ruminating in delhi

(I’ve moved to Delhi last week of October and will be here for 9 months or so for my new assignment under disability programme area)

A few meters away, across the street from where I live, right behind the bus stand, there’s a fenced lot where a group of migrant/homeless people live along with a number of cows; big and small, young and old, people and cows. The fence is made of hurricane wire that from where I stood this morning I didn’t have to crane my neck to see the tents where their meager belongings are stashed, and watch them as they did their morning rituals. There was a mother sitting on the bare ground, her legs outstretched, a naked baby on her lap and right beside her was a steel bucket. She was bathing her baby not only in full view of passersby but in what to me was a chilly morning. Standing around her were 3 or 4 women wrapping their saris around their waists. The men were gathered in a stall with canvas roof, they seemed engaged in animated discussion while smoking bidis (leaf-rolled cigarette made of coarse,uncured tobacco). It was the start of their day. I didn’t look long enough. If I did, perhaps I would see makeshift stoves and even find out what they’d have for breakfast other than the stares from the commuters as they waited for the bus.

Yes, I could ogle and be awed by their courage to flee their native places and try to survive, or be disheartened by the sight of their homelessness, of their lack of privacy as they do their own thing. I wondered, it may have been their choice to make that piece of land their temporary home in order to earn a living, but was it also a choice to become a showcase of poverty? They were fully aware of the eyes gazing at them; the wide smiles on the faces of the women as they gazed back impressed me that they took pleasure in being a menagerie. But it is what they really wanted? Or they just accepted their predicament? Deprivation of privacy, the price they paid for a survival.

As the women covered themselves with sari I felt like I was stripping them of their dignity if I took a minute longer to stare at them. I find it dreadful enough that they don’t have proper shelters where they can feel secure and protected. It is more appalling for me that these women cannot even have their privacy. Homelessness is no longer a phenomenon in New Delhi, I see them here everyday. I cannot do anything about it. The least I could do is not to deprive them of their personal space. I looked away, but I didn’t know if looking away meant indifference to their plight.