His chin holds the vest, while he tightens the strings of his drawers. One eye towards the standing bus, the other towards the small group sitting cross-legged on the earth, wet by the leaked water from the tanker. A bunch of used utensils on a half-broken rack, a bundle of clothing, pot being stirred on the fire burning in the middle. Life on the move under the flyover. I lock eyes with him, look at his exposed emaciated body. The light turns green, and the bus moves away from the flyover crossing. The image of the child standing with his back against the makeshift railing again comes back to me. He was gazing intently at us, curious at the flood of traffic surrounding, or rather, going past his home, constructed of the used tin sheds by the roadside near the faux Greco-Roman structures of Powai. I was sitting in the air-conditioned car, stuck for the last quarter of an hour, and irritated by his curious, impish, smile. What is he doing here? Does he realize the absurdity of the situation?
Covering up anything personal, life, emotions, opinions, from the public gaze and scrutiny is a lifelong project for most of us middle-class Indians. We live in large well-secured apartment complexes, take up higher floors to avoid peeping toms, erect safety doors beyond the already formidable locks, draw dark curtains on the windows, and build thick walls around our homes and ourselves. We long for that personal space we call home, where we get transformed from engineers, doctors, managers, brokers, into mighty kings whose every wish is a command.
I sometimes wonder what desperation compels these men and women to abandon their safe havens in far-off villages to come to Mumbai and live like this. To open their life for everybody to see, comment, get amused with, trample. While India keeps shining, Sensex keeps touching new heights, the life stories of these men remain untold and un-addressed. An old doggerel (or, is it a hindi movie dialogue?)says nobody sleeps hungry in Mumbai. May be. But a lot of them do sleep shamed, humiliated, insulted.
Ashis Nandy once commented that the personal and the public, the village and the city, are always close, ready to converge, in India. He could have added that they remain separated by visible and invisible boundaries.
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I liked the way you have changed the gears in this one.But the thought behind it is not as refreshed as the times we are witnessing nowadays.People want to be seen, they want to be shared more than ever.Everyone is trying or hoping to be a party crasher!! "Covering up" is old school now!!
ReplyDeleteTo Ahmad - sorry for the long reply...
ReplyDeleteMay be what you are saying makes sense to a limited extent - that we are more willing sharers of our life and thoughts now. I also won't deny our irrespressible urge to express ourselves publicly more fully now. We are voyeurs yes.
But what do we want to share, tell? With whom? How? I am not sure of the answers, so let me just posit a few things I consider relevant to what I posted here.
Sharing things we consider admirable, 'newsworthy' is not new. But, do we share things we consider shameful, petty, or feel shamed by? Who do we open out to more easily? I have felt more at ease to open out with complete strangers, rather then close, loved ones. It makes me feel immune, not judged at. Perhaps, most importantly, to a large extent, I control what is to be shared, and what is to be hidden.
Home, to my mind, still remains the symbol of stability, permanence, in a chaotic urban life. It still is a place, where a tired, humiliated man can feel and get a semblance of dignity. To be denied of that opportunity to cover, to feel safe, is to induce transience in an already transient life, and is a little cruel.
Yasir... I have always have had a different take on this issue... Why is it that we assume people living on roads are as you put it be shamed, humiliated, insulted by the 'blessed ones' or the absurdity of the situation.
ReplyDeleteIts like saying if we look at... lets say a guy in high 20's/30's driving a swanky ferrari/audi living in a duplex we should feel shamed or humiliated... If anything it should motivate the us but yes most of us fail to be motivated by it and we rather be thankful that we are not as worse as the ones on road...
I would say they could have lead a better life in their villages but they are driven by the fact that they can achieve more but struggling it out in the city... So, I would rather feel happy for it than feel sorry...
Out of Scope:
The buggers who put the kids out for begging!! They deserve no mercy!!