Not a sight you can unsee, a dozen men sleeping on wooden chowkis or cots on the breast of the city in the middle of the day. Beyond them lies the pavement — broken, wet from the morning’s rain. Beyond that lies that road, lined with stationery shops, cycle shops, shops selling tubes and tyres, roadside eateries, restaurants, a liquor shop... Cars, vans, bikes, hand-pulled rickshaws, and small and medium-sized lorries eddy around from six in the morning to well past midnight.
It is not a sight you can unsee, but no one hurrying past seems to notice.
If only one would stop to ask or zoom in, as they say now, one would know that this is not just a random assembly of men on narrow cots.
Bullet Yadav, Lalan Prasad, Nunu Kanti, Sunil Kumar Yadav, Rakesh Kumar Balmiki and their friends are mostly in their 50s, mostly employed in small businesses in the vicinity.
This space, underneath a never-finished building, is where they rest between driving a lorry, cooking, pulling a rickshaw and working as delivery men for shopkeepers in Burrabazar.
The ownership of a cot changes by shift and also by requirement. Sometimes, as many as three of them huddle together on one — no, they don’t mind managing, though yes, “karvat nahin badalte hain”. Says Shivaji Mahato, “But then we are dead tired. We wake up in the same position we fall asleep in.” There is one ceiling fan for those 15-20 people. “It is enough. When the skies are clear we pull the cots out onto the pavement,” he adds.
Shivaji is from Bihar’s Samastipur district, he drives a lorry. Bullet is from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh (UP). “This is our address in the city. We live here with a dozen strays and hundreds of rats and chhuchhundars, who have nowhere to go,” he says. Then adds, “Just like us.” That morning though, the rodents are nowhere to be seen but three dogs were fast asleep beside and beneath the cots. Some pigeons are perched on the electric wires above.
Bullet cannot recall the year he first arrived in Calcutta but he remembers it was a couple of months before “Indiraji” was killed. Those days he supplied coal to one eatery in the neighbourhood, now he supplies coal to many small-scale roadside
eateries. “There was a time when all restaurants would cook on coal fire; LPG came much later. Now coal is required in big restaurants only for tandoor,” he says, hurriedly chopping onions for the evening meal he is about to cook. Bullet has just woken up, he is still in his lungi and vest but Rakesh is dressed in his immacu- late chauffeur’s uniform, and Shivaji too is bathed and ready for work. “Gangajal pours out of the taps here,” says Shivaji. He continues, “I am happy with whatever facilities I get. Andha ka aage kya, pichhe kya…”
Shivaji left home for Calcutta in the 1980s. His parents were alive then. He says, “Now they are no more. My wife and children live in the village.” He is the only one in the group who has a concrete house. “With a tiled roof,” he makes sure to point out. Rakesh has a small plot back home in Badaun, UP. It is not enough for a large family though. “Why else do you think I am here,” he asks.
Apart from the cots, the space that is home to Bullet, Shivaji and the others is stuffed with “agram bagram” things — drums to store water for cooking and cleaning, piles of cardboard boxes, discarded sofas, chairs, two-wheelers, unused machinery, suitcases and bags with clothes spilling out of them and a clothesline, which appears to double as an almirah.
Sherawali, Shiv-Parvati, Hanumanji, Ganesha, Tara Maa, Radha-Krishna and Lakshmi- Naryana smile down at everyone from the walls.
The chatter continues. Rahul is the son of Bullet. He is a school student but had to come to Calcutta a couple of months ago when his father fractured his leg. He seems amused to hear the seniors prattle on about their respective villages.
Shivaji says, “Eighteen years ago, the state government promised to give the people of our village money to build pucca houses. Nothing happened. Twelve years ago, I got a bathroom. Two years ago, when I went to ask about the promised money for the house, the afsar at the block development office said my name was in the computer, which meant I would get it someday. I am already old; if it comes after my death, at least my children can live comfortably.”
There is no apparent reason to laugh at this tale of elected governments and their selective amnesia, but all the men begin to laugh at this point.
“They are laughing because we all know that sarkars at the Centre and the state like to make promises,” says Sunil Kumar Yadav, who is from Banka district of Bihar. He goes on, “Hum garib aadmi. We believe whatever they tell us and keep waiting forever in the hope that someday we will get something. Bal-bachchalogan will have a better life.”
Says Nunu, “Political party karyakartas come here to ask for votes but when they learn that we have no voting rights in Bengal, they leave.”
It is late in the afternoon, the pigeons descend from their varied perches onto the pavement in front of the cots. Bullet spreads some rice for them. He points to a potli in which he has kept aside dry food for the rats. He says, “They will come out of their holes when the office para goes to sleep. There are hundreds of them. I leave food for them at various spots so they won’t come and bite our toes. Shanti se rehta hai to theek lagta hai.”