[Reader-list] The Heritage of Dirt

[kaiwan mehta]

Hi 
One more posting down this third month of the fellowship.
I am conducting some mutli-disciplinary summer workshops inquiring
into questions of migration and neighbourhood spaces and their
perception and representations.
Anyone visiting Bombay in April or May 2005 - is welcome to join in.
I have just finished a study with some of my students, an academic
exercise into discovering history - they will present their work next
week and the material will be up on the RL then.
Read on!!

Regards,
Kaiwan

Fellowship Paper Title
Reading Histories: Migration and Culture
Politics of Mapping and Representation of Urban Communities

**
As I am discovering and photographing decorated buildings and
inquiring into the history these building and their secret space tell
me – I find more visions that define this locality.

A Times photographer, who I met through a colleague and my students
works on various photo-doc projects.  One of his project involves a
photo documentation of the sweepers in Mumbai. He looks at various
issues – the way BMC employees – the sweepers – are street / pavement
dwellers themselves. They are often living in govt. quarters, but one
can immediately see how bad the living conditions are. Often families
hold on to this job father to son, simply for the free one room
tenement they are entitled to. Often the male sweeper dies earlier
than the general age due to conditions of working in garbage dumps for
over 20-30 years and the drinking habit they develop. His job is then
transferred/taken on by his wife or elder son, simple to retain the
kholi – one room tenement. Often two families live in this one
tenement.
Some of these sweeper colonies exist in the C Ward area of my study.
(I need to look at them)

The sweepers clean and clear from animal carcasses to dead babies,
scrap metal and logs of rotting and splintered wood, medical waste to
blood and sanitary napkins. The BMC over the past 100 years has not
improved in technology or equipment, still very primitive means are
used to collect and clean garbage. Hands to collect and shoulders to
carry! To drown their depressed and dirt drowned lives drinking is a
habit they develop that often drowns them in debts.

How does this connect to my local history project?
Well the area we are discussing has a particular urban physical
geography, and this essentially has to do with the way 'native towns'
in colonial set-ups developed with step-motherly treatment. They
symbolized the colonial imagination of dirty and black 'native' towns
– that required planning as a tool for cleaner environments and better
living conditions. Hausmann was a favourite amongst the colonial
visionaries – evedents in the planning of Calcutta and notes of many
planners like Geddes. Even today the area is fed water by wooden vats
on carts drawn by humans. The buildings are very close or literally
touching each other as they developed in a vacuum of town planning
regulations or bye-laws. Common toilets amongst residents of a floor
or building – makes more for uncared and ignored wet areas of a
building. These conditions make cleaning the area a further task.
Often the minimal 2 feet space between two buildings is no one's land
and hence dumped ruthlessly with garbage. One incident mentions how
garbage falls on sweepers as they are cleaning these narrow lanes –
which include boiling rice water and sanitary napkins – where a co
worker cleaned the blood of the other's face with her broom.

At a recent seminar where I presented a paper on the building facades
in the area, one of the reactions I got was – how could I be
appreciative of an area that is so dirty and unorganised? Dirt hence
seems to be one of the faces of this area; dirt seems to be one of the
defining aspects for this area. And this dirt has its share of
history! Today the sweepers that clean this area bear the burden of
some history and it is important to understand their views on the area
as they clean it day in and day out. Well the sweepers have their
classification in place – as to which community creates more dirt for
them. They find Parsees as the most sweeper friendly community whereas
the Jains and the Muslims the most polluting. Jains believe in keeping
their private space and interiors most clean and spic and span but one
step out of their houses and all their garbage is emptied there.
Festivals like Diwali or Bakra Id are the most polluting. When the
whole world is relaxing after a boisterous festival, the sweeper is
cursed with more loads to clean in his already dirtied life.

What is the relationship between urban politics of space and culture
that these sweepers bear the burden of?
What is the relationship between the imagination of dirt and its
reality in urban space?
What community and social structures allow for urban spaces that need
an army of sweepers to clean it?

II
The Heritage of Dirt

To meet Sunil, a sweeper with the C Ward, I reached Do Tanki near
Kumbharwada Police Chowki, by 6:15 am. I have frequented the road but
am yet not very familiar with it. This is because one has often just
zoomed in and out of it and that too not very often. At 6 in the
morning the road was quite awake, I was wondering if the 'activities
of the night' - prostitution which skirts around this area were still
on. But observation told me it was other activities; labour of a new
day; bakeries and bathing that were already on the way on this Sunday
morning. It was difficult to locate the place I was to meet Sunil, the
names on gardens and roads did not match the popular lingo. But I
guessed I had located the place, walked around to search the spot
where Sunil, I thought was waiting for me. I entered a lane with a
Public Sauchalaya – a very busy spot at 6:15 in the morning, people
moving in and out, a lane that was stinking of urine and soap
simultaneously. Searching further I landed up at another spot where
about ten men were bathing on the street, while some women got them
water. Finally I located my meeting spot, there was a garbage van
right out there, as men and women trickled in for their ritual
attendance – Hajri. I kept jumping around trying to find a spot where
less people asked me what I was there for, yet making sure Sunil
notices me and trying desperately to avoid the stench of the garbage
van on one side and the sauchalaya at the other. Some sweepers
claiming familiarity with Sunil struck conversation with me, praising
Sunil, asking me if I came here to discuss a dance show with him. Oh
yeah Sunil is supposedly a great performer – kalakar, but has not got
his share of fame and credit due to lack of support.

