Visiting the repressed in the streets of Chennai and puducherry
By Leslie Ann Tripathy
Chill penury has repressed their noble rage -Thomas Gray, Elegy written in Country Churchyard
Gray’s famous elegy best summarizes the “chill penury” of the dwellers of the shanty town with their “noble rage” perennially crushed. Meet the marginalised, the deprived, the down and out of the Chennai; said to be one of the four metropolises of India; the other three being Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkatta. Chennai in comparison is huge and sprawling with flyovers, skyscrapers with a bustling, busy fast life. But in the margins live these children of lesser God. You meet them and they represent the microcosm of poverty mired in the miasma of poverty and they also think of their ‘rozi-roti’ as they call. When I visited them not far from the busy Marina beach in the overcrowded Triplicane, they have nothing except a hut, a mixture of a hut patched with polythene covers to protect them from seasonal rains, small huts that house families of husband, wife and an average of 2 children. In every family, women are always married young and burdened early with children; almost every woman is working as a domestic help and the husband is either a barber, a rickshaw puller or scavenger. They have a tale to tell. They want to be heard, and their problems to be solved. Below is their own life in their own words.
35 year old Parvati, works as a domestic help, lives with 3 children and her husband Sanjay drives an autorickshaw. They have a ration card through voter ID. And Government provides 25kg of rice, 3 litres of kerosene and 1 kg of dal per family every month through the PDS scheme. They consume idli and banana for breakfast, 200 gms of rice for lunch (most of the time Parvathi eats lunch at her employers place and children eat mid-day meals consisting of sambar-rice provided by the school on weekdays) with 100 gms of dal per day and again eat 1100 gms of rice with poriyal in the night and for lunch on weekends (when schools are closed and Parvathi has a day off).
They use water from a tap situated half a km away from their residence. She sends her children to the Chennai Corporation School, where education and books are free. So all the children from the 23 slums attend school regularly. The corporation’s ‘Gandhi Kasturbai Hospital’ is where they go free health check-ups.
The problems- The 23 families living in Bharti Salai, Chennai Anji, in Triplicane, only wish for better living conditions. Selvi Kristabai, a slum dweller puts it, ‘Despite a Secretariat near our place, Government pays no heed to our conditions. It is only during elections, they remember us for our votes.’ Selvi’s husband Srinivas, a shoemaker wants his two boys to grow up into engineers so that they would not have to live in the slums, “There is no electricity in our house, in the night children study with the light provided by the lanterns. And when there is no kerosene, the children don’t study. Fuel is a problem too, the kerosene provided by Government isn’t adequate, as we collect woods to cook”. N.Satya, sells tea and flowers, is eager to confide his problems with the hope that I can interpret it to the Government, who would jump into action to rehabilitate his family, “We dread the rainfall, which leaks into our thatched mud houses. Our only hope is the Government.”
I went to Puducherry, the French capital of India, is 3 hours drive from Chennai. It became independent in 1956 still has many French memories. All their streets are called “Rue”. On the beach, not far from the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, is Sardar Ballav Bhai Street. A little detour leads me to the slum of Marwari Street comprising 13 fishermen families and 6 slums for the scheduled caste. They are real ‘jhopdis’, established with Government approval after Tsunami washed away their houses.
Anjalatshi, a 67 year old woman, has no earning member in the house, she gets an allowance of Rs. 600 per month, as part of Govt’s scheme for the old. But that is not enough for her to sustain her two grandchildren, who are studying in school. So she buys fish from the market and sells them, if she is lucky she pockets a profit of Rs.10-20. And if she isn’t, then she dries the fish that was unsold and feeds the family.
Maragadam, a 25 year old, had studied till 6th grade, but later dropped out of school due to lack of interest. Her husband Satya a barber doesn’t have a steady income. Together they manage to sustain his mother and three kids with dosa or idli for breakfast, rice and dal and fish for lunch and rice and poriyal for dinner.
Aarai, a 37 year old widow, works as domestic help, sends her daughter Daisy to school, where she is studying 11th grade and has earned some impressive grades. But Araai is worried how she will arrange money so that her daughter can have a college degree. Despite schooling being free and books not, 25% of the kids have dropped out of school. After 13 year old Satya’s parents passed away when he was 9years old, he dropped out of school, to support his grandparents and because of lack of interest in studies. Such trends are scary yet have not affected Vignesh, a 13 year old’s interest in studies. Besides studying well, he has a knack for drawing cartoons after watching them from t.v. Vignesh’s father sells fish and has high aspirations for his boy.
Vijaylakshmi, a 63 year old wants Govt to provide cemented roofs so that they don’t have to take shelter in the Govt school nearby, when rainwater seeps into her hut. She showed me a hole in the house where it rained or Sun peeped in and snakes had a free pass.
Contrasts- In Pondicherry, the slum people have makeshift toilets which act as bathroom, education is free at school but not in college. Books are not free in school. Old people above 60 years of age get an allowance of Rs.600 per month. There is free electricity in one phase.
Whereas, in Chennai the slum dwellers use public space for toilet. Books and education are free in school. Old people don’t have such schemes. No electricity at all.
Common- In both places they showed their helplessness at the time of rain.
There is noble aspiration that is visible among the shanty dwellers. Despite poverty, they smile, they are cheerful, whereas the rich visit rehabs to cure depression. The rich go for liposuction to get rid of the excess fat from excess consumption of food, while the poor stay reed thin because of lack of access to non-vegetarian delights, spices and pizza.
Poverty is a killer. It saps all the creativity. But people like Daisy and the 13 year old Vignesh and Parvati’s smile in guttural poverty are indicators that they are the unsung heroes of India, who live despite the blissful indifference of the corporate rich India.
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