Men of Cheeta Camp
If we stop thinking about people, we’ll reach a stage where they are fully capable of disappearing from our memories altogether. Almost like they never existed in the first place. That’s the beauty of consciousness. You are there only as long as you are welcome. Once you’re out, you can probably be shut out forever. Of course, we are talking about healthy minds here devoid of any sort of debilitating mental conditions.
Memory remains my dearest subject to stab in spite of its countless misgivings. Not because I have a strong memory but because I love going back to my childhood all the time. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I am gifted with a crystal clear insight in to what happened more than two decades ago although I might be vague about what truly unfolded five years ago. Imagine two picture frames on a table — one accumulating dust while another staying squeaky clean. The irony being, the cleaner one is the much older one.
Which takes us to Cheeta Camp, the slummy area (a word we locals used to describe a neighbourhood, paying no obeisance to its geometric designation) of Bombay where I grew up. I’ve previously visited this place several times in my blog but this time around, let me introduce you to some of the finest men I came across back then. They were mostly silent and went about their jobs and yet they remain pegged on the walls of my memory. What’s interesting here is my brother, who is barely two years younger to me, doesn’t really see them in the same light that I am going to describe. To him, they were present for the sake of presence. To me, they are those I wonder about; where are they now, how are they now, or simply, are they now?
Let’s start at the beginning of dawn. Even before the clock struck 6, a guy unilaterally named pavwala used to visit our line — a further division of the sector in a chawl; all houses shared walls standing next to each other — handing out very warm slices of bread (pav). A young lanky fellow, often shirtless, he was quick on his feet and carried his product straight from the bakery in Trombay. There was no time to waste. Hands exchanged bread with money. So quick, so damn efficient. I must have been 4-ish but I still remember very vividly that there was no communication whatsoever between him and his morning clients. He entered each line not knowing which door will be open but he had to try his luck. Maybe he didn’t waste time on talking because nobody liked to buy cold slices.
As the sun showed up and made his presence felt, so did another gentleman with white flowy beard. He was the duawala; someone who fans incense smoke into the house. I read Tagore’s Kabuliwala much later in life but I always felt that this man from my past could have been my Kabuliwala. Clad in a white salwar, layered by a black but tattered Nehru jacket and white pyjama to boot, he had a striking personality. Aquiline nose on a face that exhaled a weird breath of calmness. As soon as he reached our doorstep, my brother and I used to run toward the tiny steel thingie he held in his right hand. He fanned using his left hand — as a kid, I harboured this desire to be a southpaw so much that I not only learned how to write with my left hand but also became a left-handed medium-pace bowler — with the sweet-smelling fumes of loban hitting both our little faces. While doing so, he used to murmur some scriptural lines which were supposed to disinfect the given house from bad spirit. Hence the name duawala. I don’t know when he stopped visiting our chawl but it’s amazing how practically secular things were back then. He performed what he felt was his job and we spared a 10/25/50 paise coin into his receptacle. There were no terms or conditions to this service. If you don’t pay, he’d just walk on to the next door.
Every Sunday morning, we’ll hear a gravel-voiced man scream “vajdi-pepsa-wala” (liver-lungs seller) followed by a continuous string of bell-ring on his bicycle he never mounted. This jet black-haired man with hands full of thick veins was a butcher who believed in knife-to-door service. My earliest memory of him is pulling different body parts of the goats he had killed out of his big hanging bag and flashing them to the women — “Ekdam fresh hai!” The women argued and bargained with him on a weekly basis. More often than not, he conceded because it was difficult to win against a battalion of hardened women. But sometimes, he held his ground and would just move on along with his HERO bicycle. And whenever he tried to do that, he would break into a wide smile. After all, he had to return to the same spot the following weekend.