Sunil comes and asks me to sit in their mukadam's office, the
attendance office. I sit their as men and women pour in, sign the
muster, change into their khaki uniform and stroll around before they
start the day. Some women, not regular workers hope for a day task as
badli – to work in the absence of a regular employee. I believe most
of them are widows of ex-sweepers, Sunil mentions, as he now asks me
to wait outside the office. He says the compound is fresher than the
stuffy office – I think he wants me to be far from the haggling women
and the mukadams as they decide the day's badli workers. Fresh air? I
try to hide from Sunil that what he calls fresh air is stench and
stinking environment for me, which I am finding difficult to bear. He
just mentions how men die soon due to their drinking habits. A habit
inculcated to fight the constant stink and drudgery of their jobs. I
can imagine. The constant stench and garbage they spend half their day
with also gives them many diseases. After I am introduced to Sunil's
immediate bosses – the mukadams – while we were chatting he explained
a complex system of hierarchy of his bosses, suspensions, supervisors,
etc.

Our walk started, proudly (I think so) he first showed me the gully he
works in. Lane after lane he showed me their narrowness, convoluted
turns, broken pipes splashing constant water out of them in the
gullies, clogged garbage and hence collecting water, entries and space
that often could allow you only if you moved sideways and had no
paunch. It is not that I had never observed these before, I had, but
never so closely and most important never with human beings working in
them. On of the sweepers insisted I take his picture as he displayed
how the water logging in the gully was knee deep. Every lane he showed
had some specific problem, for him, although to me they all looked as
bad as the previous one or the next expected. I tried a quick take at
some of the classically decorated buildings too, as I was being
introduced to the narrow and deep gullies.

However not all buildings were old, a lot of them were recent RCC
constructions. Then why were they still bad with sanitation. The old
one I have a reason for, why the new ones in the same mess, same foot
print? Every photograph I took was like an important testimonial to
their plight – Sunil hinted to me at every lane for a picture. I
wonder if people like me and my Times  reporter-friend are instruments
of archiving for them. Do they think of us as some tools or
institutions that have recorded their miseries for the generations to
come and hence given them a place in history? I am sure he knew I was
no agency of improvement and I almost felt apologetic about it every
turn he lead me. But every sweeper in every gully obliged me and
looked forward to my taking a picture of 'his' gully.

It could go on and on. But we stopped, I guess he had to do his part
of the job, I had seen it, how many more times can I see it?

As I walked away after thanking him, I suddenly felt I was now looking
at the usual world. I was walking in the same streets as earlier, but
previously all focused at peeping in gullies that no one normally
looks at, their existence only emphasised by the sudden split moment
splash of stench as you walk any of the streets here. The gullies are
also, most of the time, very visible from the streets, but either
there is conscious curtain that blinds the street users to these
gullies of dirt and filth. Many freshly bathe women and men were
running to the temples, that dot this area like the stars in the sky
on a clear night, clean they were running for the daily ritual purity
this fine and cool Sunday morning, quite fresh itself, as their dirty
water from bath and washing was being cleared by men and women (maybe
of another species – invisible – no one notices – but I saw them
co-exist!!!) – Who did it every day, unnoticed by the businesses and
families and gods in the area. Yes the city has two worlds – one where
we live and one which we refuse exists. Its existence would shame us!
It is also a situation where it is understood that there is to ones
disposal – others who will take care of things – that you are scared
to shame yourself with, you are scared to pollute yourself with (and
shame your gods) and you think it is not in your dignity to even think
about it. Assuming that one has the right to create what one hates and
others are bound by duty to oblige in taking care of it.

What is the concept of dirt? How does it define one human being from
the other and how does it define one group of actors from others? I
could see the front and back of this city in the same wink and same
shot and same frame. What hands paint the front, what imaginations
design the front and how does the back automatically (?) get generated
or who generates it and why? Why is dirt assumed as a natural occupant
of space, while all hate it? Why is it generated to alarming
proportions? Is there a vision in allowing dirt to perpetrate and
exist?
 
Experiences of Research

As my friend assisting me in conducting interviews in this area
struggles to discover the area – her various experiences are becoming
my material. Although the primary material expected – interviews – is
becoming difficult often – her troubles and struggles are often
revealing interesting characteristics of this area.

As she moves to search for people to interview – she often encounters
resistance – at the hands of 'conservation fear' or tenant-landlord
conflict! There is a lot of inter-community grumbling in quiet
whispers – various people advice her on which area is friendlier or
which area is worth discovering – these we observed later were clearly
defined by communities living there. One newly wed housewife and a
fairly new migrant to the city agreed to talk to her only after
discovering her north Indian background!

As we move through these areas one wonders is this really 'a' city or
is it a cluster of various hamlets or villages clubbed together –
forced into co-existence. At what points do our cities get defined as
'one whole' – we imagine them often so, but did my sweeper in do tanki
celebrate the Kala Ghoda or Mumbai Festival – both fighting to
celebrate the 'heritage of glory' of this city?





(This posting does not include some interview texts – awaiting some
more texts to collate them together. Some work is also on the way -
about ideas on Town Planning and visions of a 'good city' in late 19
and early 20 century India – to elaborate the question and bias
inherent in defining spaces by nature of their geometry and
cleanliness)


-- 
Kaiwan Mehta
Architect and Urban Reseracher

11/4, Kassinath Bldg. No. 2, Kassinath St., Tardeo, Mumbai 400034
022-2-494 3259 / 91-98205 56436