Delhiwale: Out in the cold, when the city’s streets froze over

Camaraderie in coldThree men find a brief spell of companionship It’s the rush hour evening

Camaraderie in cold

HT Image

Three men find a brief spell of companionship

It’s the rush hour evening. The traffic is flowing nonstop on Mathura Road. Nirmal Kumar Das was walking on the pavement, not far from Salman, who was walking not far from Jai Shankar. The men weren’t aware of each other’s existence until some minutes ago. But the extreme cold brought them together, creating camaraderie in the common discomfort. They started to chat, and soon came up with the idea of lighting an impromptu fire. Jai Shankar had a plastic thaili, Nirmal had a match box (because he is a beedi smoker), while chunks of wood were found beside the road.

And now they are huddled around the fireside, even as buses and cars are whizzing past within a touching distance of them, even as the nauseating fumes of burnt plastic is hurting the eyes and nose.

The three men are currently addressless. Nirmal, from Purnia in Bihar, calls himself a beldar (daily-wage labourer), and have been in Delhi for 20 years. Labourer Salman arrived two days back from Gwalior, MP, in search of work, but had his wallet and mobile phone stolen while getting off the train. Jai Shankar reached Delhi a month ago “when it wasn’t that cold.” Although he is from Raebareli, UP, he had been for many years a labourer in Punjab. He says he walked on foot all the way from Ludhiana to Delhi. The other two men look at him in disbelief. “There was no money for train or bus,” Jai Shankar mumbles, putting his head on the knees.

While Nirnal spends his nights “wherever I happen to find work, or else in a mandir or gurudwara,” Salman have spent his two Delhi nights outside the railway station, and Jai Shankar sleeps on any random roadside “as long as I can find a tree above and a wall for sahara (support).” Each man has a bag filled with spare sets of clothes and a blanket. Jai Shankar has a bed sheet, too. In cold months, night shelters for the homeless come up across Delhi-NCR, an option so far not considered by the three men.

Talking of his day, Nirmal says he was at the Labour Chowk in Bharat Nagar from morning until two in the afternoon, and couldn’t land any assignment. Silence follows; everyone is gazing at the fire.

Since all the three men have a family home in their respective villages, why not go back, and return after this brief cruel spell of extreme winter is over.

Nirmal says: “My ghar wale haven’t seen me for many years… they might not even recognize me.”

Salman: “Just a day’s kaam might give me enough rupees to afford a ticket to Gwalior.”

Jai Shankar: “My family says I must stay in Dilli and work.”

The men leave the spot some minutes after the fire dies.

Salma in winter

A woman’s struggles with the extreme cold

It is a gruelling job to survive Delhi’s brief but intense winter. More so, if the citizen doesn’t have a home with walls. More so, if this roofless person happens to be a woman.

Salma smiles, as she holds her daughter’s month-old son. The little one is swaddled in a thickly padded pink blanket. Salma too is covered in a couple of blankets, purchased the previous year. This dimly sunny morning, she is perched, as always, on her husband Rahul’s thela, parked under a tree, beside Lodhi Road. Rahul, a street recycler, is squatting on the dusty earth, cleaning the spokes of the thela’s wheels. Salma gave up her job in a “kothi” following a “haadsa” five years ago when a truck ran over her leg. Since then, Rahul have been taking care of her day-to-day living, such as washing her clothes every week in the nearby shouchalaya (public toilet). He also escorts her there for her bath. “But it is so cold these days, and the shouchalaya has no hot water facility,” Salma remarks, admitting that because of the chill she hasn’t dared to wash herself for three days straight. Besides, “you have to pay 20 rupees each time you take a bath,” she says, pressing the sleeping child closer to herself.

In the evening the baby is carried by his parents—Salma’s daughter and son-in-law who also live on the pave with her— to a nearby ren basera, the night shelter for the homeless. While Salma continues to stay with the husband under the icy sky, because “in the ren basera, the beds are upstairs and the toilet is downstairs, which is a problem for me at night due to my leg condition…”

The couple ignites a fresh round of fire as they lie down to sleep. “The aag lasts for three-four hours,” Salma says. “By then, the body feels warm and eyes close.”

