BALI BAHADUR THAPA

Bali’s an eighteen year-old street kid from Nepal who's been living in the streets of Bombay for the past six years. Bali is a member of the Sadak Chhap, literally "Beat of the Street" organisation, and over the years has become a reliable guide and assistant. But this happened fairly recently.

Wonders will never cease! It's six in the morning, and guess what! Bali and Jackie Chen are wide awake and under the shower. And using soap! Other things stay distressingly the same, notably the volume of the music. Still, all in all, an impressive and an unexpected sight!
The boys store their water in a huge 100 gallon blue plastic barrel, chained to a post, just in case. They use plastic bleach bottles cut in two to scoop the water and pour it over their heads. Bali and Jackie are going at it with serious intent - suds twice, wash twice, rinse twice! Unheard of! But it reflects the changes that have come over Bali in the last twelve months.

A year ago, Bali was a right pain. He showed a cruel streak. One day, the boys were going through their version of Top of the Pops, when Bali just decided to kick Tiger, the compound's resident mutt, in the ribs, for fun, just to hear him howl.

That was THEN. This is NOW, an August morning in the Mahila Milan office compound, backing on to the Salvation Army garden and the Army's resident crows. Irfan, the carpenter's planing an old board to make into a door for some wall closets. Bali appears to be helping him, holding the board straight. Bali wants to talk. He thinks I've got a wrong impression about him.

Bali is seventeen. His full name is Bali Bahadur Thapa and he comes from Pokhartu, a small village in the Himalayas in Nepal.

“My elder brother was caning me, so I came to Bombay.”

Parents seem to have been pretty ineffectual. And Bali gets the same treatment at school.

“The master used to cane me, so I beat that master. Once I hammered him, and I took 200 Rupees from home and ran away.” He comes here by a very roundabout route, spread over several weeks, ending up on a train from the North to Bombay. Bali’s not sure about dates but thinks this must have happened around 1987, when he was eleven years old.

“Weren't you scared? Just to run away from home and come all this way? “

Well, he was! But was there any alternative?

“The boys, the boys who are on the street, they used to tell me about Bombay. That if you go to Bombay they will cut you up, that thing, this thing, and I was very much scared. And I had that guts. So I said: Let us face whatever is happening.”
“And when you first got here, I mean, you came by train to Bombay Central. And where did you go, sleep? Just end up on the..just get out of the train, and what happens? Where did you go?”

“I never had anything. Nor phone number, nor address, or anything. I don't have any friends, nobody. Just I got on the train and kept on the train, kept on going, so at last I reached Bombay Central. Then I got down, and I asked that: Where is Bombay?....from there, I kept on walking to Gateway of India.”

The Gateway of India, apart from everything else, is a well-known rendezvous for drug dealers, and about four miles from Bombay Central. Now, just imagine getting out of a Greyhound bus at the northern end of Central Park and walking down to the tip of Manhattan. And being eleven years old, not speaking the language, and coming from a village in Mexico. This is Bali's introduction to Bombay!

He starts talking with a drug addict. The drug addict gets Bali a job dishwashing in a cheap hotel in Colaba. He hates it, he quits after two days. Moves a mile north, becomes a domestic servant in a high-rise near Race-Course. Quits that job after six months. Bali is now twelve years old.

He continues his way up to the northern edge of the city. “So there I landed up in one tea stall, and then I spoke to him and then he gave me a job.”

That doesn't last. The BMC - Bombay Municipal Corporation - comes and demolishes the tea stall because it's what we call here an "Illegal structure" ie. no permit and just plonked on public land. Anyway, Bali says the mosquitos are driving him crazy. He sleeps rough.
Some street kids come and tease him. Bali plays dumb, waits for them to go.

But the next day, he spots one of them again, this time on his own.

“So I went and spoke to him. And he spoke with me very sweetly. So Iasked him "Where are you staying?" He told me that "I'm staying in Churchgate Dargah." Then I asked him "Whether you have a house there? You're staying in a home?" He said "No. It's a mosque, so I get a free food there." I said "Wow, what a fantastic chance for me! So shall I come with you?" He said "Yes, why not?"

But, the "Fantastic Chance" turns out not to be so great. There’s no food there. Bali works in another local hotel, fetching fruit and vegetables from the market every day and getting fed for free into the bargain. Then the old wander-lust returns. He quits that job after six months.

For a few days he comes here, to the Sadak Chhaps, but then moves away again, like a planet on a different orbit.

