Home is Nowhere

Agar yahan kisi ek ko ho jaye, toh barbadi ho jayegi [If one person gets it here, there will be ruin],” says Santosh Gupta, pointing to the children sitting in circles drawn on the ground and waiting for their lunch at the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, just behind Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in central Delhi. A coordinator of the Salaam Baalak Trust, Gupta spends his days and evenings with streetchildren. As a beneficiary himself of the Trust, Gupta has been working with the organisation for over two decades. He ran away from Deoghar, Jharkhand as a 13-year-old because of constant “maarpeet [violence]” at home. While working as a coolie at the New Delhi Railway Station, he came in touch with Salaam Balaak Trust which strives for the betterment of street children. With their help Gupta worked his way out of the streets. Today, he does the same for the 150-odd children who live in and around Connaught Place.

Education, nutrition and safety of his wards are usually his main concerns. However, in the last few weeks, attention has shifted to a disease, which, if it reaches a single individual from the community, will likely destroy many, many more. He operates on the belief that the Covid-19 is still a disease that fells only the well-travelled and well-heeled. Gupta says that on April 2nd a 40-year-old streetdweller died at Lady Hardinge Medical Hospital, having been admitted the day before. The man used to stay in and around Shivaji Stadium. Gupta was petrified that the coronavirus might have caused the death. But the test came back negative. He knows that despite the best efforts to segregate and separate children from each other and insisting on handwashing, precautions will always fall short of reality. His only hope at the moment is that the children and people of the street have not been in contact with anyone who has travelled abroad. He says, “Jab log inhein paise bhi dete hain, door se dete hain [Even when people give them money, they give it from afar].” Right now the physical distance which the affluent maintain from streetchildren is his only succour.

Thanks to the pandemic, slogans like ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’ or ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ have become public health announcements, community clarion calls and eventually a war cry. But Delhi, a city of more than 16 million people, has nearly 50,000 homeless people—among the most of any Indian city—according to the 2011 Census. Harsh Mander, a human rights activist who works with homeless persons and streetchildren, pegs the number of homeless in Delhi closer to 150,000. What happens to those who have no house to stay in? How can they stay safe?

In the hierarchy of streetchildren, those at the shelter are better off, as they have a roof and someone like Gupta who checks in on them every day, ensuring that they have food and, importantly, information. I speak to nine-year-old Sachin and 11-year-old Ilma. Both of them live at the shelter with their parents. Sachin’s father is a carpenter and Ilma’s works as a security guard at the Shivaji Metro Station. Sachin says, “Yahan kisi ko corona nahin hai. Baahar se aata hai. Haath milane se aa jaata hai [No one has corona here, it comes from outside. You get it by shaking hands].” They’ve been told to avoid crowds and to not leave the premises. Ilma’s father was a tuberculosis patient who moved to Delhi from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh for treatment. Delhi did help cure him, but now the pall of another illness hangs over all. While the children stick to their circles to eat their meals, the distancing dissolves soon as they move into a porta cabin to watch television. Everyone is, of course, doing their best. But in quarters such as this where 250 people live in proximity, ‘space’ and ‘distance’ will always be concepts and not realities.

As the coordinator of Salaam Baalak Trust in Connaught Place, Gupta knows scores of children who live in and around central Delhi. We drive through abandoned Shankar Market, Inner and Outer Circle. The avenues and roundabout are unpeopled except for a few clusters of streetdwellers. To the passer-by these people might seem itinerant. But Gupta knows them all by name and is aware that this particular red light or the entrance to this particular subway, or the shade of that particular restaurant is their home. To know a neighbourhood is to know the people who have claimed those six-feet of pavement space as their home.

Every day Gupta ensures that various families in CP receive lunch. He stops by a transvestite in a bright green kurta. Tanya tells him that the cops chased away a few of the children who stayed near Shivaji Metro station because they were doing ‘nasha’. He stops by another family eating right outside a shuttered KFC. The woman complains that the last time he gave them dry ration, the son sold it all to feed his addiction. She prefers to receive cooked food. Gupta says that while the cheapest drugs like glue continue to be available in some shape or form, addicts are finding it harder to come by smack. He knows of at least two deaths in the first week of April of streetdwellers, brought on by a combination of malnutrition and withdrawal of substances.

We stop by an old woman dressed in an underskirt and T-shirt, with a cloth covering her head, cooking for around six children. In a vessel, perched on a simple stove of brick and fire, she stirs gobhi-aloo. She says three of these are her grandchildren, the rest are those who’ve become family over the years. From the eyes of the two elder boys it soon becomes apparent that they are on intoxicants. Gupta asks them about it. Without much conviction, they plead ignorance and innocence. He asks them where they are still finding their ‘maal’. In their case it is ‘mochiwaala’ glue, an industrial glue which can give them a sense of wellbeing and forgetfulness. To Gupta they confess that they usually buy a tube for Rs 7. In the time of lockdown, the same tube now sells for Rs 130. He asks where they are getting the money, and they hum and haw and say they sell bottles to the kabadiwaala. Which kabadiwala is open at this time? They look away and offer no explanations.

