A ROOM WITH A VIEW

Parab, who is President of the Railway Slum Dwellers Federation, lives in Govindi, on the northern outskirts of the city. Hiw one-room house stands right up against the twin railroad tracks of the electrified Harbor Line. He isn’t here yet. He’s gone into to the city to take part in a Municipal Workers Demonstration.
The walls between Parab's house and his neighbors are not exactly soundproofed. Actually, they're one inch wooden planks. Nothing more, nothing less.
That's the early afternoon Hindi movie playing next door. He's just up the top of the lane having a bath. Half-day today so Sulakshana, Parab's wife's going to start preparing lunch when he comes back down.
And the trains are very much running today, one every two minutes or so. The father next door is yelling at (I presume) his daughter
For an awful moment I wonder if we're witnessing a classic case of child abuse under cover of the television and the trains. Then I make out what the father's actually saying to the child.
"Who hit you? Why are you crying? Come on, sweetie. You can tell your papa!
Come to your Papa!"
Then Parab walks in. Freshly shaven, smelling like a rose. He's a neat slim man, a pencil-thin moustache gracing his upper lip. Dressed in shirt and lungi.
“Must be a Tamil, no?”
“Maharastrian.”
The lungi's the male counterpart to the sari - a sheet of printed cotton you wrap round your waist that stretches down to your ankles. Very cool, very informal and very practical come rain or shine.
Lungi adjusted, Parab hops onto the bed next to me.
“How long have you lived here?”
Parab's a local man, from a town called Kalwa a couple of stops on the railway, the other side of Thane, maybe an hour north of here.
“I stay here for past 12 years. But the people staying here are more than 18 years.”
“Well, why did you come here? Why and not Dadar or Byculla or somewhere else?”
Parab needed a place in a hurry. This house was already built. It fitted his needs and his budget. Back then, it cost him 7,000 Rupees, four months salary. It's a single room, 10 by 15, and solidly built. Stone floor, brick and wood walls, and corrugated tin roof.
“Staying in Byculla and Dadar is very costly, and I didn't afford at that time to spend so much of money And I had to buy in eight days time. So, this house is a very emergency!”
“What's it like living next to trains that go by every two and a half minutes, so if you sleep-walk you might never wake up?”
The distance between Parab's front door and the actual tracks is about fifteen feet.
“I know it's dangerous to stay near the track side. But what to do? It's our problem and our condition. We cannot afford: like how all people think we should stay far away. Even I believe and I also want to live away from here. But you need finance and all that thing, then only I can go and live there. And you're talking about sleep-walking. You get used to it, habituated to, and even if you're in your sleep you know that you are staying somewhere near the railway track and you will not go and bump into the railway track, into the train.”
“What about things like running water? And sewage? And toilets? I notice in the street there are all these little toilets, perched in a very precarious way. If I got into one of those I'd probably fall straight into the nullah beneath!”
Back out on the main road, thirty yards and two rows of houses back, there's a Nullah or stream. Perched over it are forty very rickety outhouses, a gift from a local politician
“We get water about four hours. and every twenty houses has two running water taps. And that is provided for us by the BMC. Then the sewage, and the drainage. We got about 40 latrines, toilets, which are 20 for women and 20 for men.”
Parab started organising here back in 1987, among the thousands who live alongside the Harbor Line tracks. He used to work for the BMC full-time.
“I didn't organise this organisation, or form committees, or organise people because I'm a servant of the BMC. But staying in such kind of locality: we have so many problems, such as school problem, education problem, hospital problem, ration card problem, water, toilet, basic amenities, all such types of problems we had, and to get out of it, to find a way, to get, how to get all these things and how to achieve all this, that's what I went and formed organisation.”
“How many people in RSDF now? How many households?”
The answer to that one is 18,000 members and counting. But Parab's got a more immediate problem, and a familiar one.
“OK. Why, for example, won't they give you a permanent ration card? Obviously, this is a fixed structure. You're not living on the pavement. This is a recognisable house. Why wouldn't they give you a ration card?”
Turns out they did eventually get permanent ration cards. But now they have another problem: electricity. None of these houses have legal title to the land they're built on. In Indian vernacular, they're known as "illegal structures".
“So therefore you're in a sort of permanent legal limbo!..But this is a legal or an illegal structure?”
“It is illegal structure.”
“How can you get a permanent ration card for an illegal structure?”
My question's too logical, and rather naive. I wonder how long it'll take you to figure out the obvious answer?
