Baluta: A Cry From The Heart

바카라�I바카라�ll tell you what I remember...I have always liked a poem from In Prison. You know the one in which sorrow is compared to an iceberg?
My sorrow: an iceberg,
Its tip alone breaking the waterline.
My memories: drops of acid
That leave me shivering in pain.
On my shoulders, the crucifix of life
On my forehead, the placard of my fate바카라�
You who have washed the guilt off your hands, You who have exfoliated your past,
How do you manage with these new-hewn faces?

바카라�That poem mirrors my life in more ways than one. Most people see only the tip of the iceberg. And even this causes much discussion in society. My past is like the submerged part of the iceberg. But an iceberg is constantly being fed by the sea. My face seems frozen too.

바카라�And yet, ever since I바카라�ve become aware of this, oddly, the past has begun to elude me. When I think I바카라�ve got hold of it, my spirit trembles. For a long time, I think I바카라�ve been seduced by surfaces. This shocks me.

바카라�Then you come along and ask that I should take an axe to the iceberg. Will it break? Or would I reduce myself to the state of a Pothraj? You바카라�ve seen them, haven바카라�t you? Those bare-chested men who whip themselves on the street, who wear anklets on their feet but have rather good biceps, which they pierce with needles till blood spurts...That바카라�s who I바카라�d be, and then people would gather around and clap and sigh and say, 바카라�Poor chap.바카라� Do I want to become an object of people바카라�s pity?바카라�

바카라�How would you be to blame even if you do?바카라�

바카라�I know. If I바카라�d been born in some frigid tundra, would my past have been different? There too I would have known sorrow. But it would have been a different kind of sorrow, not a result of calculated inhumanity.

바카라�I cannot tell you if you will meet this 바카라�Me바카라� in the story. The reflection of a man in a mirror does not know the whole story of the man it is reflecting. Consider this: My real name is Dagdu; you바카라�ve forgotten that, right? So have I. But that바카라�s the name you바카라�ll see in the school register. No one in the city knows me as Dagdu. Who knows whether even my wife and children know the name. Since my childhood I바카라�ve hated this name. Shakespeare may have said, 바카라�What바카라�s in a name?바카라� but tell me, why should this name fall to my lot? It smacks of a clod on which a clod was born. Look at our nicknames바카라� Kachrya, which conjures up dirt; Dhondya, which suggests stones. If by some chance someone were to name his child Gautam, it would be shortened to Gavtya. The Manusmriti has a list of names for Shudras; it requires that our names should reflect society바카라�s contempt for us. Brahmins바카라� names signify learnedness바카라�바카라�Vidyadhar바카라�, for instance. Kshatriyas바카라� names suggest valour바카라�like 바카라�Balaram바카라�. Vaishyas can be named after the goddess of wealth, say 바카라�Laxmikant바카라�. And Shudras? For us, names like Shudrak or Maatang, names that declare our low-caste status. That was the order of things for centuries.바카라�

WHEN I WAS a child, Aai would say, 바카라�Child, I had ten or fifteen other children whom I stuffed into the earth. My babies just kept dying. I asked for a boon and when you were born someone advised me, 바카라�Just name him something like Dagad or Donda. He바카라�ll live.바카라�바카라� And so I was named. I began to go to school. Since I didn바카라�t like my name, my classmates began to call me DM. If one of them came home and asked for me, Aaji, my grandmother, would stand at the door and say, 바카라�Dyaam is not at home.바카라� Dyaam was her version of DM.

My childhood was divided between the village and the city. It would not be wrong to say that I had one foot in the city and one in the fields. Perhaps this is why I am never really at home in either place. Just as Krishna ripped Jarasandha바카라�s body into two and tossed them apart, my life has split my psyche into two.

My father worked at the dry docks in Mumbai. I called him 바카라�Dada바카라�. My son calls me 바카라�Dada바카라� too. I would not like it if he were to address me as 바카라�Daddy바카라� or 바카라�Papa바카라�. It feels like someone calling the humble cactus Opuntia Dillenii...

What was I saying? Yes. My childhood. At that time, we were living at Kawakhana. In a ten-by-twelve-foot room. A tap inside, common toilet outside. Aai, my paternal cousin바카라�s family, and later Aaji, all lived there.

You won바카라�t find Kawakahana on any map of Mumbai. In those days the tram from Khada Parsi turned into Foras Road on its way to Girgaon. Aaji says that she remembers horse-drawn trams. She would tell me her memories. As a child, I would dream of those horses, foaming at the mouth, struggling to get the trams up the bridge. Nagpada props itself up against this bridge and in the middle of Nagpada was Kawakhana. Today, it바카라�s all tall buildings, five or six storeys high. On one end was Chor Bazaar or the thieves바카라� market. On the other side was Kamathipura, the red-light area. Golpitha was where the prostitutes lived. Kawakhana was squeezed between these two.

The Mahar community lived in little islands in the surrounding areas. All of us came from the Konkan plateau, from Sangamner, Akola, Junnar, Sinnar. And around us, there were communities of Christians and Muslims.

The Mahars lived in squalid homes, each the size of a henhouse, each henhouse having two or three sub-tenants. Wooden boxes acted as partitions. But they were more than that: we stuffed our lives into those boxes. At night, temporary walls would come up, made of rags hanging from ropes.

The Mahar men worked as hamaals or labourers. Some worked in the mills and factories. None of the women observed purdah. How could they? They worked harder than the men. They scavenged scraps of paper, rags, broken glass and iron from the streets, sorted them out and then sold them each morning. And however much their drunkard husbands beat them, they continued to serve them, hand and foot, and indulged their addictions.

Most women gathered discarded paper from the cloth shops of Mangaldas market. They had to bribe the shopkeepers바카라� servants to be allowed to take this waste paper away. Each woman had a few shops marked out as her territory and border disputes were frequent and noisy. Other women washed the clothes of the ladies in the brothels. Some of the prostitutes, tired of keema pao, would also ask them to cook bajri bhakris and fiery meat dishes. Sometimes, sly customers would ask for these women instead of prostitutes. Then the Mahar women would run for their lives, guarding their fragile honour.

(Excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger Books)
(Translated by Jerry Pinto)