A HOUSE OF OUR OWN
The women and men of Mahila Milan in Mumbai have been struggling for many
years to move off the pavements and into a proper, a pucca home of their own.
They haven't achieved that dream. Not yet anyway. What they have done is maybe
more important: they've helped others to reach that dream. And if you believe
in Fate...well, I'm not going to give the game away.
~
It's a windy day up here
in Mankurd, at the northenmost tip of Mumbai, where the main highway to Pune
veers off towards Thane Creek and the Western Ghats. Grace Sukatki has insisted
I come with her to Mankhurd. A pie dog barks fiercely at us, defending a dozen
tiny single-story brick row houses in various stages of completion. This is
what Gracie dragged me up to see.
“All Houses built by us!” she says with triumph. “”Well,
not by you personally, Gracie.”
Many years ago, this land was wasteland, where the city quite literally ended.
I remember seeing small boys herding flocks of sheep and goats. Today, it's
one of the fastest growing slum settlements in Mumbai, as the city thrusts
ever northwards. What were empty fields ten years ago are now rapidly filling
up with small apartment blocks and brick and tin shacks.
I've come up here at
the invitation of Chinatambi and Sutar of the Railway Slum Dwellers Federation
(RSDF) to see their pride and joy, which also happens to be the Holy Grail
that's inspired the pavement dwellers of Byculla to slog on all these long
years.
We stop into the first of the houses and step through a doorway and into a
simple, neat room, twelve by sixteen. Gracie continues her patter, as smooth
and enthusiastic as any real-estate saleman. “This is a model house.”
One of the first things the pavement dwellers of Byculla did back in the 1980s
was hold a competition to design and build houses they could finance, build
and maintain themselves. The entry they chose had a mezzanine loft for sleeping
and a kitchen down below. This simple house is proof that dreams really can
come true!
“How many square feet is this?”
“Two hundred and eighty, total.”
That includes the loft. And all for just 20,000 Rupees.
Everyone here's saved over 5,000 Rupees as their downpayment. The rest is
borrowed at 6 percent interest from HUDCO, the national Housing and Urban
Development Corporation. Now, that's ab out a sixth of what it would cost
a professional builder to put up a similar house here in Mankurd.
So why is the cost so low?
For starters, the future home-owner provides most of the labor. Then, the
building materials are purchased in bulk by the pavement dwellers. And finally,
though they have to hire outside masons or electricians, the pavement dwellers
are their own contractors. They supervise the whole operation.
The surface area of this
house is only 180 square feet. But the pavement dwellers, I think it was Shakoor
on Water Street, came up with a simple and brilliant design idea to get more
bang for their buck. The ceilings are fourteen foot high, with a mezzanine
that almost doubles the living space .....
The only way up is via a very rickety bamboo ladder. I peer over the edge.
“It's pretty spacious! How many people can you sleep here?”
Chinatambi calls up “ten adults or twenty kids.” while he searches
for a ladder that can take my weight!
“Twenty people! All going to sleep here! I daren't tell you how many
square foot I've got in my house, because the whole of the Colony could probably
sleep in there! Public housing regulations in the United States require a
minimum of 200 + square feet per person.
This house, including the loft, is 280 square feet and will be home to, frankly,
as many as can sleep here!
“You've even got a view! I could be quite happy living here, on my own,
or with one other person, I think! But not twenty! Not twenty!”
The future owners are doing all the plastering. But they still don’t
have an electrical connection. I ask Chinatambi:
“You have to get that from the BMC?”
“No, from BSES - Bombay Suburban Electrity Supply. We will get electricity
supply from BSES and water connection - water supply - from BMC.”
Both will probably take a couple of months to obtain because the authorities
don’t run connections during the rainy season
But I’m still lost at the cost. “It's amazing. You're making them
for about $400. That's how much it's costing to make this house. Quite extraordinary,
quite extraordinary.
It's a wonderful house.
The floor of the loft is made of poured concrete ladis, that the pavement
dwellers learnt to make themselves. There are no steel beams involved. The
ladis are joined to each other by steel lintels in each of the ladis, a solution
that Makhrand, one of SPARC’s young architects came up with.
Nothing's been overlooked. Next to each doorway there's a little alcove for
a God or Goddess.
And now for the acid test Dipa Vasant Deokar's one of the first to have moved
in.
“How do you like this new house of yours?”
“I like it. Before I had a wooden hut. But this is a very good house.
I saved all of the money for this myself”
It’s spotlessly clean and with gorgeous deep blue floor tiles, chosen
by her children
Is this where the Mahila Milan pavement dwellers from Byculla will also build
their homes?
Sutar points to a couple of acres of vacant land a half mile away towards
the main road. “Behind these roofs there is a vacant place. So, eventually,
everyone will be here in the same Mahila Milan, NSDF, RSDF colony.”
Back in 1993 I was sceptical
they’d ever really move up here. Too much seemed in the lap of the Gods,
or the hands of the politicians downtown. The pavement dwellers had no legal
right to any land. All they can do is try and create a situation where the
state or the city decides to give them land as part of some deal. It may happen
tomorrow. It may happen in five years time. No one, and certainly not I, can
predict when.
~
Many times, people in India and in the United States have asked me How come
I ended up on this particular street with this particular group of people?
I used to think it was just accident. A name, a phone number, and then sheer
habit.
Now I'm not so sure. And I'm going to explain why.
One Spring morning, Miriam Dossal's an historian of Bombay, took me on a walking
tour of Byculla, the district where I've spent so much of the past few years.
We've started at the lower end of what will eventually become Apna Street.
Here, it's now called Megraj Sethi Marg, doubtless after some Freeedom Fighter
or ex-politician. Very residential and quiet. A broad avenue shaded by thick
plane trees.
Miriam explained that Byculla has been develope as a suburb in early nineteenth
century Bombay. “And you had the famous Byculla Club, one of the oldest
clubs, I remember.”
“And that doesn't exist anymore?”
“No it doesn't.
“Well, it's still fairly leafy and residential here.”
.. “There are some marvellous buildings here. You have really..the residential
quarter of Bombay.”
If it's a quiet haven in the heart of working class Bombay that's probably
because the street's no longer a through road to anywhere. It's become a backwater,
quiet, leafy and largely hidden from view., albeit many of the bungalows with
wonderful balconies, a reminder of how spacious and pleasant it must have
once have been.
Today, Byculla’s population in mixed. A lot of the residents then and
now were Goanese Catholics. Remember, Mumbai was originally a Portugese settlement.
Maybe that's the clue to its cosmopolitan air.
Miriam stops outside a large three story house. She wants me to look at something
high up on the wall.
I squint upwards: “What's the name of the street?” Miriam says
in quiet triumph: “Ten, Souter Street.”
The name suddenly rings bells, lots of bells. Who was this Souter?
Miriam has the answer at her fingertips. “Souter was the first Police
Comissioner of Bombay. He remained Police Comissioner right from 1864 till
1888, which was a very long stretch of time.”
“So this street is named after him? And the stone dispensary where Mahila
Milan has its office?”
“The stables for his horses.”
Frank Souter was my great-great grandfather, on my mother's side. Coincidence?
Fate? Of all the places I could have ended up?
I leave that up to you.
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
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Cast of Characters
Credits
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