He heads back up to Vile Parle in the northern suburbs, whether on foot or not I don't know, and goes to work as a cook for a Sardaji - a Sikh. And things are looking good. Good boss, good pay, good prospects. A woman on the fifth floor asks Bali to find her a boy to clean her apartment. Bali comes back to the Sadak Chhaps. He picks out Gopi, takes him back. And then Gopi really lands him in it.

“That granny took that boy to an actor's house. He was working there. So he robbed Rs 70,000 from there and ran away. So they complained to the police and police came. Then they took me to..what do you call?..behind bar.”

The police lock-up is brutal. Bali is made to beat suspects with a cane. If he refuses, they beat him instead. And then, he gets a big break. A policemen warns him his case is due in court. And if he's convicted....then your life is gone. You bloody just run away from here!" And he gave me a chance, when all of them went for a security. I saw a chance and ran away from there, from the lock-up."

What happens next is a grey area.

Bali runs away to Delhi. He spends seven months there, doing what? Working in a brothel? Drugs? For a street kid not to come clean is suspicious and unusual. Whatever it is, Bali's ashamed of it.

Then, he returns to Bombay, comes to the Sadak Chhaps, starts earning money washing dishes at weddings. Jockin apprentices him to Irfan the carpenter, so that he will eventually have some skill. But inside most Sadak Chaaps lurks a Dreamer. It's no accident the kids come to Bombay, Bollywood as we call it - the City of movies, the city of Dreams.
“So, now I'm working with him if it suits me. I’ll work otherwise otherwise, I'll leave this. I want to learn driving.”

“Become a taxi driver?” I’m surprised.

Bali’s adamant: “Yes, I want to become a taxi driver.”

Jockin's told him to wait a couple of years, then learn to drive and try and make a go of it here in Bombay. Ghulam and Yunus both live on the street and they're both quite successful as taxi drivers. So it can be done. Indeed, it is done, all the time. But Bali wants to drive his particular taxi back in his village in Nepal.

“In my village I have enough land, and I have four houses.”

“Yes, but you're not working in Nepal, Bali, you're here in Bombay. It's no use having four houses in Nepal.”

“No, I'll learn driving. Then I'll go to my village. My brothers are there, my daddy's there. They will do the agriculture thing. Then I can sit and eat and enjoy myself there. I want to learn.”

I suggest there's little money to be made as a taxi driver in a poor village in Nepal. Doesn't bother Bali.

"I can drive a tractor then!"

Bali has this notion of himself as the Prodigal Son returning in triumph. All the unhappiness and cruelty that made him leave in the first place are conventiently forgotten.
“From my village it’s hardly 2-3 hours away. So there I can get a job easily. I can drive tractor. And you get taxi also there. That I can also do. But it’s quite near to my place.”
“So you want to go back to Nepal?”

“I'm thinking like that. But I don't have any money with me.”

“But you like living in Bombay, don't you?”

“Bombay is good that way. But I'm very bored of Bombay. I'm thinking to move to some good place.”

If you go back home now, isn't your brother going to beat you up yet again? He's just that much bigger now!”

“Now my brother got married. So now he no more, he won't cane me, I think. I have come after long time. So he may let me stay at home.”

“Have you ever written to them? Or let them know that you're alive and well?”
“Once I wrote, two years back.”

But no one's ever replied. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign. I suggest to Bali that, whatever their feelings, they'll have a hard time even recognizing him now that he's eighteen and five feet eight. Last time they saw him he must have been four feet nothing.

“Do you miss your parents? Your mother in particular?”

“Sometimes.”

We could have ended on this sentimental note. But it would have rung false. Sadak Chhaps are notoriously un-sentimental. And something's bothering Bali, something to do with me. He starts complaining that he doesn't earn enough as apprentice to Irfan.

Jockin is giving me ten Rupees. That's not enough for me. Just enough for a snack. Not enough for a decent meal like we had last week.”

The cat is out of the proverbial bag. Why Bali and Hassan are so keen to be my assistants. A few days ago, I sent them, along with Yunus my regular taxi driver, off to lunch with a fifty Rupee note. I didn't have anything smaller and I was expecting change. They came back with a very smug expression, belching and burping all the way back into town. Yunus was uncharacteristically modest in his financial demands that evening.

"Two hundred and fifty, Boss"

"That's all, Yunus?"

"It’s enough."

And now I know why. For Yunus life is a zero-sum game. He figures I only carry so much money in my pocket. So, if the boys eat as much as normal teenagers should, I won't have enough to pay Yunus all his fare. So, because he's kind, and to spare me losing face, Yunus tells them to eat all they want, and reduces his fare accordingly. That's very considerate of him. Now, I wish Yunus would do that everytime I buy him an expensive lunch!

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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