They call me Chotu. It means small boy,
and I’m still called that, even though I’m 18 years old now. My parents, the
hopeless drunks, never bothered to come up with a real name for me.
But they are gone now. Thankfully.
Papa overdosed on charas one
night. Mumma fell from a bus in a drunken stupor, and was run over by oncoming
traffic.
It’s just me and Pinky now, and we take
care of each other.
We live in a hundred square foot shack
in the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, with a corrugated metal sheet that serves as a
roof, a curtain for a door, and no light or ventilation inside. I’ve seen houses
where the Memsaab’s wardrobe is bigger and brighter than our place.
The thin alleys of the slum stink of
feces and rotting garbage. The open drains teem with mosquitoes. An ocean of
people lives here, more than a thousand humans for every toilet.
It’s the only place I’ve ever called
home.
I’ve worked many odd jobs. I’ve been a
waiter at a dhabha. I’ve polished shoes. I've delivered newspapers and washed
cars.
Pinky is in the 6th
standard, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she stays in school.
*****
The blaring of a police siren.
The barking of a stray dog.
The clattering of steel utensils to the
floor.
In the slum, there’s no need for an
alarm clock. An assortment of sounds will wake you up long before the first
rays of the sun touch the night sky.
I stood up and stretched. Next to me,
Pinky stirred on the low wooden cot.
“Bhaiya,” She mumbled, her eyes
half-closed.
I bent down and adjusted the razai to
cover her body. The thing was tattered and threadbare. Winter was almost here,
and I had to get a proper cover for her.
Outside, the line to take a shit was
already hundred people long. I refuse to stand in that line. The years in
Dharavi have left me bereft of any shame, and I’m happy to do my business on
the street. Sometimes the pandu hawaldars get after me, but I can easily outrun
those fatsos.
I took the train to Churchgate,
collected my daily bundle of newspapers, and set off to nearby housing
colonies.
At Asha Bhavan building, I walked from
flat to flat, tossing papers at doorsteps. Near one door, I saw a color
printout of a brass diya stand, with some numbers scribbled in red.
Shankar was the building valet, in
charge of all the cars. He had a thick beard and a chin that protruded beyond
his face. He handed me three car keys: one Maruti and two Hondas.
“Volkswagen?” I looked at him.
The Volkswagen was my favorite. Not
because of the leather seats, digital display, or power steering. We don’t
drive, we only scrub. The more expensive the car, the more we get paid.
“Has Neelam madam gone to Pune again?”
I asked.
Shankar looked past me, as though I was
invisible. An old Hindi film song blared from one of the car radios.
“Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu …
Chali aa, tu chali aa …”
Shankar rapped his knuckles on the
bonnet of the musical car. “This time in the morning, no sapno ki rani is
coming.”
Mukund was down on his haunches, wiping
the tires. “What Shankar Bhai…”
“The residents have complained,”
Shankar switched the radio off. “Your music wakes them up in the morning.”
“Oh, the residents,” Mukund muttered.
“Mustn’t disturb their beauty sleep then.”
“What?”
“Can’t a man at least enjoy a tune
while working?”
“Put it on again, and I’ll get you
fired,” Shankar said and walked off.
Mukund stood up and gave a mock salute.
He was a short, wiry fellow whose gait reminded me of a squirrel. He didn’t
walk, he scurried.
“That man doesn’t like you, you know,”
Mukund said to me. “He’s trying to get his nephew your Volkswagen job.”
I glared at him, and then towards
Shankar’s post.
“But Neelam madam knows you do a great
job,” Mukund added.
“Did you hear about Swapnil?” Keshav
was wiping a windshield. His greying hair and wrinkled hands spoke of a
lifetime of labor.
“He got a delivery job at some online
shop,” Mukund said. “I heard he’s getting 30 thousand a month.”
“Wow,” Keshav whistled.
My ears perked up. “How did he get this
job?”
Mukund regarded me with amusement.
“Arrey, forget it,” He said.
“It’s out of your league. They want educated people who speak English.”
“I can speak English,” I frowned in
concentration as I recalled the words. “How…how I can help you madaam? I bring
loondry for you.”
Mukund laughed so hard his eyes became
wet.
“No, I can really speak English…”
“Ha, we heard you,” Mukund grinned.
“How do you say ‘Nothing will work out for me’ in English?”
I gave him a piercing stare.
“How much do you think Swapnil had to
pay?” Keshav asked me. “There are millions of boys like you and him in Mumbai.
How much did he feed those pigs to get picked?”
“One lakh,” Mukund said. “At least.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You have
to bribe the same people who will then be paying your salary? What sense does
that make??”