Keeping warm

Daily wage labourers on their relationship with the rajai

The fire will be soon over. No problem, one of the men says. It is still afternoon, and more fires will be set up later in the day. One always manages to find scraps of wood from here-there, he says.

The men live on this pavement, here in Old Delhi, by the western wall of the Jama Masjid. The entire pave is home to multiple groups of daily-wage labourers. “Some of us are beldar, some are masons, some are carpenters, some are plumbers,” says raj mistri Muhammed Khurshid. With families back in their villages in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, the men reside on this footpath throughout the twelve months, under the open sky, directly exposed to all the extremities of Delhi’s polluted weather. Now, “marble ghisai” man Abdul Lateef shuffles his feet and cribs that the city’s brutal winters are too short. “Each year we have to buy a rajai, and it’s needed for a month only!” This is insane for the rajai is so expensive, others concede. “500 rupees,” mutters Khurshid. True, one can get the rajai on rent but then you have to pay 60 rupees for each night’s use, which ends up pricier in the long term. Plus, painter Irshad points out, “some days we find work and some days we don’t find work… wiser to buy the rajai while you have spare cash in hand.” Indeed, this weekday afternoon the men have failed to find work, obliging them to sit about the fire.

It is also a fact, Khurshid admits, that not every dweller on this pave is able to purchase a rajai. In such a case, “one of us shares the rajai with one of us who doesn’t have it.” In the day, the men store their rajais in sack-like bags hanging on the pavement wall. A typical rajai never lasts beyond a season, they say, and have to be tossed away later.

Tonight’s strategy to deal with the winter will be the same as the one yesterday. After their routine 8pm dinner at the Jamia Hotel, across the road, the men will light the day’s final fire. It will lasts for an hour. By then everyone will have snuggled under the rajai. The plastic awning that shelters the men from the night dew too will be in place.

“But the thandi never completely leaves us,” observes Khalid. “What can one do… majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi.”

Bhola’s new blanket

A rickshaw puller plans for the next winter

The chilly 11pm air is burning the bare portions of the skin. A car slows down by the pavement, here near the Ashram crossing. The front window opens. Instantly, the people lying flat on the footpath get up and rush towards the window, flinging behind their blankets and sheets. The woman passenger sitting by the window begins to quickly hand out slim bundles to these almost-invisible figures. Each bundle has a plastic-wrapped blanket. More and more people get up, and start to run after the car, which keeps moving slowly. It is astonishing that this city pavement that had seemed almost empty was actually full of citizens, who were either asleep or were simply lying down.

Amid this commotion, rickshaw puller Bhola Singh pedals hurriedly to reach close to the car. He urgently taps on the driver’s closed window. The driver throws a glance at Bhola, nods, picks a bundle from the aforementioned woman, pulls down his window, and hands it to the puller—all of this unfolds in a split second. Bhola keeps the package neatly along the length of his rickshaw’s handlebar and pedals ahead, escorting his passenger to the latter’s destination.

Unlike the people on the footpath, Bhola does have a roof. He shares a “kamra” with three other rickshaw pullers in Sarai Kale Khan village. “Why shouldn’t I have taken the blanket when it was being given for free,” he asks. By now, the car has picked up speed, driving away into the cold darkness.

Packed in a thick jacket and woolen gloves, Bhola says his room in Kale Khan remains warm even in the coldest time of winter “because our kamra is small and we are many.” Plus, there are more than enough blankets for everyone. “Kambal saaf hain,” he says approvingly of the new blanket. Bhola plans to pack it tight in his suitcase; he will not use it immediately. He has other plans for this pink blanket. It will next travel with him at the end of the cold season—he says—just before Holi, when he will board the train to his village in Munger, Bihar. “My biwi-bachhe at home will use this blanket during the next winter.”

After dropping off his customer, Bhola agrees to pose with his new possession, explaining, “I have two sons and two daughters, I’m trying to educate them… they need all the comforts I can arrange for them.”