I live at the corner of a street, in what used to be the downmarket segment of my neighbourhood. The lane is narrow, and when my family and I moved in, it faced a jungle area that was nominally separated from the lane with sagging barbed wire. The putative fence drooped even more at a juncture; my neighbours called ‘T-point’, wilting under the weight of garbage bags slung over the fence by passing domestic workers who didn’t want to walk all the way to the ‘official’ garbage dump and confront the smell of rot.
My first encounter with my neighbours who had lived in the street almost from the time the colony was first established in the 1960s was through the T-point garbage dump. I was of course a fledging inhabitant of the neighbourhood since I had moved into the apartment in 1990, almost thirty years ‘junior’ to Mrs D, Mr M. and S. Sahib, denizens of the street. In the way of all new home owners, I was almost militant in my campaign against the T-point dump at the corner of my home. I would stand on my balcony and shout down to garbage bag slingers, entreat the street sweepers to clean the bags and grumble into every possible ear I could find. Sensibly, no one paid any attention to me. Finally, in a fit of private enterprise, I engaged a small group to come in one Sunday morning; to clean out the dump and ferry its contents to the official garbage dump a little way down the street.
Midway through the Great Clean Up, the men returned from the official dump saying that a sahib had stopped them from dumping the T-point garbage in the official dump. Not quite getting it, I imperiously instructed them to continue and told them to convey to the sahib that the madam at the corner was getting the garbage cleaned. I continued to stand at the corner, in supervisory regalia of headscarf and dark glasses. Soon enough a dapper gentleman came down the street right behind the cleaners trundling their wheelbarrows from dump to dump. I had a little time to decide my strategy; should I be morally outraged at the mess? Cravenly subaltern and stop the work? Or arrogantly middle class about my rights over a public street?
With spare seconds before the Sahib of the official dump reached me, I took recourse to anthropology and decided the best thing would be to open in a familiar idiom by acknowledging hierarchy. Folding my hands, I greeted ‘Uncle ji’ and tossed all gender equality to the wind by introducing myself as Mrs. S. He was flattered and unmanned by my opening gambit but made a quick recover and asked ‘beti ji’ what she was up to. I pointed up at my apartment, and said the flies were infesting my home, affecting the health – and here I pulled out my uber card – of my mother-in-law. S. Sahib looked appreciative, recognizing the gambit, but by no means beaten. “Did you know” he said, “that the men are dumping malba in the dhalao, the garbage dump?” Not quite grasping his point, but not willing to give in wholly either, I resorted to a prudent mixture of meekness and bewilderment, and damning the cleaners to their fate, pointed out that “They” didn’t know.
As I said, I wasn’t quite clear myself at that point about the fine distinctions of disposal. S. Sahib was happy to instruct the greenhorn lady about the niceties of garbage. Malba he said, could not be dumped into the dhalao, the official dump, that was in the charge of the Residents Welfare Association who supervised the street cleaning staff, whose job it was to clear out and clean the dhalao of household waste. Malba on the other hand, was building material and had to be dumped outside the walls of the dhalao. This upstart garbage then had to be removed by the Municipal Committee tractors, paid for by the Individual Malba Dumper.
This, continued S. Sahib in his discourse on disposal, was the decision of the Residents Welfare Association of which he was a long term elected member. He then did me the ultimate honour by saying that of course he and I knew that no Individual Malba Dumper ever did the right thing and it was left to right minded residents who cared for cleanliness, to remove “Their” malba and indeed their garbage from unofficial T point garbage dumps. He and I, he said, graciously inclining his head, worked For the Health and Welfare of All. I was quite overcome by his gesture of inclusion that transformed me from a newbie to a Resident, and almost instinctively folded my hands again. Happy at having won his point, with the added beneficence of initiating a new resident into the niceties of garbage, and finding a fresh audience, S. Sahib turned and began directly operations from dump to dump. It wasn’t my business anymore, but had been taken over by an elected resident member of the association, transforming a spot of private enterprise to an official act of regulation. S. Sahib, needless to say, introduced me to the old time neighbours, and ended his triumph and magnanimity by sending the colony chowkidar to my door with a letter announcing the death of a denizen, in an act of official neighbourliness. I had finally arrived.