“You don’t know how the world works
Chotu,” Keshav said. “There’s always someone who decides, and they’re always
greedy.”
“It takes money to make money,” Mukund
added.
“If I had so much money, why would I
need a new job?” I threw out my hands. “Can’t they hire me because I come on
time and work hard?”
Mukund and Keshav exchanged a wry
smile.
“Just wash the car,” Mukund said. “The
game is rigged against people like you.”
I caught my own reflection in the car
window. It was a dark face ridden with scars. The skin on my arms was wasting
away with daily labor and not enough nourishment. A black mole on my neck was
my birthmark.
My whole existence felt like a black
mark.
Whatever this game was that Mukund
spoke of, I was surely losing. I needed a shortcut, a cheat code.
My next job was to wash dishes at an
Udupi dhabha. I made sure every dish was squeaky clean and by the end of it,
the smell of sambhar emanated from my pores.
My only sustenance was one vada pav.
But it’s my favorite part of the day. The vada pav, with its boiled and fried
potato neatly packed into a soft white bun, and spicy red garlic chutney that
will make your taste buds soar, is the best thing that ever happened to Mumbai.
Finally done for the day, I walked to
Grant Road station. I went past Kamathipura, the red light district where
groups of women leaned against rickety doors, wearing low-cut blouses that
displayed their cleavage. Some were young and shy; some were provocative and
solicited their clients without hesitation.
I ignored these activities as I walked
on. But the face of one girl made me freeze in my stride.
Those blueish eyes. That dimple on her
cheeks.
Shruti,
the sweet girl who grew up next-door to us in the slum, was doing the dirty
business at Kamathipura. It was a reality that I still couldn’t
digest. The same girl who would quietly play with her little
plastic doll. She never troubled anyone. And today she was doing this.
For people like us, all roads lead to
hell…
Back at our shack in Dharavi, music
played from a small wireless radio, and Pinky twirled her body. She was in her
school uniform, a collared blue top and a long blue skirt. Her hair was tied in
two ponytails on either side of her head.
I shut off the music. “Did you do your
homework?”
She nodded.
“You better do it,” I said. “You have
to study well and get a proper job, and then get out of this place.”
“I’ll do all that bhaiya,” Pinky said.
“But life is about more than going to school and doing homework.”
She put the music back on. “It’s also
about having fun.”
I watched her dance to the tunes
playing on the radio, and the tunes playing in her heart.
I wish that were true. I wish there was
more to life. I wish it was about having fun. But it wasn’t. It was the same
shit every day, day after day. Nothing ever changed.
Until that day when things did change…
*****
It was the garbage that changed my
life.
I peek into building garbage cans from
time to time. It’s pathetic, I know, but in the past I’ve found a cap, a watch,
a pair of shoes. I grew up in Dharavi, so the stink never bothered me. In fact,
it felt like home.
At Asha Bhavan building, I saw a brass
diya stand in the garbage, exactly like the one I had seen earlier on a
printout outside the door of flat no. 3, the Chawla residence.
Strange coincidence, eh?
Meanwhile, Neelam madam returned and
the sky-blue Volkswagen was back. My Volkswagen. I scrubbed greedily,
till her wheels gleamed, her mirrors sparkled, and every inch was spotless. She
was my highest-paying job, and I admired her dazzling beauty in the morning
sunlight.
Next to me, Mukund emerged from the
belly of a BMW.
“What do you know about Chawla from no.
3?” I asked him.
“Why?” Keshav looked at me quizzically,
from behind a jeep.
“Arrey, he wants more work,”
Mukund scratched his back. “Swapnil was Chawla’s driver, so there is an opening
now.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Tell me about
Chawla.”
“Two kids, a boy and a girl,” Mukund
said. “He owns a shop in Colaba. The Mrs used to be a dentist, now she’s
retired.”
I stopped scrubbing momentarily. How
did he know so much??
“What kind of shop?” I asked.
“He sells statues and souvenirs and
other rubbish that those firang tourists pay lots of money for,” Mukund
said. “Trust me Chotu, you won’t get the job. He wants a proper experienced
driver.”
I finished my work in silence. As I was
leaving, I saw Neelam madam walk out of the building in a floral pink salwar-kameez
with a silver bracelet on her wrist. Shankar scrambled to open the door of the
Volkswagen. He saluted her and smiled.
That bearded bastard. His smile was
like those duplicate Ray-Ban sunglasses you get at Churchgate station for 50
bucks.
While I waited at the bus stand, I saw
Chawla’s Toyota roll to a halt at a traffic signal.
