bowels.
The slum is divided into three sections, unimaginatively entitled Zone One, Two and Three. The first has water every day, but old leaking pipes. The other two have newer pipes, but supply alternates between them. Babu lives in Zone Three. ‘The water can come any time, but generally it is between mid-afternoon only and midnight,’ he explains. The flow dries up after twenty or thirty minutes, so speed is of the essence. If Babu is at home, he will help Jyoti fill the jerry cans at the communal tap. The plastic containers come in two sizes: twenty litres (coloured white) and forty (blue or black). If he’s out, she has to fetch their day’s supply by herself.
‘Sweet water’, as Babu refers to the intermittent supply from the mains, is good for drinking. Well water, by contrast, is not. On sale at various water tanks dotted around the slum, a twenty-litre container of the latter costs two rupees and fifty paisa. It used to be two rupees, Babu says, but the price is currently hiked due to summer water shortages. ‘This is policy.’
Babu’s interest in water is semi-professional. His father used to sell it. ‘Not the bottled stuff,’ he adds for clarity’s sake. His father would buy his sweet water ‘wholesale’ at Colaba market. He’d cycle over there, fill four forty-litre containers, and walk thetwo kilometres back with his sloshing cargo dangling from the handlebars of his bike. His margin was three rupees per container. On an average day, he’d make four or five trips. I totted up the maths. He was clearing sixty rupees a day. Babu’s driving job is lucrative by comparison.
‘Sometimes he’d collect the water from a nearby building that had a leaking overflow pipe,’ Babu says, a crook-toothed smile crossing his clean-shaven face. ‘It is a military soldier building actually.’
As his father’s only son, Babu was occasionally drafted in to help. His inauguration as a water rustler came at age eleven. ‘Many times the police were catching us,’ Babu admits. First, they’d be dealt a beating. Then the uniformed officers would make them cut the grass or wash their bicycles.
Babu’s smile gravitates into a light-hearted chuckle at the memory. What kind of childhood must he have had, I wonder, to recall father-and-son moments like these with such affection?
The thought occupies me as we step into the slum. The entrance comes via a few downward steps and a shack-padded passageway. The path is wide enough for a bicycle but too narrow for an ambulant cow. Neither are considerations to be overlooked in India.
A corner store the size of a small garden shed serves as a sentry post. It is manned by a heavy-set girl called Rochi (meaning ‘light’). I stop to buy some Peppy Cheese Balls for Babu’s children. Clad in the white smock of a school pupil, the twelfth-grader has proficient English and a keen desire to practise. She plans to do a graphic-design course after graduating, she tells me. She won’t marry until she’s ‘well set’ in her career. Her father was a chauffeur for the US Embassy. He lived in New York for a year, but he had to have emergency heart surgery. The operation took place at the city’s Bellview Hospital. The last point is shared with a touch of wonderment, as if her father had dined at the Waldorf rather than narrowly escaping death after a massive coronary.
As we press on, Ganesh Murty Nagar opens up – or rather closes in – like a multi-highway rabbit warren. Everywhere thereare sharp corners and cavernous tunnels. Babu turns left and right and left again. It is not long before I am totally disorientated.
I concentrate my eyes on Babu’s over-exercised sneakers, watching their threadbare tread closely for both direction and dog shit. Head down, life unfolds in my peripheral vision. Curiously, the world at close quarters lodges more as sound than sight: housewives gab, televisions sing, couples yell, children shout, vendors vend, dogs howl. To my surprise,
The slum is divided into three sections, unimaginatively entitled Zone One, Two and Three. The first has water every day, but old leaking pipes. The other two have newer pipes, but supply alternates between them. Babu lives in Zone Three. ‘The water can come any time, but generally it is between mid-afternoon only and midnight,’ he explains. The flow dries up after twenty or thirty minutes, so speed is of the essence. If Babu is at home, he will help Jyoti fill the jerry cans at the communal tap. The plastic containers come in two sizes: twenty litres (coloured white) and forty (blue or black). If he’s out, she has to fetch their day’s supply by herself.
‘Sweet water’, as Babu refers to the intermittent supply from the mains, is good for drinking. Well water, by contrast, is not. On sale at various water tanks dotted around the slum, a twenty-litre container of the latter costs two rupees and fifty paisa. It used to be two rupees, Babu says, but the price is currently hiked due to summer water shortages. ‘This is policy.’
Babu’s interest in water is semi-professional. His father used to sell it. ‘Not the bottled stuff,’ he adds for clarity’s sake. His father would buy his sweet water ‘wholesale’ at Colaba market. He’d cycle over there, fill four forty-litre containers, and walk thetwo kilometres back with his sloshing cargo dangling from the handlebars of his bike. His margin was three rupees per container. On an average day, he’d make four or five trips. I totted up the maths. He was clearing sixty rupees a day. Babu’s driving job is lucrative by comparison.
‘Sometimes he’d collect the water from a nearby building that had a leaking overflow pipe,’ Babu says, a crook-toothed smile crossing his clean-shaven face. ‘It is a military soldier building actually.’
As his father’s only son, Babu was occasionally drafted in to help. His inauguration as a water rustler came at age eleven. ‘Many times the police were catching us,’ Babu admits. First, they’d be dealt a beating. Then the uniformed officers would make them cut the grass or wash their bicycles.
Babu’s smile gravitates into a light-hearted chuckle at the memory. What kind of childhood must he have had, I wonder, to recall father-and-son moments like these with such affection?
The thought occupies me as we step into the slum. The entrance comes via a few downward steps and a shack-padded passageway. The path is wide enough for a bicycle but too narrow for an ambulant cow. Neither are considerations to be overlooked in India.
A corner store the size of a small garden shed serves as a sentry post. It is manned by a heavy-set girl called Rochi (meaning ‘light’). I stop to buy some Peppy Cheese Balls for Babu’s children. Clad in the white smock of a school pupil, the twelfth-grader has proficient English and a keen desire to practise. She plans to do a graphic-design course after graduating, she tells me. She won’t marry until she’s ‘well set’ in her career. Her father was a chauffeur for the US Embassy. He lived in New York for a year, but he had to have emergency heart surgery. The operation took place at the city’s Bellview Hospital. The last point is shared with a touch of wonderment, as if her father had dined at the Waldorf rather than narrowly escaping death after a massive coronary.
As we press on, Ganesh Murty Nagar opens up – or rather closes in – like a multi-highway rabbit warren. Everywhere thereare sharp corners and cavernous tunnels. Babu turns left and right and left again. It is not long before I am totally disorientated.
I concentrate my eyes on Babu’s over-exercised sneakers, watching their threadbare tread closely for both direction and dog shit. Head down, life unfolds in my peripheral vision. Curiously, the world at close quarters lodges more as sound than sight: housewives gab, televisions sing, couples yell, children shout, vendors vend, dogs howl. To my surprise,
Similar Books
