Carroms

Easter Celebrations in Dharavi

Photos by Sudharak Olwe

Episode 2

Dharavi does not suffer from vertigo. 

People living in a slum cannot afford to be vertiginous. The lack of space makes building upwards the only alternative. And once again, because space is a luxury that cannot be wasted, the stairs that lead to the upper storeys are little more than steep, narrow, modified ladders. With years of negotiating these stepladders, the people have little fear of loosing their footing. They climb upwards nimbly, and without hesitation.

But higher and steeper than the climb to their upper storeys is the climb to relative prosperity. A climb that the people of Dharavi are constantly engaged in. Because they cannot afford to be vertiginous.  

Anjana Kale’s knees are inflamed.  

It has been a long climb up the ladder for the 40-something Anjana. As she moves around the tiny living room-cum-kitchenette in the lower level of her house in Dharavi, her bearing is warm and yet regal. As we ask her how work is these days- Anjana prepares and supplies dabbas for PWD employees in BKC, which nets her a minimum of Rs 6,000 every month- she informs us that the officials want her to cook within the office premises and provide tea in addition to lunch, something she flatly refuses to do unless they give her a gas connection and a separate room to cook and serve in. 

Anjana has always lived life on her own terms. 

She also has a very strong sense of protocol. So she firmly tells us ‘tea first, talk later’. We are affectionately treated to tiny glasses of delicately flavoured tea and puranpolis as Anjana keeps up a steady banter of small talk. But tea over, Anjana peremptorily says, “Ab bolo, kya baat karne ke hai.” Her attitude is a little sharp,a little wary. And you know that Anjana has had a lifetime of looking out for herself, and won’t be taken for a ride. 

Obviously, that is not our intention. 

And once Anjana is convinced that all we really want is to know more about her, she opens up. She talks about her various jobs over the years- vegetable vendor, sari saleswoman, and for several years now, caterer. The food is prepared in the tiny room where we are seated, and her husband-who she fondly addresses as ‘seth’-helps her carry the tiffins over the bus ride from Dharavi to BKC. Her delicious meals, vegetarian through the week except two days on which she offers a side dish of chicken or fish, are appreciated by the health conscious among the office-goers as well. “I don’t use much oil and none of my dishes are too heavy. Even the puranpolis I served you were made of wheat, and not refined flour,” she proudly informs us.  

But Anjana’s not-so-secret pride isn’t her status as a successful entrepreneur.  

Mention you’ve heard that she is respected in the community for her status as a successful mother, and Anjana’s face suffuses with pleasure. Her older children, a daughter and a son, are married and settled with their own families, the youngest child-another daughter-is still in school. The weddings of her older offspring were conducted with much lavishness, as Anjana’s treasured photo albums reveal. There are photos too of a family vacation in Mahabaleshwar, the affection between mother and children evident despite the self-conscious poses.  

But this too, has come to Anjana the hard way. 

Whether it was annulling her marriage with a philandering husband whom she was forced to wed when still a child or raising the two children of the man she later married - over the years, Anjana has fiercely fought for, and found, her happiness. “When I married seth, his wife had been dead four years. The children- a teenaged girl and a 9-year-old boy- had no one to look after them in the proper way, to guide them. They weren’t very receptive to me initially, but I knew that if I didn’t forge a bond with them right then, it would become impossible later,” she says. 

And as Anjana smilingly forces us to have another of the deliciously crumbly nankhattais that she has ordered just for us, her earlier wariness forgotten, her seth-who has a story of his own-hovering lovingly in the background, the miracle is this- that her spirit hasn’t been submerged in the struggle to stay afloat.  

Anjana has successfully climbed the ladder. 

-Rohini Nair