Raju's story is not that of a single man. It's the story of a community put together through anecdotes from several people. "Raju" just happens to be the main source. I have no idea what his real name is.
He lived in a slum, or as NGO workers like to call it, a community. It was a community where the stone-houses were haphazardly lined up against each other, with just about enough space to accommodate two small people. For most families, however, the actual number stood around 2 adults and 5 steadfastly-growing kids. It was crammed, but as their nation had taught them since the day they were born, they had to adjust.
Mazdoori was the main livelihood. The men worked from morning to night, laboring in exchange for an income that allowed the family to survive. The women worked hard around the house to ensure the family could survive on that income. And the kids…they learnt soon enough that the innocence of childhood did not waste its time on their likes.
Life was hard, but Raju knew there was something to be thankful for – they had water and electricity for the most part. They had jobs. They had their family and friends. They had a solid roof over their head. They had a home.
I guess he thanked too soon.
On a day like any other, Raju returned home from labouring to find that he no longer had a home. It was gone. Every last bit. As were all the houses of his neighbours, and their neighbours, and the entire community.
The only thing left was rubble. Piles and piles of it.
On his left, people were crying – moaning; to his right, a man was sifting through the rubble looking for something, though he didn’t seem to know what. Children were clinging on to their mothers, looking confused and terrified, trying to forget the sounds of the bulldozers as they tore down their homes in front of their eyes.
The government had decided it was time to vacate the land so that it could be used for construction. That Raju understood. What he did not understand was why they were not given a moment’s notice before their homes were turned into rubble. A hysterical mother had to beg the authorities to allow her to get her son who was sleeping unawares while the bulldozers approached his house. She had to beg, because they didn’t seem to care what came in the way of the bulldozers – a bed, a dog, or a child.
As Raju looked towards his wife and son standing where their house used to be, he could not explain the emotion that passed through him. Everything that he had, that they had, was gone. The house, the clothes, the TV, the stove, the thali they ate from, they vessel they stored water in – it was all gone. “I was lucky I carried by identity papers and toolbox with me to work,” he recalls, “or I wouldn’t even have that now.”
Their lives were turned inside out. Without even the courtesy of a notice.
*** Flash forward 6 months later ***
Dust, for as far as your eyes can see. Bamboo sticks, attempting to stand upright in their position on the ground. Tarps – red, blue, white – hanging desperately onto the bamboo sticks as the wind tried fervently to release them.
This was the new community that Raju was now living in. Some might call it a camp. Some might call it a dump. The government seemed to prefer calling it home. And it had been “home” for the last 15 days.
Although the details of his life are not too clear after the house was destroyed, from what I understand the government gave some of the families flats in a distant community in an attempt to relocate them. But not everyone received a flat, and so they continued to wait; they continued to live on the rubble of what-had-once-been-their-house for a few months. After 5 months, it seems the government had had enough of the squatters and wanted to clear the land, so all the remaining people were rounded up in trucks and dumped unceremoniously onto a far-off land next to a major garbage dumping ground. There was no water closeby, no sign of electric lines, no food, no job, no money, and certainly no home. Just a vast ground filled with prickly weeds and plants.
When I met Raju, he had been living there for 15 days. His new home, consisted of a few bamboo sticks precariously holding up white tarp, with a sandy floor that had been laboriously cleared of the wild plants. He stood in front of his house as he unabashedly narrated his story to me. The flaps of tarp that stood as a door fluttered in the wind, giving me a chance to look inside his house. It was bare.
He had sent his wife and son to their village and was living here alone. “Why didn’t you go with them?” I asked. He looked tired, almost defeated. “Because I will not be allocated a house unless I stay here,” he said, the unfairness of the situation crushing him. “I do not want them to have to live through this misery.”
And misery it was. It was the end of December in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and temperatures at night were steadily dropping. Blankets were nowhere to be seen. The number of people living on that ground surpassed a few thousand. The men claimed there were no jobs available around them. Food was hard to come by unless it was through charity. Three children had already died by eating poisonous plants growing nearby. Water was available thrice a day – almost a kilometer away. No one had bathed in days. No one had properly quenched their thirst in days. All around, the faces - whether they be of an 8-month-old or an 80-year-old – showed signs of exhaustion.
The question that seemed most pertinent, was how long they would have to endure this hell. The authorities said that they will respond by the 31st – 3 days later. “And if they don’t?” I ask hesitantly. Raju looks at me directly, his eyes burning with an emotion I couldn’t possible describe, and said, “We might be here for 5 years. Or more. Who knows?”
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| The tarp-homes held upright with bamboo sticks |
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| Raju's home |
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