Saumya Roy - Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai

Copyright 2021 by Saumya Roy

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Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roy, Saumya, author.

Title: Castaway mountain : love and loss among the wastepickers of Mumbai / Saumya Roy.

Description: Includes bibliographical references. | New York, NY: Astra House, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN: 2021909406 | ISBN: 9781662600951 (hardcover) | 9781662600968 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH RagpickersIndiaMumbaiEconomic conditions. | RagpickersIndiaMumbaiSocial conditions. | Plastic scrapEconomic aspectsIndia. | Refuse and refuse disposalSocial aspectsIndiaMumbai. | PoorIndiaMumbai. | SlumsIndiaMumbai. | Mumbai (India)Social conditions. | Mumbai (India)Economic conditions. | BISAC SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy

Classification: LCC HD9975.I43 R69 2021 | DDC 363.728/209dc23

First edition

Design by Richard Oriolo

Map illustration by Jake Coolidge

The text is set in Adobe Caslon Pro.

The titles are set in Akzidenz Grotesk BQ.

To,

My grandmother, professor and poet, who wrote

have you seen, my friend?

on the peaks of inky, dark, rain cloud topped-mountains,

snowy white illuminating clouds appear sometimes?

and Prashant Kant, my uncle,

who could not see but showed me how to spot the

illuminating clouds.

CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

AT THE MOUNTAINS

Hyder Ali Shaikh: Wastepicker at the Deonar garbage mountains and father of Farzana and her eight siblings.

Shakimun Ali Shaikh: Hyder Alis wife.

Jehana Shaikh: Hyder Ali and Shakimuns daughter and the eldest of the nine children.

Jehangir Shaikh: Hyder Alis oldest son and the second oldest of the children.

Rakila Shaikh: Jehangirs wife. Mother of their three children.

Alamgir Shaikh: Hyder Alis second oldest son, drives garbage trucks.

Yasmeen Shaikh: Alamgirs wife and mother of their two children.

Sahani Shaikh: Second oldest of the Shaikh daughters.

Ismail Shaikh: Sahanis husband. Does odd jobs around the mountains.

Afsana Shaikh: The third oldest sister and the only one who married and moved away from the mountains. Does tailoring work and is a mother of two.

FARZANA SHAIKH: Hyder Ali and Shakimuns daughter. Sixth of the nine children.

Farha Shaikh: The sister after Farzana. The two often pick together.

Jannat Shaikh: The youngest of the daughters.

Ramzan Shaikh: Hyder Alis son and youngest child.

Moharram Ali Siddiqui: Picker, known for working night shifts and finding treasures in mountain trash.

Yasmin Siddiqui: Moharram Alis wife.

Hera Siddiqui: Moharram Alis oldest child. Hera is beautiful, imperious, and of the few girls from these lanes to have made it to high school.

Sharib Siddiqui: Older of Moharram Alis two sons. Often missing school to pick on the mountains.

Sameer Siddiqui: Younger of Moharram Alis sons.

Mehrun Siddiqui: Moharram Ali and Yasmins middle daughter.

Ashra Siddiqui: The youngest of the Siddiqui children.

Salma Shaikh: Picker who came to work on the mountains more than three decades ago with a toddler son and hundred-day-old baby son wrapped to her back, after her husband had died.

Aslam Shaikh: Salmas older son, married to Shiva, father of four sons and a daughter.

Arif Shaikh: One of Aslams four sons.

Vitabai Kamble: Said to be one of the oldest pickers on the mountains. She came to live at the mountains rim in the mid-seventies with her husband and children.

Nagesh Kamble: Vitabais oldest son. Came to pick at the mountains as a ten-year-old and turned middle-aged and potbellied on them.

Babita Kamble: Vitabais daughter.

Rafique Khan: Garbage trader.

Atique Khan: Rafiques younger brother.

IN THE COURT

Dr. Sandip Rane: Doctor who lives in a genteel neighborhood near the mountains rim and runs a cardiology hospital. Filed for contempt in 2008 when the municipality did not close the mountains per court directions, following a case filed in 1996.

Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud: Adjudicated on Dr. Ranes case in the Bombay High Court.

Raj Kumar Sharma: Grew up and lives in a leafy area not far from the mountains. Filed a court case in December 2015 asking for the mountains to get mended.

Justice Abhay Oka: Judge who heard Sharmas case for several years.

ITABAI KAMBLE FIRST ARRIVED at my office on a warm April afternoon in 2013. She worked on the garbage mountains at the edge of the city and needed a loan from the foundation I had set up with my father in 2010 to provide small, low-interest loans to grow the citys poorest residents businesses. I had worked as a reporter for nearly a decade before that and wanted to do more than write about Indias rising economy and its lengthening shadow of slums and waste. While Indias economy was fueled by people buying, and even taking loans for, new gadgets, holiday travel, and weddings, I had written about how telemarketers from banks often hung up when they reached people in slums.

We set up our office at the end of interminable, undrying clotheslines in a residential lane in the Sion area of the city. At first, the only sounds were of trains passing by on the tracks behind it, but, as word of our operation spread, the citys fish, fruit, and street food sellers, lunch makers, cobblers, and tailors filled our office, drowning out the train sounds. As I met vendors who exchanged garlic for household waste that they then resold and others who made the citys shoes, clothes, and toys, my brain slowly got rewired. I saw a city different from the one I had lived in for years. I asked about how they made a profit on their meager, and often several, businesses, eliciting blank stares. They were not sure.

But hardly anyone I had met through the foundation had fascinated me as Vitabai did that summer afternoon. She huddled close to the thin mattress I sat on, revealing hands and feet covered in fading scars, which mapped memories of the nearly four decades she had spent on rising trash. The mountains had lightened her hair and I saw the thrill of chasing forgotten treasures dance in her silver-rimmed eyes. Her plucky energy and memories of her life on the growing mountains had lit up my languorous afternoon.