Since my childhood days onward, I’ve been obsessed with old people. Their wrinkles fascinated me as much as a their dentured laughter; their wise words charmed me as much as their snaily pace of existence. There was always something about them that pulled me in their direction. Young people intimidated me while the more weathered ones appeared welcoming. In the early 90s, there was one particular old man who was the neighbourhood’s favourite. We called him chindivala; he collected old clothes for a living in exchange for a few bucks or coins. Recycling at its best. He wore dhoti and gandhi topi and carried a large sack behind his back. As soon as he showed up, all the kids flocked to him to do what we felt was the awesomest thing ever: handshake. He shook hands with every little one of us. He wasn’t a celebrity but for reasons way beyond our timid understanding, he broke the barrier between childhood and senility every time he extended his right hand out with a toothless smile.
At a very young age, I understood the power of alcohol. Those who don’t know what it can do to the semblance of what we like to call a family are infinitely lucky. If being poor wasn’t tough enough, our wall-less house dealt with liquor-driven drama almost every second night. Needless to suggest, it didn’t take me long to identify that Big A was my number one enemy in life. There were times when I would imagine how I’d destroy all the alcohol in the world. Stupid me. Yet, despite all these immature inferences, there was one interesting character in our chawl who was perpetually drunk. And he was, surprisingly, one of my dearest too. A man in his early 60s, he was balding in the middle and had white whiskers and negligible beard. He never inserted his shirt in to his trousers and spoke several south Indian languages, often prone to dropping deep words soaked in hooch about the many adventures from his past days. He spoke to my amma in Kannada and immediate neighbours in Tamil and Telugu and in drunken English with me. His lingual prowess must have be the reason why I still remember him. However, it wasn’t always rosy. Every once in a while, he showed up with blood stains on his collar. Collateral damage of what he loved drinking perhaps.
Everybody loves a sweet guy. Everybody loves a sweet guy who brings sweets more. One such neighbourhood persona was gulabjamunwala. His real name, we later learned, was Ramesh and he was a Sindhi fellow with a big belly. His line call was “walle gulab jamun waale” and as soon as you heard it, you stormed out of your house even if you knew your mother won’t buy you anything. After he passed away to a sudden heart attack, his brother took over the rounds. Unfortunately for him, he never matched his elder brother in terms of popularity. Kids loved Ramesh because he used to hand out the chashni (sugary syrup) left at the end. If there is anything I miss the most about the place I grew up in, it’s the sweets. All of them, especially the sorts Ramesh used to bring, placed in leaf-bowls smelling divine. At the risk of drowning in nostalgia, fuck pre-diabetes.
Do you remember the days when there was no such a thing as iodized salt? I do. I also remember the namakwala who walked our lanes carrying that huge wicker basket on his head almost every single day. Even before I learnt about the role Gandhiji played in bringing down the price of salt for eternity, I was aware of the fact that salt was super-cheap. And the face of the person who brought salt to our doorsteps remains fresh in my head. A tall burly man who walked slow and screamed “namak gyaaaaaa” (buy salt) as he passed every second to fourth door. One rainy morning, he slipped and his basket crashed down. I witnessed the fall as I was walking a few steps behind him on my way to nearby shop. Seeing him slip, I ran towards him but as soon as I reached him, the elders — mostly the womenfolk — around me pushed me aside so that they could help him up. Somebody said “paani lao” (bring water) while somebody else said “pankha lao” (bring hand-fan), as the adults got busy adulting around the heavy fallen man. To make myself useful, I started saving whatever I could of the spoilt salt. Seeing me, other kids joined in the effort. That’s how we rolled back then. We cared in whatever ways we could bother to.
Maqbool was his name. Ever heard of a blind plumber? Well, I’ve seen one weaving his magic in darkness. In fact, he covered the plumbing job for most of the houses in our neighbourhood and was a legend of sorts. However, he wasn’t always blind. His eyesight weakened over the years until there was nothing left. Yet, he continued to work with a young assistant by his side. Along with exemplary skills, he was a fine conversationalist too. Used to call my amma ‘akka’ (elder sister) and chatted away to glory while his fluent hands continued fixing whatever needed to be fixed.
As I think about it now, there are many more men worth mentioning here and in the same league, there are some wonderful ladies too. Some day, hopefully, I’ll dedicate a blog post to the women who left an inescapable mark on my psyche. Until then, let’s try not to bring nostalgia back.
