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chantalkrcmar · 5 years ago

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Whiplash: revisited

I did interviews in a basti (slum) in Belapur, Navi Mumbai on Friday evening, and it was the hardest time I’ve had in the field since starting my PhD research. Most of the time, I can compartmentalize my feelings. On a day to day basis — not just for doing my job, but also for simply living in Mumbai — I have to keep my feelings in check. Every day, I see people living in horrible conditions on the streets, children begging or selling stuff, children and adults maimed and mangled. The streets of Mumbai ain’t easy. And when I do my fieldwork on women in construction, I am talking to some of the most marginalized laborers in India. If I allowed myself to get too emotional, I couldn’t function. So I do my bit as a caring citizen of the world and as a feminist researcher, and I do get upset and perform random acts of kindness — but especially for work, I mainly keep my heart walled off.

But sometimes the fortress gets breached. And Friday was one of those times.

I went to a basti where 400 families live. It is large and sprawling, homes made of tattered bits of plastic and corrugated metal dotting a hillside in Navi Mumbai. They have water tapped in once a day from 8-10am; they have some community toilets; there is a stagnant creek nearby so I was told that malaria and dengue run rampant during monsoon; landslides during monsoon can also be an issue given how haphazard the construction is and how stripped the hill gets every time the basti spreads out more. Most of these slum dwellers (250 of the 400 families) have no formal right to this property, so they are considered “encroachers.” They face the constant threat of eviction. Poisonous snakes used to pose a problem, too — until people living in the basti learned how to catch and immobilize them.

My interpreter, a staff member from a local NGO, and I spent three hours there while I did interviews with women construction workers and chatted with a variety of family and community members. When we walked out I felt as if I had been there for 30 hours. Of course, I did not walk away wailing and gnashing my teeth — though the conditions there warrant that kind of reaction. I just felt deeply out-of-sorts and sad. I was rattled to my bones. I completely kept on my game face while I was in the field, but then it was time to let it down. It was so much to process — intellectually and emotionally. Sitting at this computer a mere two days later in the quiet of ASB’s Parent Cafe, looking at notes I had scribbled immediately after the fieldwork, I still don’t know exactly where to start.

So what got to me so much? And why this time?

Part of it may have been the timing of the interviews. I started around 4:30pm, and by the time we finished, it had grown dark. (At this time of year, it gets dark by 6:30pm in Mumbai.) While this basti does have electricity, it’s sporadic. Lights are very dim, at best. Talking to people in the gray light of dusk does make it feel…darker, more oppressive. Hard to see hope in a dark, dirty slum. Part of it may have been that I was at the tail-end of a long, bad cold so I entered the field pretty tired. We researchers are humans too.

Part of it was definitely that I saw lots of children on Friday. And they were not in great shape. They are children, so they still played and laughed. But most of them were downright filthy; many were totally naked; some were playing in a stroller that clearly had been retrieved from a trash heap. One of the girls — Anamika’s age and cute as a button with a little ponytail piled high on top of her head — clung to her grandmother as I interviewed her. Her grandma had been working in construction for the past fifty years; she started working as a child; lost her husband ten years into their young marriage; raised their two daughters on her own; now is mostly raising her grandchildren (but still working in construction — when she can get work). The little girl who reminded me of Anamika: her dad is an alcoholic and cannot take care of his family. My god, is her experience with her Papa way different than Anamika’s. Our daughter gets nothing but safety and security with and from her Papa.

The image that sticks with me the most from Friday is of two young men, boys really. Brothers, one now 18, the other 15. I met them while interviewing their mom and grandma. The 18 year old started working in construction when he was 13 years old; the 15 year old just started last year at 14 years old. 13 and 14. Hard, dangerous physical labor. Paid so poorly. And this is their path in life. Set so long ago. They never got educated since their parents moved around so much for work. Their mom and dad work in construction, so do their grandparents. And these boys, hard as their lives are, still have the swagger of adolescence. The 15 year old has both his ears pierced and wears gold earrings. They both were wearing knock-off designer jeans. They are good-looking boys — the younger one especially, with large deep brown eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a stylish haircut. I told Rahul that in another life, they would be chilling on their school campus, goofing off with friends, perhaps being mischievous in the classroom, getting lots of attention from the girls.