A bus pulled up that wasn’t my bus, but
was headed in the same direction as the Toyota. On an impulse, I hopped on.
The diya stand was still in my head.
Something weird was going on. What I felt was more than curiosity. It was a
primordial instinct that whispered in my ear: Here’s an opportunity.
Or maybe I was just desperate.
A short ride later, the Toyota pulled
over. I got off the bus and saw Chawla go up a small flight of marble stairs
into a building with wide glass doors.
“Oye, where do you think you’re
going?” A uniformed guard barked at me, when I tried to go in.
“In there,” I said.
“Hah,” The guard made a sound that was
a half-laugh, half-snort. He brushed his hand dismissively in the air.
For people like me, the doors all
remain closed.
I hung around nearby. A short man came
out of the building, wearing round gandhian glasses and a beige striped shirt
tucked into grey pants. A name-tag on his shirt read: Sanjay Sharma, Peon.
He had a mobile phone in one hand,
samosa in the other.
“What’s the score?” I asked him.
“120/4. Virat Kohli got out now.”
“But Dhoni is still there.”
“Ya,” His mouth was full. “With Dhoni,
there’s always hope.”
I nodded. “What’s that building?”
“Wilson Auction House.”
“What is that? What happens there?”
“Some old stuff that rich people want
to buy. Whoever is willing to pay the most money, gets to buy it.”
“Old stuff?” This was bewildering to
me.
“Ya, like today they sold a tennis
racket that Roger Federer practiced with during his first Wimbledon.”
“Roger who?”
The peon looked me up and down. That
familiar contempt.
“Is there a diya stand too?” I asked.
“Ya, lots of stuff like that.
Yesterday, a diya stand went for 10 lakhs.”
“10 what??”
The peon wiped his mouth with a tissue
and hustled back into the building.
10 lakhs!! Can you believe it? And I
saw it lying in the garbage…
An hour later, Chawla appeared holding
a dagger with a curved tip and an engraved bronze handle. He was a rotund man
wearing sun glasses and a gold watch. A typical Sindhi baniya, who had
gotten rich and fat.
“What you doing here Chotu?”
I spun around to see Pankaj, who also
worked at Asha Bhavan.
“I…umm…” I gulped down some air. “What
are you doing here?”
“I’m working,” He said. “I’m Chawla
saab’s new driver.”
“Oh.”
He looked at me expectantly.
“I came to apply for the waiter job
there,” I pointed behind him.
It was a cheap Chinese restaurant where
a teenager stood taking orders from customers, with a dirty cloth slung over
his shoulder.
“My brother-in-law is the manager
here,” Pankaj said, and folded his arms across his chest.
I blinked, while he eyed me closely.
“Can…can you ask him if he’ll hire me?”
I said.
Pankaj frowned. Then he saw his boss
across the road, and hurried towards him.
By now, the gossip at Asha Bhavan would
already be about how I was asking about Chawla. And now this.
Pankaj lived next-door to Mukund. He
would surely tell Shankar too. I’d seen them chatting over chai. If that
bearded bastard said he would get Mukund fired over playing music on car
radios, then he could definitely…
I skipped the dhabha job, and went home
with a rising knot in my stomach.
*****
“What do you mean there aren’t enough
textbooks??”
We were in the principal’s office at
Pinky’s school, a dingy room with the paint peeling off the walls and a wobbly
ceiling fan that looked like it could come crashing down any second.
Principal Shirodkar sat on a tottering
wooden chair behind a scratched wooden desk.
“This is a government school,” He said.
“We don’t have money to paint the walls. I’ve been trying to get funds for
years…”
“But at least you can give the kids
textbooks,” I cut him off. “Otherwise,
how will they study? How will they pass the exams?”
Shirodkar looked from me to Pinky, who
sat there toying with her ponytail, and then back to me.
“We have 60 students in the class, and
only 27 textbooks,” He said.
Next to me, Pinky started to hiccup.
“Which students get those 27
textbooks?” I asked.
“Ah,” Shirodkar smiled. He ran a
fingernail in the gap between two front teeth, which protruded out like those
of a cartoon rabbit. Except this rabbit’s teeth were lined with the red stains
that came from a lifetime of chewing paan.
“Now you’re asking the right question,”
He said, and then lapsed into silence.
Pinky’s hiccups got louder and more
frequent. I glanced at her.
“I don’t want it to be this way,” The
rabbit principal exhaled a long sigh. “I want all the students to get an equal
chance. But that’s not how the world works, you understand?”
I did understand. This bastard chaprasi
wanted to dip his filthy wet beak into my hard-earned money.
“How much?” I asked, looking at the
desk.
