For about 2 weeks in August, Cheryl & I decided to try living in a slum in East-Delhi. For a few of those days I penned down my experiences. Now I'm thinking I should probably place what I had written during those few days on this blog for those who might be interested.

It took us several months of interesting experiences to actually move into the neighbourhood which we now call home.

Monday 25th August 2008

Started off with a walk around the basti with Mark. I saw lots of stores selling household goods, other selling veggies, gas cylinders, cell phones, etc. There were dozens of mosques scattered about the place. I saw butcher shops and carts full of buffalo meat swimming through those narrow lanes. In the middle of the basti I came across a gigantic empty ground, "The Idgah" or the ground where everyone congregates to pray on special occasions/festivals. All the houses were of exposed brickwork and this is what marked an illegal basti. Since it could be demolished by the government at any time, no one bothers to plaster the walls. A while into our walk, we came across a very narrow lane that I wouldnt have noticed if I werent told. This lane was like all the other narrow lanes exept that houses on one side were plastered and houses on the other sider were not. This was the lane that divided the legal & illegal, Welcome Colony & Janta Colony, security and insecurity. As we walked into Welcome Colony the lanes became visibly wider and cleaner, the stench less noticable and the houses were nicer too. We returned back through another route and got a closer peek into people's houses & lives. We also got  peek into a madarsa in which a room full of young boys sat in their spotless white kurta pajamas & skull caps repeating texts of the Koran after their elderly teacher who sat in the middle of the room with a big stick. I was told that if the boys were to get it wrong, the could suffer very dire consequences from that stick. I returned to our room which our kind host family had let us uses for these 2 weeks. It was a tiny room, with a tiny toilet and a front door about 2 feet from an odourous nala (sewage canal). The everpresent stench from the nala hung around the room, but surprisingly there were times when we didnt notive it. The room that we are using is where the boys of the house used to sleep in. So were were displacing them. So I guess it was not so unjustified that they considered it their perogative to push the curtain aside and peek in every now and again whether we be sleeping, eating or even changing. One of the brothers considered himself buddy enough to march right in unannounced. Last night was our first night here & we had gone to bed when one of the brothers peeked in. I got up to ask what the problem was and he said "Lete raho" (go back to bed), as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do. These experiences sure are challenging our sense of what is normal. Good for us!

One good thing I noticed was at the end of Day 1 when I walked the streets, no one noticed me, or rather no one bothered to stare. I was inconspicuous, blending in... not a bad deal. In fact even when Cheryl & I walked together very few people stared at Cheryl. This was a relief from the first time we arrived when we felt a hundred stares drilling their way into us. Now, we almost felt ... part of the family.

Oh and how could I have forgotten... the intoxicating aromas that hit me when I was walking through those lanes at lunch time. The aroma of gosht & tandoori roti and the sight of so many people gorging on it really tempted me. But since Cheryl had issued strict instructions "NOT" to eat there coz it was "FILTHY", I didnt. Maybe one of these days I'll try to find an excuse to satisfy this craving. Did I mention, this tasty meal was also pretty cheap.

But for today I just bought some eggs, oil and bread, made a sandwich and lunched on that.

Day 2

I took a walk with Anthony today to meet some families. We first visited Savita. Savita used to work with Anthony at another NGO. But she quit when she got married. She married someone within the basti. Tooday we met her, her ma-in-law and her mother. Savita's husband is lucky enough to have a temporary job in Rohini that pays him Rs. 3000 per month. He travels to work by Metro which is very convenient, but travel eats up almost a third of his salary (Rs. 900pm). So since he spends Rs. 1000 on travel and they spend Rs. 1000 on rent, they effectively have 1000 per month to run their household. As soon as we arrived she sent for 2 pepsis for us which cost her Rs. 20. After doing the math on how much this family survives on every month, every sip of pepsi going down my throat hurt me bad. However much we insisted that we didnt want a pepsi, the insisted more. So refusing was not quite an option.

They manage their space pretty well. The front door opens into the tiniest room I have ever seen which struggled to contain a bed and a big dressing table. Beyond that there also was a cupboard. Beyond the cupboard is a tiny puja space. Besides the bed there is a ladder leading to the room upstairs. This room I really liked. A bed was propped up against the wall in the daytime and beyond that were some shelves which serves as a kitchen. This opened up into a mini balcony which interestingly also contained a toilet. The upstairs was airy and thats why I liked it. The balcony was an arm's distance from the opposite balcony, so standing here I could'nt help but peek into the next house where the whole family was engaged in some activity that I couldnt quite figure out. Looking below I saw a man in his underwear sitting in the middle of the 1.5 foot wide lane washing and cleaning his blue table fan. I came back down to chat with Savita. Anthony asked her if she was interested in doing some work. She said she couldnt do field work (social work) since she was married and had responsibilities at home. But she did ask repeatedly for a job for her mother. During our conversation since there was no electricity, the 3 women were fanning us. About halfway through, I took over one of the handheld fans and started... after a while it did hurt my hand quite a bit. After a while we left and continues down the Hindu lane of the basti and met a few more families. One boy with whom we chatted was in class 12 (a phenomenal achievement for boys from the basti) and after he finished this, he said he wanted to do an ITI course, computer course and English speaking course simultaneously. His mother sat beside him swooning from a malaria fever, but talking nonetheless. We then met a young man who was a part of a 20 member strong "Messengers of Peace" group. Last year they had organised a Ram Lila and brought together people of all faiths. Then we walked into the house of a blacksmith (I think). They were melting pieces of scrap metal and making something useful. We entered in. Not only was the room hot, it had extremely high dust levels that set me choking and my eyes burning. I fought the temptation to leave and was determined to stay while trying to muffle my coughs. The family worked all day within these conditions, I was determined to stay at least for the length of this conversation. In this family there was a mother, 2 sons and a daughter. 15 days ago the younger son committed suicide. He was about 15 years old. The daughter had recently married and left the house and the 2 sons and the mother managed the work. Anthony guessed that the younger son was frustrated because he worked with his brother but the brother got to keep most of the income. The mother however had no idea why he committed suicide. He had come back home that night & gone to bed without eating. She heard a voice within her telling her to spank him with her slipper and make him eat. If she had done that he may have told her what was bother him. But she regrets that she didnt listen to her inner voice. The elder brother said "People die, but the work has to go on. We will hire someone to do his work and carry on". The eldest sister also had died a while back leaving behind 2 children.