puja preparation

One of my last days in Bombay, I walked through the site of a temporary puja in front of the Govandi train station.  (The word puja means worship of a deity, roughly.  But I also heard it used to refer to the physical structure of a shrine). 

A newspaper-wala nearby said that every year, the rickshaw drivers set up a puja in this area.  Its stays up for several days and is a big celebration, very colorful and noisy.  He didn't know if it was meant to celebrate a particular thing... he said it was just an annual puja.

When I saw it, the puja was still being set up.  It was a very bizarre sight.  The mechanical statues-- larger-than-life depictions of Hindu deities as well as people and animals-- were disassembled and strewn about.  They were missing heads and arms, and many of them had wiring sticking out of them.

People walked by and tended to snicker, especially at the scantily-clad bottom half of a muscular man.  But once the puja is set up, I'm sure many of the onlookers will be somewhat reverent toward it.  For once, I didn't get odd looks because I was taking pictures... maybe the rest of the passersby also thought the scene was worthy of documentation.

 

 

quick update

Yet another change of plans... I have cancelled my trip to Calcutta and am returning home on Wednesday.  A professor I spoke to over there advised me that it wasn't the best time for a short and productive trip to Calcutta... West Bengal has had a lot of rain over the past week and many parts of Calcutta are flooded.  Transportation systems are especially unreliable.  So I decided, instead of trying to negotiate a heavy monsoon during my first visit to the city, I would rather come home and start my writing.

There are lots of impressions of Bombay that I would still like to jot down.  Right now I'm quite busy with preparations to leave, but hopefully I'll be able to write a bit soon.

For my last couple of days here, I am staying with Mamaji Mudar and Mami Alefiah in Marol, a northern suburb of Bombay.  Its a very pretty place, inside and out.  Mamaji is an architect and designer, and his flat really reflects his artistic bent.  And when I look out the window I see trees and hear birds, which is certainly a change from my past two months in the city.

national security issues leaking into ration card administration

I'm really interested in how national security issues are related to citizenship rights.  But as far as my fieldwork goes, I've taken care not to research the topic directly because its sensitive and the Indian government prefers that researchers do not broach it.  Every once in a while though, the topic comes up, unsolicitied, in my conversations and interviews about ration cards.

Rations aren't technically a right of citizenship, because by law, you don't have to be Indian to get a ration card.  But in practice, one of the concerns that rationing officers and government officials are rumored to have is that Bangladeshis are applying for and getting ration cards, and using them as an inroad to establishing an Indian identity and possibily providing an avenue for extremist groups to embed themselves in Indian society.  Or, to put it more directly, that terrorists are getting ration cards.  This is hearsay, because no government official has actually said this to me.  NGO workers say that it is often the stated basis on which applications for ration cards are denied, even if the real reason for the denial may be that the officer is angling for a bribe.

As Ms. Joshi (the director of Apnalaya, an NGO that works with these issues) says, it is an obstructionist tactic for rationing officers to put the burden of proof of citizenship on the applicant.  This is a real problem for poor people who do not have birth certificates.  They might have an election card or various bills as proof of identification and address, but if a rationing officer tells them, "prove to me that you're not Bangladeshi," they really have no way of doing so.  

My interviewees also often mention national security issues when I ask them to speculate on why their applications for ration cards haven't come through, which to me seems like an indication that they perceive (rightly or not) that the government may be treating them like outsiders.  I'd like to craft interview questions that can better get at this issue, but the topic makes people uncomfortable, so for now, I'm leaving it out.

I got a chance to ask the rationing controller of Maharashtra about this issue, sort of.  Today I had a second meeting with him.  He is a very welcoming person... he told his PA (personal assistant) to allow me to have full access to his office, and he encouraged me to ask him anything at all.  So I asked about the citizenship requirement.  I thought the answer he gave was quite interesting.  He didn't really say anything directly at all... but the exchange we had seems to imply that while there is no legal citizenship requirement, given that ration cards are used as proofs of residence in practice, in practice it makes sense to restrict them to citizens.  But maybe I'm reading too much into his words... he did choose them very carefully:

Rameez:  Does someone have to be an Indian citizen for getting a ration card?  Like, I'm a U.S. citizen, if I come to live here, can I get one?