“There are political leaders here, and who think that these slums are their vote banks. During the time of elections they lead us very badly, so to get themselves elected they do such needy works for us during the time of election.”
In other words, when election time rolls around, what was illegal yesterday, suddenly becomes legal today. Slum dwellers may be poor. But they have votes, and lots of them. In Bombay alone almost one in every two voters is either a slum dweller or a pavement dweller. But that's not the only oddity here. Parab drags me out of the house and points up at the overhead electrical cables that power the trains.
“Here we have high-powered tension lines. And behind us also, we have high-powered tension lines. So the people who give us electricity tell us that we're living in between the high-power tension lines. And it's dangerous for you all to get the light. We cannot give you legally lights.”
This is indeed a problem. But if that's true, how come Parab's neighbor has a television going full-blast? And how come Parab has two bright 60 Watt lights glowing?
Bombay's perhaps the one city in the whole of India where electricity works, at full power and all the time. No load-shedding here - You can run a computer or any electrical appliance with pretty good confidence, all day, every day.
The reason? Because the whole electrical supply has long been contracted out to a private company. But even they are not immune to a bit of bribery, here and there, and this is how wily old Parab has ended up getting electricity.
“The authority people who can give us the light current. They said everybody has to deposit 200 Rupees. And when they deposit that money, B.ES.T. will give us the underground cable. And that way you can get the light. The houses which are just opposite the railway line can't get any light. Only the houses which are behind. So again, while I was getting the meter I showed that my door was not facing the railway tracks. But it was facing backside. And that's how I got the light!”
In other words, Parab told the electricity wallahs that his door didn't give on to the tracks, because that way, he wouldn't have got any light.
So, when the inspector came round, Parab took him into the lane behind his house. And showed him the house directly behind his, whose door, of course, doesn't give on to the railway tracks at all, but on to the lane.
The inspector fell for it, though I also suspect a bit of baksheesh probably changed hands.
“They also want to take their money. So we have to do according to how they want. But we all of us obtained light this way.”
Parab’s an intelligent man. He’s been in one the struggle from day one. So a good man to give a long-term assessment of how things have progressed for Mahila Milan, NSDF and RSDF
“To what extent has involevement with NSDF and SPARC and Mahila Milan, has this given you encouragement? And made you fell that indeed one can achieve a lot by fighting, and that you're not alone?”
“There are many people, they sow seeds to destruct the slum people, seeds such as caste system, class system, religion - all this they put the sees so that people, we fight. And they do not allow us to organise ourselves and become one. But SPARC has helped us to organise whatever caste, language, creed we belong to, and whatever we are, we are organised or unorganised, whatever caste we have, they helped us all to come together, and they helped us to go to the concerned officer, whether he is in BMC or in the electricity of anything. And they taught us primarily how to go and how to talk, and where to go, whom to go, for what purpose and what problems, whom to contact. This is the basic thing that SPARC, Mahila Milan and NSDF has taught us.”
And what about the women of Mahila Milan, the pavement dwellers?
Parab admires the women, but he also feels sorry for them because they don't have their own toilets. And I'm not quite sure that he isn't a bit annoyed at the implication of my question, that somehow the Railway Slum Dwellers owe something to the pavement dwellers of Byculla.
“Yes, even we have achieved so many things, even we have achieved so many things before them. See, when I came here we did not have light, water, toilets. But after organising ourselves, we have achieved all this. Byculla people have also achieved many things. But still today they have not achieved water, toilets and all that. But we have struggled and we have achieved things even before them!”
What about the entry of so many women into political activism? A traditional Muslim patriarch like Mohammad Ali Jung Bahadur in Dharavi still has a lot of problems accepting women running things.
“In the beginning, when I saw the women, I thought why the women had to go out when I'm going out? And even when my wife went out and I also went out, I was thinking that who is going to take care of the house, the children, the housework, household works and all that? But in the beginning, I thought all that, it was just waste for my wife to come out. But gradually, we came to know that it is important for both of us to come out. And now we work hand in hand, taking care of the house, the children, everything together, all responsibility.”
Sulakshana looks on, an ironic smile on her face, as she starts to pump up the pressure for the kerosene stove. So, Parab, having women take their place alongside men in the fight to improve the slums, this really has changed you?
“If she tells me then I will have to do. And I will do. But she doesn't tell me. If she tells me then I will do.”
Like most slum dwellers, Parab doesn't think it's practical to ask for new houses and move away from here. So, he and the railway Slum Dwellers, are pushing for proper toilets, more running water, and an end to their legal limbo. And staying put, right here in Govindi, in a room with a view.

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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