Delhi.
“I'm not very happy with the existing interpretations by the Supreme Court....And I would like to see the Supreme Court say that this right to life means the guaranteed right to live with dignity, which means that the State has an obligation to give to every individual the basic necessities of right and life, namely food, shelter and clothing. The Supreme Court has not gone that far.”
“How far has it gone?”
“It is ambiguous. They have said the right to life includes the right to live with dignity. But what exactly does that mean? The right to live with dignity? The court has not spelled this out. So far, I must say, the impression that I get is that it varies from judge to judge, because in this case we took to...the Lawyers Collective took to court - the homeless, the pavement dwellers - came up in 1981, where the....”
“You're talking about the Bombay...?”
“The Bombay case, the Bombay Pavement Dwellers case! .We convincingly proved that the pavement dwellers were here in Bombay because they were employed, that their levels of income did not permit them to seek shelter or to obtain shelter, that land prices were prohibitive, and there was no question of their being able to purchase any kind of shelter. And that in these circunstances, the eviction of the pavement dwellers from their dwellings would result in a violation of their right to life.”
Unfortunately, that's not how the Court saw it, well not exactly. In the summer of 1985, they issued a judgment of Solomon without the latter's wisdom.
Yes, the pavement dwellers had a right to life. But the Court would not order the city to re-house or refrain from breaking their huts.
The pavement dwellers of Byculla would obviously have to try something else.
A few days later, I found myself at Jhula Maidan recording a noisy public meeting.
“Sit down quietly! Brothers and sisters, I appeal to you to sit down. All those who are standing near the gate please sit down!”
And Samina tells a street kid to buzz off or she'll thwack him round the head!
The scene is the park called Jhula Maidan, bang opposite the room where our first conversations with the pavement dwellers took place.
It's seven o'clock, already night. Fifteen hundred, maybe more people, most of them poor and pavement dwellers, are already sitting on the red baked earth of the Maidan.
Magar, the head of the Bombay Slum Dwellers Federation will kick off the proceedings, to be followed by Dr Datta Samant, the local member of the Maharastra state assembly.
But the real star is Medina, cousin of Samina, who also comes from Bihar and has been living on the street in Peer Khan Road for twenty years.
This is the first time Medina, who is both Muslim and a woman, has ever spoken in public, let alone to a microphone and in front of a couple of thousand strangers.
“What I am saying with my broken speech, listen to me carefully. . I will only speak what my mind is capable of. There is no question about laughing today. If you didn't have any unhappiness, and I didn't have any unhappiness, then why would this meeting be held, this big meeting?.”
And Medina tells really tells them like it is. And ends with this warning:
“If they (meaning the Authorities), do not treat us as human beings and help us get off the streets, If they don't lift a finger, if they continue to beat us and tear down our houses. Then they might as well go the whole hog and shoot us with a big machine gun. That would be best!”

Essay
Episodes 1 - 4
Episodes 5 - 8
Episodes 9 - 12
Episodes 13 - 16
Episodes 17 - 20
Episodes 21 - 24
Episodes 25 - 28
Episodes 29 - 32
Episodes 33 -35

Main Episode List
Cast of Characters
Credits
MP 3

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