“Bhaiya,” Pinky clutched my fingers.
“It’s okay, I can study with friends.”
“No,” I looked at her. “No, you need
your own textbooks.”
Shirodkar nodded with satisfaction.
My blood had started to boil, and my
sister knew it. Her hiccups went on incessantly.
“The students who got the textbooks
gave a generous donation of ten thousand rupees,” Shirodkar said.
“Ten. Thousand. Rupees,” I enunciated
each word, with my eyes set ablaze.
Shirodkar shrugged.
“Ten thousand rupees,” I bellowed,
standing up and sending my chair flailing backwards.
“Bhai—ya,” Pinky managed, in between
accelerating hiccups. Her eyes pleaded with me to stay calm.
“Bas, bas,” Shirodkar said.
“Stop all this drama.”
“You bastard,” I said. “It’s one thing
to fleece businessmen and lawyers and accountants. But to squeeze every last
rupee from slum people like me…”
The principal’s face turned red. He
stood up violently. “Who the hell do you think you are, ha?”
Pinky’s hiccups reached a crescendo.
“You give my sister the textbooks…” I
yelled.
“I don’t take orders from you…”
Shirodkar hollered back.
“…And get her a fucking glass of
water.”
Suddenly, everything went silent. The
hiccuping stopped, and so did the shouting.
Shirodkar and I glared at each other.
“Get out,” He said. “Get out now.”
I took Pinky’s hand and walked to the
door.
“Fifteen thousand rupees for you,” He
called out from behind me. “And within one week. Or I’ll throw Pinky out of
this school.”
I turned and fired a look of
unadulterated hatred. “You can’t do that.”
“I can,” He said. “And I will.”
*****
On the train ride back, not a word
passed between Pinky and me. She gazed out the window, leaving me to fume.
Back at our shack, she took a notebook
from her school bag and sat in a corner with it. I flung off my t-shirt and lay
down bare-chested, staring at the ceiling.
A fly slipped in through our
curtain-door, and buzzed about near a puttering table fan.
I felt like that fly, with no other
place to go but this garbage dump of a home, to dodge fan blades that could
slice you at every turn.
The sun rose next morning to start
another miserable day. I went about tossing newspapers, cleaning cars, washing
sambhar.
In the garbage at Asha Bhavan, I saw a
dagger with a curved tip and an engraved bronze handle.
This was not a coincidence anymore.
What was Chawla up to??
Walking home from Mahim station, I saw
a small crowd gathered at a nearby slum. A brute of a man with bulging biceps
stood with a hockey stick in hand. His open shirt buttons exposed a set of gold
chains hanging over a hairy chest.
“Move fast,” He growled, and slammed
his stick into the backside of a grey-haired old man, who yelped and doubled
over.
With the brute were other men with
hockey sticks. The accumulated crowd, mostly slum-dwellers, stood mesmerized
and unmoving.
Amongst them I recognized Ramprakash, a
day laborer from Dharavi. I went over to him. “What’s going on?”
“Sharad Bhai’s gang,” He whispered.
Sharad Bhai. A name that instantly
struck fear in our belles. He grew up in our slum, flunked out of school. With
his unrestrained courage and aptitude for violence, only one career path
beckoned.
He rose through the ranks from minor
henchmen sent to threaten and rough up, to gang leader running extortion
rackets. Legions of store-owners paid Sharad Bhai monthly dues for his
‘protection’.
“Narayan Industries is building a new
factory,” Ramprakash gestured to an area with construction scaffolding and bags
of cement. “30 shacks have to be vacated.”
“Vacated??”
“Javed Chacha’s been here 20 years,” He
looked towards the old man. “Doesn’t want to leave.”
Javed Chacha lay sprawled on the
ground, his trembling palms clasped together in prayer.
“Can…can this happen in Dharavi?” I
asked Ramprakash.
“Of course,” He said. “We have no legal
papers for our homes.”
The howl of a baby sent a hush through
the gathering. The mother, a middle-aged woman in a faded purple saree, cradled
it in her arms.
The big brute smashed his stick into
her lower back. She screamed and turned her baby away, with her body as a
shield.
“C’mon move,” He commanded.
“Please leave her,” Javed Chacha cried.
“Please, please, please.”
The man grabbed the ends of her saree
and dragged her along the ground, his gold chains dangling.
“Noooo…” She shrieked.
I had seen enough. I turned and started
walking. The howls and shrieks rang in my ears.
Vacated. The word burned my brain. One
day, we’ll all be vacated…
Droplets of rain fell from the sky and
rolled down my skin. I looked up. Grey clouds had gathered above, mesmerized
and unmoving.
*****
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