And while I interviewed their mom and grandma, the family and neighbors milled about. This is India where privacy and individual space are very hard to come by (one of the blessings and curses of such a community-oriented culture). I had privacy with the other women I interviewed on Friday, but could not manage it with this group. In the end, it was fine because I got way richer data from seeing the family interact, talking to the boys, and just allowing it to be “real.” The mom, her sons, grandmom, and grandpa sat on an old beaten up door which was balancing on top of an old beaten up, cushion-less sofa. I sat on an old beaten up cushion-less chair facing them. Let’s not talk about the filth factor.

For much of the time that we all talked, the 15 year old boy had his arm around his mom’s shoulders in an act of pure and comfortable affection. Perhaps he was protecting her in some ways. From me. From the harsh realities about which she spoke. Or maybe he was just having a sweet mother/son moment. Slums are tough and hard. Kids are not always treated with tenderness. The physical environment itself is extremely rough, so full of illness and bereft of soft, cozy things. Adults cannot afford to raise their kids to be sensitive. So seeing this tender moment really touched me.

These two boys got me. More than anything else that I heard or smelled or touched on Friday, it was these two boys. Later on, I found out from the NGO staff member that their mom engages in sex work on the side if she can’t get construction work. This is not an uncommon practice. Coming to know that afterwards, the son’s tenderness toward his mom touched me even more. Given the near impossibility of having any privacy in this setting, it is very likely that her family knows that she engages in sex work. I could not help but wonder how they all manage it, process it. Of course I could not ask. It’s not my place; the woman did not tell me herself.

The icing on this tough-to-swallow cake: Sitting behind this family during the interview was a girl who, I was told, just finished 8th standard (grade). Naively, I asked if she was going on to 9th. With a shy smile, she answered, “No. I am going to do domestic work.” In the field, it is not my place to judge, and I am very practiced at keeping my emotions to myself. All I said was, “Teek hai (ok).” Inside, though, I was seething. In what world does an 8th grader go to work instead of school?! Oh yeah, in this world.

After we left the basti and bid the NGO staff member farewell, my interpreter and I went to a little local spot where we chatted a bit over South Indian filter coffee (30 rupees, or 42 cents, for the best coffee ever!). We both needed a moment to catch our breath. There was a fair bit of sighing.

Then it was time to go home. My interpreter is a very gentle, but very big, bear of a young man. He has no troubles moving around Mumbai at night. Being a woman in a country known for its violence against women, it’s not so easy for me. I had gotten out to Navi Mumbai (about an hour and a half from home) by local metro. I was not keen on traveling such a long distance at night by myself in public transport, though, and my interpreter cautioned against it. I felt terribly guilty and conflicted about taking an uber. Surge pricing made my trip home 800 rupees (11.17 USD), and after what I had just seen in the basti, I felt badly about spending so much. I also felt like a wimp for not toughing out the metro. But reason triumphed over my emotions, and I took the uber. No sense in putting myself at risk. As I was riding home, I sent Rahul a message: “Another thing money buys: safety. I could choose to uber home. So many women don’t have that option and just have to take risks.”

When I got home on Friday night, I walked through our compound to get back to my comfortable building, my clean healthy sleeping daughter, my delicious home-cooked palak paneer waiting for me — overwhelmed by one of those acute feelings of whiplash that I wrote about in my last post. That feeling was intensified by seeing children from our compound playing on top of a large pile of cement bags. One of the buildings in our compound is being gutted and refurbished so there are construction materials lying around. These children on top of the cement bags were surrounded by watchful adults making sure they were climbing safely. They all had shoes and clothing on, and I am sure they had tummies full of dinner. To the children in my compound, this was just a fun game. A pile of cement bags for the children in the slum from which I had just come represents something very different. It represents work.

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