Drop the broom, pick up the chalk

"The dark ominous cloud I looked up at was actually a flock of crows coming at me," remembers sexagenarian Ramesh Haralkar, his eyes still freezing with horror at the nearly four-decade memory of riding atop a garbage truck full of dead rats from Central Mumbai's Haffkine Institute to the dumping ground.

"I'd just watched Omen with friends and felt the birds were coming to gouge my eyes out like in the movie." Only, the flying scavengers were more interested in the rats than him. "I couldn't even let fear stop my pitchfork pushing out the mangled, dead rats stuck to the truck bottom."

As Haralkar recounts his experience, the 30-odd children of conservancy workers at the municipal school in Mumbai's Tilak Nagar neighbourhood listen in rapt attention. Not one face has disbelief on it. "Disbelief may be for those like you who come from privileged backgrounds," says Haralkar. "For us Dalits, this is the reality... the world we're born and condemned to die in, generation after generation."

Conservancy workers' colonies reinforce the sub-humanness of their existence, just like the job, says Haralkar, whose Safai Kamgar Parivartan Sangh has been running tutorials in several schools in neighbourhoods housing conservancy workers since 1998. "Crammed in filthy colonies in small tenements, most discourage kids from going to school right from the beginning."

Socialised into thinking they have to either pick up the broom or lower themselves into sewage manholes, education is viewed as unnecessary. "The few who do send kids to school, send them to civic ones where teaching standards aren't the best. This leads to frustration-led dropouts. Even those who pass out, do so, so poorly; they barely have a chance when it comes to competition outside."

Given that almost all conservancy workers begin their day drunk ("How else will they work?"), fights, brawls and domestic abuse are a 24x7 phenomenon in these neighbourhoods.

It is to help such kids that Haralkar started his jhaadu virudh khadu (Drop the broom, for the chalk) in 1974. "I began with the terrace of our conservancy workers' building. I noticed children who came to the tutorials wanted to break from what can only be called caste-based slavery."

Quick to point out that he has nothing against dignity of labour, he asks, "Why do Dalits have 100 per cent reservation to clean gutters, sweep streets, handle hospital waste and remove rotting maggot-infested dead animals? Why don't upper castes who sabre-rattle over reservations not want these jobs?"

Haralkar should know. He was after all a conservancy worker from 1971-86. His father Hari Vithu, who worked as a labourer for an army camp in Karachi, came back after Partition to become a safai karamchari. "He had no roof on his head and when he got a small tenement in Dharavi, we wanted to do our best to see that we didn't lose that home. I was good at drawing and calligraphy and had dreamed of pursuing JJ School of Arts to become an art teacher. But the fear of losing our home forced me to throw the brush away for the broom."

He remembers being violently sick on the first few days on the job. "Once someone threw a used sanitary pad on me while I swept the service lane between buildings. My hair and face was covered in menstrual blood. Some of my colleagues who first ran to help thought I'm bleeding from an injury too, shuddered when I told them what happened. I had nothing to even clean myself with. I remember rubbing my face into a broom."

Later, he deadened himself to the disgust. Unlike his peers who sought refuge in alcohol, Haralkar took to activism. "I had a long association with Dalit Panthers," he offers. Despite the huge appreciation and following in the community that he enjoys, Haralkar has spurned offers of joining the political mainstream. "Look at our Dalit leadership. They want cushy posts and positions which upper castes use to make them sell out. They only use emotions to raise political temperature when a Dalit's attacked or a statue/building's desecrated. While shows of strength are good, that's not enough. Where is the issue-based movement with sustained resistance, that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar spoke of?"

He turns around to ask children around if they could recall activists like Aruna Roy, Medha Patkar or Anna Hazare from the community. The response is a deafening silence. Till a feeble-voiced Lata Torne, a Class 9 student, says, "Can we become those leaders?"

Haralkar's voice breaks with emotion, even as he laughs out aloud. "This is the hope that's brought me till here and leads me on..."