OF MEN and MULLAHS

It must have been a month after the Riots of January 1993. Things were starting to get back to normal in Byculla. But there was still occasional fallout, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

It must have been a month after the Riots of January 1993. Things were starting to get back to normal in Byculla. But there was still occasional fall out, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

But Sona was already back to normal, hectoring and lecturing me to make a serious effort to learn Hindi. And this morning, in the Mahila Milan office, she's finally got me where she wants me: with time on her hands, and me with nothing planned. So Sona can turn the tables and interview me:

Which takes the form of running down the list of foods I eat, in Hindi:

Rotis, mirchis, sabli
Chutney, Mango chutney.
Alu - when I insist this is our word potato, Sona becomes positively schoolmarmish.
Not batata! Alu. Say after me ALU.
Yes, Alu and that means potato.
Pay attention! Alu not batata! Speak properly!
Soba has a list of questions a mile long:
How much rent do you pay over where you live? That much!!!??

It's a measure of how much Sona has been exposed to the realities of the world outside and above that of a pavement dweller that she understands and accepts a figure that is several times her own monthly income with some intellectual sophistication.

Sona understands that you can't always compare incomes or prices, within the same city of Mumbai. Both are expressed in the same Rupees. But the numbers don't mean the same thing at all. On one street, rent is several thousand Rupees a month (or much more for a full apartment); for the pavement dweller it's zero.

Pavement dwellers have to pay for electricity, water, sewage - usually. Not in neat computerized bills that arrive through the post. But in the shape of backsheesh to the sandaswallah, or someone in the apartments nearby, or the man in the Byculla fire station, who turns on the water hydrant every morning at 4 AM.

Sona's not going to get mad because I earn and spend many times her monthly budget. She knows the figures are relative.
And then in hobbles Sakina.
Hello Sakina. Under aao.
But Sakina looks as if the end of the world is nigh! Her face has all the sorrows of this world written on it.

Yesterday, she'd muttered something about having had a flaming row with her husband.

Now, this isn't the first time Saline's had problems with her husband. But this time, he's been gone for over two weeks, leaving Sakina without money, and without anyone to look after her. Normally, this might not be quite so critical. But we've just gone through the January riots and if ever there was a time for a husband to look after his wife and family, this was surely it. But the guy's vamoosed: Sakina knows where: to another part of the city and a younger woman.

But Kamal and I are blissfully unaware of this rather important information. So we don't realize that this time it may be for real. Kamal and I are intent on fixing up which day we're coming to lunch at Saline's Nonchalantly, I suggest the errant husband will probably be back home tomorrow.

Sakina is deaf to my banter. And she's right. She lets it all pour out:

"I don't think he's going to come back. He has this other woman. But I don't think I've the energy for a divorce. I've lived thirty years with this man; had my children by him. I'm used to him. Now I'm so old (in her late forties, though she looks much older) that there's no point going through a divorce. I'll be all right. I'm virtually supporting myself anyway. So what's the point?"

Which sounds like a declaration of war to me. But what if he comes back tomorrow? Will Sakina keep her door closed?

Sakina seems quite calm and matter-of-fact about this very real possibility. She's obviously thought this through. This whole outburst is not some spur-of-the moment tantrum, but a real enough-is-enough.

"If he dares to show his face round here again, I'll call all my community together"
 I think she means the Mahila Milan members on Water Street. But then again, she might mean her kinsmen who live in the area, and there must be plenty from Hyderabad, where Sakina originally comes from.

"I'll have my community decide if he should be punished for how he's treated me and the kids!"

Of course, the kids in question are now in their twenties. But Gausia, her eldest daughter, has come home to live with her mother. Gausia got dumped by her husband a couple of years back. Now she and Sakina work together, doing finishing work for cotton dresses and blouses for export (see Water Street, USA) and helping in the toddlers' school right across the street.

"I'm not going to take him back! Because when I was young he used me. I brought up his children. But now that I'm old, he doesn't want to live with me anymore. He wants to live with a younger woman."