Mr. Kerure:  Basically, food security-- the right to food-- is different, and citizenship is different.

Rameez:  So someone from outside can get [a ration card]?

Mr. Kerure:  That is to say, right to food is not restricted to a person of any origin.  But if you think of citizenship, then you should be Indian.  Because after all, the ration card is not [supposed to be used as a] proof of residence, as I already told you.

Rameez:  But because it is being used as that...

Mr. Kerure:  Yes, used.

Rameez:  then citizenship ka requirement hai?  (Then the citizenship requirement is there?)

Mr. Kerure:  Yes.

terrified little girl

For about three hours today, I interviewed people from 9 different households in an area of the Dharavi slum called Muslim Nagar.  Bano Apa, the president of the LEARN women's labor union, lives there, and she took me around to various houses in the area (all of the dwellings consisted of one small room).  Everyone I talked to was Muslim and a migrant-- I met people from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka.  I also got a good mix of genders, which is something I've struggled with since most of the slum dwellers I know are women.  

For the most part, I got some pretty detailed interviews, and I learned a couple of new things.  One of the most interesting was that I talked to a couple of people who had tried to pay a bribe for a ration card, but still were not able to get one... a scenario I had previously thought did not exist.  My social worker friend from a different organization has repeatedly told me that anyone who pays a bribe can get a card.  To be honest, I'm glad that isn't universally true, because it means that other calculations-- besides money-- are going into the decisions of these ration card officers, and those are what I find the most interesting.  

And I also heard a lot of responses that agreed with those of my previous interviewees... which is also a good thing.  I will soon say more about the actual interviews, but there was one particular non-fieldwork incident that really disturbed me today, and I want to write about that for now.

In one of the homes I went to, there was a little girl, about 7 or 8 years old, curled into a ball in the corner of the room and sobbing violently.  She was looking around her and at me with terrified eyes, and crying, sometimes softly, sometimes wailing.  I don't think I've ever seen such a distressed child before.  Her parents were both there, apparently unfazed by this, and her siblings seemed somewhat amused but mostly didn't care.  I asked if she was hurt, and the parents said no, she's just scared.  She doesn't want to go to school or study.  

I thought this was kind of an unsatisfactory explanation for this unusual behavior, but I didn't want to pry, and I was especially afraid of discovering that someone at home was beating her... so I didn't ask any more questions and tried to finish my questionnaire as quickly as possible so I could get out of there.  (The crying girl wasn't the only strange thing about the household.  There was also a little boy, her brother, maybe about 5 years old, wet and naked.  His mom told me that he also didn't like school.  I told the kid that I was surprised, since he looked quite educated to me, except for his missing clothes... where did they go?  The kid grinned, and his mom told me, he really likes to bathe.  He bathes all the time... always pouring water over himself.  We're not sure what to do about it.  

Back to the crying girl.  One of the neighborhood kids, aged 11 or 12, had decided to join me for a couple of interviews, and he happened to come along to this girl's house.  (As in all slum neighborhoods, everyone who lives there knows each other well and its no big deal for kids to freely go in and out of other houses).  He teased the girl every once in a while, and once, I heard him say that I had come for her, at which point she cried even more.  I was surprised to hear a reference to myself, but I still didn't get what was going on, so I asked why she was scared.  

And the parents told me, she's scared of you.  I was very taken aback.  I asked if I had done something, or whether the girl was very shy of strangers.  The parents said she wasn't normally, but while I was interviewing in the previous house, they had told her that the police had sent me over to capture and jail her because she refused to study or go to school.  The girl was terrified of me because she thought I had come to take her away, and here I was, sitting in her house, talking calmly to her parents and trying to smile at her once in a while.  I immediately told her I had no intention of taking her away and asked her to stop crying, but another neighbor quickly jumped in: "well, you've come for either her or her father.  bad things happen to girls who don't go to school."  And she gave me a smile and a wink, asking me to play along.

