My name is Valmiki Ratnakar Rao. I was born here, at Ganga Niwas Chawl, Lower Parel, Mumbai. My parents named me after a great sage because they wanted their children to accomplish something. None of us did but it’s the thought that counts, so I mention it anyway. I don’t have much to say about my childhood, my parents, or even my many siblings, because nothing about our lives is worth documenting. My parents came here from their village in Maharashtra because they had nothing to do there. Their parents were labourers, and the land they once owned eventually went to a zamindar. To stay there meant working for him until they died. they didn’t want us to do the same thing, so they took a train and turned up here.
This is how most people ended up in this corner. There were mills here, and they needed labourers, so anyone who could work would leave their villages and come over. There were only men at first, all sharing these kholis until they began to miss their villages, wives and the taste of home-made bhakri. So, families began to turn up too and, within a few years, children were running through these shabby corridors. My siblings and I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary because we had no choice.
We had to go to a municipal school because it was free, and none of us dreamed of higher education because we had to work. What my father earned at the mill was never enough, so my brothers joined him after they finished class six or seven. I was allowed to complete my matriculation because they all brought home more money by then. If I was older, I wouldn’t have that opportunity. My sisters were never sent to school because they had to be married off. you know how these things work, so forget about me and my family. This is not my story; it is Ramu’s.
I keep calling him Ramu because that is what we all called him. But I will use his full name once: Ramesh Tukaram Shinde. it was his mother, Kashi, who named him, and I remember the day he was born because his father, Vishnu Mahadeo Shinde, brought laddoos as well as pedas for everyone at Ganga Niwas. Ramu was their first child, and a son, so they wanted to give more than just pedas. No one bothers giving anything these days. We were more generous then, I think, and didn’t earn money to just buy things from some shopping mall. We didn’t even know what a mall was.
He was born only because Kashi and Vishnu did teerth yatras for four years. they must have been a happy couple because none of us saw or heard them fight, either with each other or with their neighbours. This was rare because fighting comes naturally to us. if we don’t fight, how will we know we are alive?
We liked Vishnu and Kashi, because they made us feel good about ourselves. Let me explain what I mean by this. Without them, the only happy couples we would see were on Doordarshan. We didn’t know any in real life. My parents were unhappy from the moment I first saw them until I helped with their funeral rites. There were no smiles. I can’t blame them, because there is little to smile about when you have to wait for running water or stand in line to shit. Smiling is for people who have clean toilets. You understand this only when you have to share your toilet with 60 people, clenching your buttocks while you wait for your turn.
I don’t know why Vishnu and Kashi didn’t fight. He worked at the mill too, at first, but was a hard worker and wanted to do something bigger. After a few years, he joined a printing press and they began to have more money. Maybe we would all have fought a little less if we had a little more in the bank, but I can’t say for certain. If money made us peaceful, our politicians would have been saints. Vishnu looked like someone you could trust; I remember that. he would smile when he saw someone he knew and always stopped to ask how we were. He would always oil his hair and comb it neatly, and wear ironed shirts. His marriage to Kashi was arranged, but he must have fallen in love with her almost immediately because she was so pretty. She used to wear a shiny nose ring and helped anyone who needed anything. None of us could dislike them. they were both fair, tall and happy. It was as if the sun chose to shine on them alone, while the rest of us huddled under umbrellas.
Today, when I see Ramu, I think of Vishnu and Kashi a lot. They would never have imagined this – their eldest son drunk and dirty on a street corner. It would have killed them. They wanted their children to go to school, study hard and become doctors or engineers. They knew this could happen only if their boys didn’t play with the other boys of Ganga Niwas. They knew what good and bad company meant, and their children learnt it too.
After Ramu, Lakhya was born, two or three years later. Lahu Dhyaneshwar Shinde. My god. We thought Kashi and Vishnu would die of happiness. Two sons? How many were so lucky? Even I knew that was great, and I didn’t even want a wife or children. They came from the hospital carrying that baby and we all stood outside our kholis to look. Some of the women must have been jealous but didn’t say anything because Kashi was that kind of person. Even if you were jealous, she would smile, and you forgot what you were supposed to be jealous about.
Excerpted with permission from The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao, Lindsay Pereira, Penguin India.