"But I've learned to live as if he isn't here. He hasn't contributed any money to the family for years. I've had to do that. I was the one who got my daughters married off, found them husbands. He was useless then and he's useless now. I've had to be the man of the house. I had to be both mother and father to the kids."

"So I'm not really dependent on him. But I don't want him back without some punishment. And, to tell you the truth, I don't really want him back at all. But I'm not going to put myself through all that expense and time and effort and go the courts for a divorce. He's not worth anything anyway So what's the point?"

Sakina just lets all the years of sadness tumble out. Yes, her husband used to give her money for food. Twenty Rupees a day. But that was to buy his food. It wasn't for the kids or for Saline's food.

"If I give him good old chapatis and dal for breakfast he gets all high and mighty! He wants vegetables and meat or fish! Nothing less for milord"

So it looks like curtains for one wandering husband. While Sakina just pours out her most private thoughts to our small and silent group.

"I've never told any of you how unhappy I've been! But I can tell you all because you're my real family! And one thing I can say is I've kept my self-respect as a woman and as a mother."

Each one of the little group here - Laxmi, Shehnaz, Banoo and Sagira - know only too well what Saline's been through, although only Sagira, perhaps, has had marital problems, and she's pretty careful to slide over them. Because her husband died a few years ago from TB and she's forgotten some of the bad days, when he threatened her with divorce if she continued to come here to Mahila Milan. She did and he did not.

Laxmi throws her arms round Sakina, encourages her to continue talking, to let them share her unhappiness. Reminds herself and each of them that bottling unhappiness up never solves any problems.

Banoo, who can twist her husband round her little finger by turning it on or off at will, makes a very wise remark: she knows now, from traveling round the city and the country, that women get dumped by men, whatever their class and status: a woman from the pavement can share her sorrows with another woman, no matter how great their differences in class and material wealth.

And then Banoo gets very much to the point:

"You know, there are many people who think all we do is collect bank notes, or go to the city, or visit the homeless in other countries. They completely miss the essential. Our organization is important to each one of us here because it brings us happiness."

Of course, she's hit the nail on the head. Someone, I've forgotten exactly whom, once told me that getting a house was no longer that important to the original founder-members. The process of becoming empowered, of taking charge of their lives, helping others do likewise, that was the most important thing.

It's obvious really. Before they formed Mahila Milan all of them had problems at home. But no one really to talk to. But as they got to know each at the office, they learned to trust one another, to confide, to share confidences, and they realized that most of their problems were the same. So coming to the office became a form of therapy, as it is for millions of women who welcome work outside the home, no matter how boring, precisely because it gets them out of the house and opens up the possibility of new friends, new horizons.

Banoo calls this an addiction. If it is, it's a healthy addiction.

And then Banoo adds a caution: "We can't make it on our own. We need our men beside us in the fight."

This is important, because Mahila Milan goes to great pains to emphasize that they're not a woman's organization and that they reject Western-style feminism. Once, a delegation of homeless people came from Columbia. After a few days, the relationship started to fray. The South Americans simply could not understand why the woman allowed men in, why they hadn't thrown all their husbands out.

But for the pavement dwellers, men have never been the enemy. A problem, yes. But the enemy, No! Many of the women are perfectly happily married.

As Celine never tired of telling visitors, the reason women dominate is a simple and pragmatic one: it's women who are on the street most of the day. Their men usually leave the house at dawn and return only at dusk. Unless you are lucky and work nearby, most men have to commute two hours each way.

So, it's women who have to deal with, are in a position to deal with the municipal authorities or the police, or collect the daily deposits for the bank, and all the hundred-and-one things that have made Mahila Milan such a powerful organisation and symbol..

