I have been known by many names, except my true one, that given by my mother at birth.
That birth occurred some twenty-five years ago in a small and distant village whose name I do not remember. What I do remember is that I came into the world in dramatic fashion, amidst thunder and lightning, on the night it rained for the first time after three consecutive seasons of drought in the village. At least that’s what my mother, Kamla, told me. She took it as an omen and named me Devi, the Goddess, even though she always called me by my nickname, Munni.
My father, Birju, took the arrival of a daughter as a warning. Till then he had had two sons, Rajinder, born eight years before me, and Shyam, who arrived four years before me but died of encephalitis within two years of birth.
My father came from a generation of indigent farmers who lived off the fruit of the land. He was also a firm believer in his father’s dictum, that luck never smiles on the poor. So, within three months of my birth, he decided to quit farming and move to Delhi, some three hundred and fifty kilometres away.
I took to the capital city like a pig to mud. Its geography is imprinted on my mind like a tattoo. But it left my parents bewildered. They wandered through its shiny streets and gleaming parks as if in a trance, the sooty air coating their skin like fine dust. They met their clansmen from the village who had migrated before them, who were the walking talking advertisements for the greatness of the city, and discovered that advertisements are inevitably deceptive. They learnt of the exorbitant rents in the capital, that it would take their entire life’s savings just to find shelter in a one-room shack. And that in a city teeming with people, employment was harder to find than loyalty these days.
Eventually, they became construction workers, desperate nomads who moved from project to project. My father’s job was to dig, excavate the ground to lay the foundation of a brand-new building, and my mother’s task was to remove the dirt and debris. Every time they moved to a new site, they would pitch a tarpaulin tent next to it and that would become our temporary home till it was time to move on to the next project. Mummy told me that in the first four years of my life, we moved house seven times. I grew up with the sound of metal hitting against metal, of concrete mixers churning and bulldozers ploughing the earth. Looking up from our ramshackle tent, I would see these unfinished multi-storied buildings towering over us like a thick shadow. It always made me feel like I was part of something bigger.
My earliest memory is of dirt. Yes, dirt. Different construction sites have different types of dirt. It ranges from reddish brown to blackish grey, depending on the gravel. There are somewhere the gravel content is more, there are others where you see the earth more. I was more interested, though, in the earthworms oozing into the world, only to be squished by the giant machines. Some of my happiest memories are of playing in the dirt, eating it, running naked on the uneven ground with my mother chasing after me, shouting, “Munniii, Munniii, come here you little rascal!”
Two years after we arrived in the city, mother gave birth to my younger brother, Sonu. Sonu was a colicky child. His head was way bigger than the rest of his body. He was also the biggest bed-wetter on the planet. But he made up for it with his smile. It was a smile that lit up the day. Rajinder, my elder brother, was aloof and distant. The eight-year difference in our ages had created a chasm between us which he showed no inclination of bridging. He was the studious kind, loving nothing better than to read and study. And he was completely useless when it came to the practical business of surviving in a tent. The tarpaulin covering was no protection against gusts of wind or a heavy downpour. Whenever the rain came pelting down, our so-called house would get flooded in minutes. I would be the one then scooping out the water in buckets. Every time our roof would be blown off, it would be me and Papa who would painstakingly drag it back and weigh it down with rocks. Rajinder would act as a supervisor, checking if our repair job was satisfactory, without lifting a finger himself.
My mother eventually made peace with the city. But my father could not comprehend it till his dying day. He would often lament that it was the biggest mistake of his life to leave his small patch of land and his two oxen and move to the city. On days when we went to sleep hungry because we could only afford one meal, he would beat his head with his hands, and tell us, “Even the animals in the village receive a regular diet. But it is better to be a dog than a human in this heartless city.” Lying in our 10x10 tent he would talk to us about the wide-open expanses of his village – wheat fields fluttering in the breeze, yellow mustard filling every space, a technicolour paradise, miles of open space where, if you looked, you could see forever.
He had a farmer’s weather-beaten face and a farmer’s nose for weather. He would squint at the sky with his grey eyes and make a forecast. “Going to be a storm today, Munni.” And sure enough, three hours later we would be drenched in a squall that would just come out of the blue.
But most of the time he was sullen, silent, and sozzled. He would stumble into the house in the evening and beat me and Rajinder, and most often, mother. My father was a weak man. He couldn’t handle the stress of the city and sought refuge in alcohol. He could only afford the bootleg variety known as desi tharra which caused such a stink in the house that I would gag. That early experience made me hate liquor like nothing else.
By the time I turned four, my parents had saved enough money to invest in a permanent dwelling. We finally developed roots in a slum colony on the outskirts of the city. The official name for our locality was JJ – standing for Jhuggi Jhopri – Cluster No 66, but it was known locally as Rail Basti because it was situated on both sides of a railway track.
Our new home, made of corrugated metal sheet, with a plywood door, was a definite improvement over the temporary tents that had marked our existence till then. From 10x10 we upgraded to 25x15. From one room we went to one-and-a-half, with my parents taking the bigger room, which also had the kitchen, and Rajinder, Sonu and me sharing the smaller one. The roof, though, still required to be weighed down with gunny bags and all kinds of scrap material, and it still leaked like a sieve during the monsoon. Worse, our hut was right behind the railway track, and every time a train thundered over it, our tin shack would shake like a leaf in the wind.
Excerpted with permission from The Girl With the Seven Lives, Vikas Swarup, Simon and Schuster India.
