A life of tension

DAWN is breaking over the airport as we arrive. I go straight to the office of the Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), a Mumbai-based NGO. From there we set off to their project area near Sufaid Pul. These slums that flank the airport house the poorest of the urban poor - rickshaw pullers, laid-off textile mill workers, masons and casual labourers. The busti is made of standard slum-material - tin, bricks and large plastic sheets; a stench covers the area - of fish, faeces and rotting drains.

The sun is intense and we are soaked with sweat by the time we reach the large, dark community room, where the women have gathered. Their children are all over. Outside the circle of children, the jobless men of the busti lurk. They have the emaciated bodies of those who known starvation since birth. All of them have fled the hunger and drudgery of their drought or flood-ravaged villages, in the hope that life elsewhere will be better. But nobody needs them here in this big globalised city already bursting at the seams. The new wealth generated by the country's industrial capital has sentenced them to be hapless witnesses to their own decimation. They do not care which political ideology will serve them the best, or whether Kashmir should be granted azaadi. They only care about getting a decent job and a steady income, so that their dignity, their izzat, is restored.

I ask the women what kind of life they lead, what illnesses plague them the most. They say nothing or look away. CEHAT's survey of women's reproductive health in these slums shows that their health is intricately linked to the social environment in which they live and work. It also illustrates that reproductive illness is endemic and forms the largest group of problems. On an average, these families spend Rs. 415.68 per person a year on health services because the government hospitals offer the poor nothing. Eighty five per cent were treated by private doctors, though Mumbai boasts of a chain of government hospitals. The government expenditure in Mumbai was only Rs. 250 per person a year. The study also found that there was an increasing commercialisation of abortion care and a high use of unwanted drugs and procedures that put women's lives at great risk.

Later, the women begin to talk - haltingly at first, then in a torrent. Fatigue, they say, chronic fatigue, backaches and menstrual disorders are widespread. "Can't you see how bloodless we are? There is no taakat (strength) in our bodies at the end of the day, our blood has turned to water, the doctor says."

"Tension bahoot hai, bahen (There is a lot of tension, sister)," says Mira devi. She is from east U.P. and her husband works as a rickshaw puller. Life for women is full of tension here, she says. First there are taporis everywhere, sitting and gambling and drinking and making passes at women. Going to the toilet is like a punishment, so most women hold back till they cannot anymore. Then there is the filth. Only when the VIPS come does the area get cleaned. There is also tension about children's school fees and books.

One woman, whose husband had started drinking, finally lost her mind and lay covered in filth for days, till the women heard her children crying and called the Arogya Sevikas. Together they hauled her to a clinic. Now they take turns to give her her "mental pills," and supervise her household chores.

"What to do?" they say, "men will be men. When there is tension, men will drink and beat the women." The women bear it for the children's sake as long as they can, then either become "mental" or die quickly, sometime by their own hand.

Karrnamma from Karnataka adds, "there is tension also about our land." Land? "This is airport land So we cannot construct anything here. Now we are all under orders to leave. No one knows where we will go once the bulldozers come. For five months, our men have been jobless. But here we at least support each other through bad times. Once we disperse, who knows what will happen?"

They ask me if I know whether the new companies coming to Mumbai will generate new jobs for fitters and masons, or powerloom weavers? I know nothing. They apologise for the power-cut. Many steal electricity, so power breakdowns are frequent here. In their village in Ahmednagar, Oamrunisa says, they had no electricity but a garden and water. But now they have nothing. The men can at least go out into the city for several hours each day, or hang around tea or liquor shops but a woman cannot. They have to guard their adolescent unmarried daughters. There is nowhere for them to go.

"So what do you do in the evenings?"

"Watch TV."

"You have TV sets?"

"Most do. When there is money, men buy TV, radio, fans..."

"Not a gas-chulha? Or a washing machine?"

They laugh and shake their heads, "Labour saving devices will spoil women, our men say."

At the moment, they cannot see a future. You cannot see it either. The women get up slowly. We all know what it is that ails them and us. But we know it will remain unsaid. They are too proud to put it in words. I am too embarrassed to try to prise it out of them.

MRINAL PANDE

The author writes in Hindi and English and is a freelance journalist.

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