That said: I think I've already told you, and it must be obvious, that Sakina, Sagira and many of the others are Muslim, that Byculla is a predominantly Muslim area, with all shades of Muslim opinion from the fire-breathing, heat-seeking Indian Union Muslim League to the extremely liberal "Urdu Times"

Every day, we have lunch in the office just when the Azzan sounds. Most of the women who are Muslim nonchalantly pull the corner of their dupattas over the hair, so casually you'd never really notice. But that's about the extent of the public manifestation of their faith.

Given that they've all just lived through several weeks of communal riots in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, you might expect them to be more consciously, or ostentatiously Islamic. To be, if not in thrall, at least listening to the local maulana at the Alam Masjid at the corner of Jhula Maidan, if not to their husbands.

Not a bit of it!

I asked anyone prepared to answer if they obeyed what their husbands or their mullahs said. General laughter. It's Sagira, who fought with her husband over her determination to come to Byculla and be part of the original group of women, who speaks first:

"I can read the Koran. And I know what is right and what is wrong. I can think for myself and make my own decisions. So why would I listen to the maulana?"

"Yes, Sagira, but you haven't always been like this. Not so long ago, you used to be a lot less assertive. You'd do what the men and the maulanas said. Don't rewrite your life and claim you've always been this self-confident, assertive woman you are today! Because it wasn't always true."

No prizes for guessing this is Shehnaz, who whatever her faults, has a knack of never letting any of us get too many airs.

Sagira now has something to prove:" I don't obey the maulana. Lot of what he says isn't practical anyway. And I won't be kept down by anyone, even by my husband. If I have the chance I'll try and think it through for myself. And I'll give you an example."

"Years ago, I took one of my babies, who was doing poorly at the time, to the Nagpada Neighborhood House, here in Byculla, where Sheela and the others were working to give basic health care and immunization to the kids in the area. My Muslim friends on Dim dimkar Road warned me against taking her (the baby) there. They said that 'Didn't I know that Hindus suck out the blood from Muslim babies? Then eat them alive?' "

"But I decided to think myself, not accept on blind faith. I felt I lived in a very little world. Like a frog. I wanted to broaden my vision. So I went. And that's also why I decided to come to Mahila Milan once we established it. I wanted to expand my world."

"Oh yes, he did threaten to divorce me! But I told him I have to go to the meetings. I want to meet new people, learn new things, broaden my vision. But now I can think clearly and for myself And I know I can take my own decisions now!"

Before she opened her mind to the world, Sagira says she was like most poor Muslim women. She didn't know what her rights were in Islam. So if her husbands had uttered the Triple Tiak and unilaterally divorced her on the spot, she'd have accepted it because she wouldn't have known any better.

Then Sagira adds something that astonishes, but has a certain logic.

"If I remarried and my husband asked me to be in Purdah, I'd happily do it. It's the right and proper thing. But only rich women can afford to do it."

Because for Sagira, Purdah would signify she'd made it into the middle class, that she didn't have to work anymore!

And before I can press her further, in walks Samina's eldest daughter, Zarina, who's divorced and has come back to live in Samina's hut across the street.

Zarina is tall and rather attractive and was married to a man who used to be a wholesale distributor of glossy news and film magazines in Central Bombay. Zarina's husband initiated the divorce but she got some alimony form the courts. But nothing like what he could have paid, according to Zarina.

She went to the Family Court and told them her husband earned Rsl5.000 a month, a princely sum for the city ($400 a month). She asked for Rsl5OO a month for her three kids. But the husband, crafty bugger, turned up in old clothes and told the judge he was poor, that he couldn't afford even one thousand. And the judge fell for it and ordered child support at just R5600 a month.

Because this was all settled under the civil law, Zarina was able to refuse the settlement and still receive the RS6OO a month while her appeal is pending. Hers was one of the first cases where a Muslim wife managed to get permanent child support, precisely because she's insisted on registering her marriage first in the civil courts.

Now, the practice is catching on among the poor, when Muslim women know the option exists. And so, some Muslim men have had to think twice, before discarding wives as casually as they would change their clothes.

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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