Beniram Jaiswal is one of Mumbai’s ubiquitous hawkers who lives in dread of one thing: a municipal raid. This father of two tells Yogesh Pawar of his struggle to keep his family afloat while playing hide-and-seek with cops and civic officials.
Mumbai is so big with tall buildings and big hoardings. So, why can’t poor people like me try to make a living on one street corner? The people who grumble about the growing number of pheriwallahs are the ones who come to me for chai. If they go to a proper hotel they will have to pay between Rs 10-40 depending on the kind of place. Everyone wants to save money, but the man who helps them do that is a problem.
I’m from a village near Jhansi. The decade-old drought in Bundelkhand, my mother’s deteriorating health and my sisters’ marriages landed our family in debt. Despite selling off our small plot of land, we still couldn’t repay it. With the land gone, we lived in a hut near the grazing ground. When the upper caste moneylender and his sons began misbehaving with my wife, I complained to the police but got beaten up instead. So I left for Mumbai in 2001 with my wife and sons.
I first stayed at the Majaswadi slums in Jogeshwari (East) where I knew someone from our village. I sold my wife’s nose stud, borrowed from neighbours and started selling chai from a hand cart near the Link Road junction. After paying the municipality people, the local havaldar and the local dada’s men (who also wanted free chai), I was barely left with Rs 80.
Two years ago the kholiwallah asked us to vacate the Jogeshwari home. I managed to find a space in Naya Nagar near Mahim where my wife and I have a hut made of plastic sheets and bamboo. Now, I put up my stand between the dargah and Mahim church. My older son, who is 10, comes with me and helps deliver chai to the shops around.
I don’t have a ration card or any documents so I can’t send the children even to
a municipal school. I don’t even have enough money to buy them warm clothes. My wife has started sweeping and swabbing shops near my place of work.
Last month, I was caught unawares when the municipal van came and started taking away my stand even though I have paid my protection hafta (bribe). “The new officer is kadak (strict)and will not listen,” we were told. But this time, instead of simply carting it away, the civic staff began breaking it by stomping on it. I fled with my stove and utensils. Of course, all the hawkers are back. What has changed is the rates of hafta. Everybody wants Rs 20-50 more.
The shopkeepers keep shooing me off from their shop fronts but some understand. I once ran in front of a shop with my stand on my shoulder when the municipal van came. The staff tried to push me out, but I fell at their feet and they let me be.
I constantly live with two anxieties: of my dwelling being pulled down and the municipality van confiscating my stand. The recent cold wave has given me a rasping cough and regular bouts of fever. But I can’t rest because my family will go hungry. If it weren’t for my family that’s dependent on me, I would have ended it long ago.
My dream is to own a jhopda where it won’t be cold or wet for my family, and a regular spot from where I will not be chased away. My fellow hawkers, who see me struggle, often ask me why I don’t return to Bundelkhand. But what do I have to go back to? If there was anything there, would I have brought my family to Mumbai to live like animals?
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