I cut my interview short and got out of the house as fast as I politely could.  I wanted to take myself out of the girl's sight, and I was also disturbed that no one else was bothered by the abject terror on her face.  Not her parents-- they are the ones who caused it-- and not even Bano Apa, who I have come to like very much and find to be generally compassionate.  After that, I didn't concentrate that well on my next interview, but then I put the incident out of my mind for the rest of my time in Muslim Nagar.

trains during rush hour

I have been taking trains around Bombay basically since my second day here.  But I've written very little about them, especially considering that my train travels have been one of the defining aspects of my Bombay experience.  There is a train station one short block from Bakir uncle's place (where I'm staying), so I find myself on a train almost on a daily basis.

The Bombay rail system covers most of the city.  There are three main lines that connect the city center in the south to the northern suburbs.  Much of south Bombay's work force lives in a northern suburb and commutes into the city every day, many on trains.  So especially during rush hour, the trains are extremely crowded.  (As a side point, the use of the word suburb is a bit misleading here.  Bombayites call much of the city that is not South Bombay "suburbs," but these are still very urban places.  Some slums in the suburbs have population densities of around 100,000 per square kilometer).

The trains don't have closed doors, so you can hang out the side and jump on and off at any time.  Every train has a few cars designated as women's compartments.  I always ride in these-- most women do, unless they are traveling with a man-- because when its so crowded that you can't help but be pressed against others' bodies, its a little more comfortable if they're all women.  One less thing to worry about.  And as riders, women are less rough.  Men dangle out of the compartment more, take leaps onto moving trains and jump off well before the train comes to a complete stop.

There is a pretty well-established code of conduct and camaraderie on trains.   There is also a lot of pushing.  Both of these things are at their height during rush hour.  Since I live in the south and tend to travel to the north for work, I often find myself riding against rush hour and rarely have to deal with the situations I am about to describe.  Still, I have been on a few rush hour trains and they are my most memorable experiences.   

One key to understanding rush hour patterns is the observation that the trains stop at each station for only about 15 to 20 seconds.  When there are large crowds of people that need to exit and enter the train during that short period of time, you really have to be on your toes to make sure you don't get left behind.  First, you have to position yourself near the door of the train before it arrives at your station.  And you can't just quietly wait behind someone else who is near the door-- you have to ask if they're getting off at your destination, because if they don't move, you'll be trapped.  If the person in front of you is getting off after you, she will switch places with you and let you get closer to the door.  People are constantly asking others where they need to go and rearranging their positions.    

When its time to get off, you can't dilly-dally.  The people at the very edge of the compartment, near the doors, have to begin their exit before the train has fully stopped.  Its best to do this of your own volition, because otherwise, someone behind you will push you.  Better to exit a moving train on your own terms rather than someone else's.  Its also imperative to get out of the way as soon as you are off the train.  If you're not successful on that account, you risk being swept into the sea of people that is entering the train.  Kind of like being caught in a whirlpool.  Once, when I found myself being shoved back onto the train by the incoming wave, a woman on the outside grabbed my arm and yanked me to safety.  So while there is a decent amount of pushing and very little personal space, there is also plenty of help if you need it.  Kind of a reflection of Bombay itself... crowded, abrasive, personal... and ultimately friendly.

The compartment in the picture above is only moderately crowded.  It was taken on a Sunday... rush hour is probably twice as crowded.  Below is a video of rush hour.

 
A final, rather stunning, train fact:  Bombay trains kill about 4,000 people a year.  This includes riders as well as people who get run over because they live/work/walk too close to the tracks.  (This is a statistic I found in Maximum City by Sukhetu Mehta... a really entertaining book on Bombay).