Over the years, Connaught Place has gone through many facepacks and facials, which have tried to whitewash it completely. But despite its shiny white commercial exterior, it has always had a darker side. You only need to wander through a tad less-neon lane to stumble upon drug users and addicts. With the lockdown having forced out the shopkeepers and shoppers, diners and waiters, the only people who remain are the children of the street, their families and the users of substances.

To see the scale of people who do not have homes one needs to travel towards Kashmere Gate ISBT. A regiment of ‘Ran Basera’ (shelter home) cabins stand by the banks of the Yamuna, near Nigambodh Ghat. On March 25th, a day after the three-week nationwide lockdown was announced, the scenes here were biblical in terms of proportion and need. A clip on Twitter posted by Anjali Bhardwaj (co-convenor of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information) showed a camera pan for more than two minutes over neverending lines of men waiting for food. They sat haunches by haunches with barely inches between them holding empty plates. By April 7th, the day we visited, the crowds still remain but order has been implemented.

IT IS LUNCH time, and in the hour or so we spend there, van after van arrives with cooked food. First from a religious trust and then from NGOs like Wishes and Blessings, which help to feed the hungry. A genial cop stationed at the Ran Basera, Sunny Aggarwal, says that at least 5,000 people will be fed today. As far as the eye can see men stand or squat at arms-distance from each other awaiting their portion of rice and sabzi curry. There isn’t a single woman or child in the line. This is a vista of men without families. Some carry blankets and bags, most arrive emptyhanded as they sleep on the banks of the Yamuna, with the sky as their roof and the sluggish river as their view. The cops maintain strict order, ensuring that those who stray out of the circles drawn on the ground move all the way to the end of the line. They scold the men if their mouths are not covered with a cloth. The men get their parcel of food and then wander to the riverside where they huddle in groups or sit alone under a massive water pipeline and eat. Prior to the lockdown most of these men depended on religious organisations, especially the ‘langars’ at gurdwaras for food. Without access to that or cheap streetfood, they can only rely on charity. Even a cursory glance reveals that many of these men are in various stages of disrepair: some talk to themselves, a few can barely stand straight. A couple of them giggle as they chant, “Gole mein raho, corona jao [Stay in your circle, corona go away].”

I notice a man dressed in a worn t-shirt and jeans. He stands out from the rest. He tells me his name is Aamir and that he used to be a driver for a lawyer. He used to earn Rs 15,000 a month but his employer has left town and he now has nowhere to go. His family stays in Varanasi and with the lockdown taking him by surprise he is now stuck in Delhi. He comes here twice a day to get his meals. I meet Sunil Kumar who is originally from Saharanpur but has been living in Delhi for more than a decade. He does load-bearing work and “party ka kaam”, meaning he cleans and washes for a catering company. On good days he earns Rs 300 to Rs 400, but the lockdown has made him dependent on food distribution services.

Along with the police, an elderly man with a lengthy beard wearing a yellow jacket with ‘Civil Defence’ written on it tries to enforce order. His name is Abdul Majeed. The men waiting for lunch seem as scared of him as of the cops. He says that on April 6th a man was found lying near the Yamuna bank with the quarantine stamp on his wrist. He had escaped from the Lok Nayak hospital, perhaps because he needed his drug fix. Majeed called the cops and an ambulance took the man away. He says that most of the men here have some illness or the other, whether it is drug dependency or tuberculosis. If one of them were to get the coronavirus it would destroy the entire community, leaving thousands dead as they already have compromised immunity and will have little access to proper healthcare.

But even with the blight of sickness hanging over, governments and civil society are stepping up to serve the most vulnerable. In the first few days of the lockdown, lack of food posed the greatest challenge. Two weeks into the lockdown that is no longer the case, at least in Delhi, attests Gupta. He says, “Systematic khaane ka problem nahin hai.” Harsh Mander adds, “Delhi State administration has massively increased its food outreach. And civil society interventions have also grown exponentially. People are coming out and risking their lives to help others and that is very reassuring. But one has to recognise that the level of distress remains huge.” He adds, “While all these measures are welcome, it will not mitigate the suffering and scale of economic dislocation. These will remain palliative measures at best.”

In the face of the distress, one can find hope in the deeds and gestures of good Samaritans who are leaving the safety of their homes to help others. In CP during lunch time, we see cars stopping to give food to not only the families living in the streets but also to stray dogs. We notice piles of uneaten rice lying on a pavement. One of the streetdwellers says that dogs ate the chicken and left the rice. The picky nature of the strays reassures one that even the animals seem to know that those who fed them today will return to help them tomorrow.

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