My first encounter with my neighbours who had lived in the street almost from the time the colony was first established in the 1960s was through the T-point garbage dump. I was of course a fledging inhabitant of the neighbourhood since I had moved into the apartment in 1990, almost thirty years ‘junior’ to Mrs D, Mr M. and S. Sahib, denizens of the street. In the way of all new home owners, I was almost militant in my campaign against the T-point dump at the corner of my home. I would stand on my balcony and shout down to garbage bag slingers, entreat the street sweepers to clean the bags and grumble into every possible ear I could find. Sensibly, no one paid any attention to me. Finally, in a fit of private enterprise, I engaged a small group to come in one Sunday morning; to clean out the dump and ferry its contents to the official garbage dump a little way down the street.
Midway through the Great Clean Up, the men returned from the official dump saying that a sahib had stopped them from dumping the T-point garbage in the official dump. Not quite getting it, I imperiously instructed them to continue and told them to convey to the sahib that the madam at the corner was getting the garbage cleaned. I continued to stand at the corner, in supervisory regalia of headscarf and dark glasses. Soon enough a dapper gentleman came down the street right behind the cleaners trundling their wheelbarrows from dump to dump. I had a little time to decide my strategy; should I be morally outraged at the mess? Cravenly subaltern and stop the work? Or arrogantly middle class about my rights over a public street?
With spare seconds before the Sahib of the official dump reached me, I took recourse to anthropology and decided the best thing would be to open in a familiar idiom by acknowledging hierarchy. Folding my hands, I greeted ‘Uncle ji’ and tossed all gender equality to the wind by introducing myself as Mrs. S. He was flattered and unmanned by my opening gambit but made a quick recover and asked ‘beti ji’ what she was up to. I pointed up at my apartment, and said the flies were infesting my home, affecting the health – and here I pulled out my uber card – of my mother-in-law. S. Sahib looked appreciative, recognizing the gambit, but by no means beaten. “Did you know” he said, “that the men are dumping malba in the dhalao, the garbage dump?” Not quite grasping his point, but not willing to give in wholly either, I resorted to a prudent mixture of meekness and bewilderment, and damning the cleaners to their fate, pointed out that “They” didn’t know.
As I said, I wasn’t quite clear myself at that point about the fine distinctions of disposal. S. Sahib was happy to instruct the greenhorn lady about the niceties of garbage. Malba he said, could not be dumped into the dhalao, the official dump, that was in the charge of the Residents Welfare Association who supervised the street cleaning staff, whose job it was to clear out and clean the dhalao of household waste. Malba on the other hand, was building material and had to be dumped outside the walls of the dhalao. This upstart garbage then had to be removed by the Municipal Committee tractors, paid for by the Individual Malba Dumper.
This, continued S. Sahib in his discourse on disposal, was the decision of the Residents Welfare Association of which he was a long term elected member. He then did me the ultimate honour by saying that of course he and I knew that no Individual Malba Dumper ever did the right thing and it was left to right minded residents who cared for cleanliness, to remove “Their” malba and indeed their garbage from unofficial T point garbage dumps. He and I, he said, graciously inclining his head, worked For the Health and Welfare of All. I was quite overcome by his gesture of inclusion that transformed me from a newbie to a Resident, and almost instinctively folded my hands again. Happy at having won his point, with the added beneficence of initiating a new resident into the niceties of garbage, and finding a fresh audience, S. Sahib turned and began directly operations from dump to dump. It wasn’t my business anymore, but had been taken over by an elected resident member of the association, transforming a spot of private enterprise to an official act of regulation. S. Sahib, needless to say, introduced me to the old time neighbours, and ended his triumph and magnanimity by sending the colony chowkidar to my door with a letter announcing the death of a denizen, in an act of official neighbourliness. I had finally arrived.
Author's Bio- Note:
Radhika Chopra teaches
at the University of Delhi. She is the author of Militant and Migrant: The Politics and Social History of Punjab (Routledge, 2011) and edited Reframing
Masculinities: Narrating the Supportive Practices of Men (Orient Longman,
2006). She has published widely on issues of gender including among others, as
guest editor of a special issue: Indian
Masculinities of the journal: Men and
Masculinities, (2006), and co-edited South
Asian Masculinities: Contexts of Change, Sites of Continuity (2004).
She was the
curator of a film-cum-discussion series “Making
Migrants: Dialogues through Film” (2009), and “School in Cinema” (2004). She is on the editorial Board of Culture Society and Masculinities, Men’s
Studies Press and Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture,
Theory, Taylor and Francis. She has been Co-chair, U.N. Expert
Group on the Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality (Brasilia,
2003).
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