A window to the world – from Homes Without Windows

Chandu Maheria is a leading Dalit writer-activist in Gujarat. His heart-felt memoir, Homes Without Windows (translated by Hemang Ashwinkumar, published by Juggernaut Books), is being compared with some of the best autobiographical writings from marginalised people. The title comes from the chawl in east Ahmedabad where Chandubhai grew up in a family of nine, with a leaky roof and no windows.

From this viewpoint, he writes about the first pair of chappals a six-year-old refuses to take off because he has never owned a pair before; the public toilets of the city; his mother, who looked after neighbours and strangers alike, about Gandhi and Ambedkar, and about the fact that one does not need to choose. It is a book about caste, but it is also about food, faith, friendship, monsoon, mothers.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

Creed, Conversion and Childhood

I had grown up at a very tender age. Matured prematurely, so to speak. Partly on account of the burden of responsibilities that had fallen on my kid shoulders, courtesy of our family’s abject poverty. But partly also on account of my friends, a bunch of close but older friends, older to me by as much as two decades or thereabouts: writers and intellectuals like Neerav Patel, Dalpat Chauhan, Indu Jani, Harshad Desai, and so on. Today when I have crossed fifty, I have struck intimate friendship with committed journalists and activists like Urvish Kothari, Sanjay Bhave and Jignesh Mevani, all of whom are younger to me by a couple of decades or more. God knows if having contemporaries as friends is a boon or a bane, but I have always felt that the distance in age automatically puts, even sustains, some kind of natural reserve between two people, no matter how close and candid their friendship. Bosom buddies they are, all of them, and yet, not quite.

As I think about friends, I realize with a little twinge that no friendships I had struck in school or college days have survived today, neither materially nor in memory. Except, of course, these two interfaith chums of mine, my early childhood pals, who always spring out of the black hole of my fond remembrances to give a lie to my despair. Simon Paul Gamadiya and Rahmatullah Alla Rakha Maniar. We studied in the same primary school and lived in the same ragtag suburb. Simon died young and quite tragically. Rahmatullah gave up studies mid-school and went the way life had chosen for him; thus, we are not in touch today. But, even after all these years, their tender memories survive, as fresh and vivid as ever, like evocative engravings on the rusty plate of my mind.

In the sordid working-class chawl of Abu Kasai, bang opposite Hiralal’s toilets, squatted Simon’s small, modest house, though the term ‘house’ would be an overstatement to describe that rented low shack, known as a ‘thatch’ in local parlance. His was a large family that included his father Paulbhai, his mother Preetibehn and six siblings, Simon being the youngest of all. Paulbhai, pronounced in the area as P + owl + bhai, was a desi Khristi from Gamdi, the native village of the eminent Gujarati writer Joseph Macwan in Anand district. His forefathers, in all probability, had converted to Christianity. Preetibehn worked as a nurse in a private hospital near Lal Darwaja in Ahmedabad while Paulbhai, with his two elder brothers, worked in a textile mill.

For many kids of my age in our chawl, Simon’s thatch was an address of happiness, the way a happy man’s shirt was for the ailing king in the famous children’s story by that title, which we had read with great relish at school. By the going standards of those days, the ambience of Simon’s house could safely be called modern. Very modern. He called his mother ‘Mummy’. His father too was quite unlike those daunting, domineering figures we were familiar with – always keen on helping his wife with household chores: peeling and paring of vegetables, cooking a variety of dishes, dusting, mopping, and so on. Paulbhai specialized in fashioning an extremely tasty curry out of nasty, smelly veggies like gourd and bitter gourd, that too without peeling them. And what a runaway hit his fish curry was amongst the chawl people, just don’t ask. ‘Wanna have fish? Go for Paul’s make or just drop it!’ the chawl folks never tired of repeating. I wondered how the atmosphere in Simon’s thatch remained ever so light and soaked in wit and humour. Much to my surprise, Simon kept his slippers on even inside the house. He and his siblings joked freely with their father, even went to the extent of slapping him on the back in jest. Everyone in Simon’s house spoke ‘pure’ Gujarati, the sophisticated urban variety, that is.

I simply marvelled at Simon’s thatch, the genial air therein, the open outlook of its inhabitants towards life, and so on; for me, it had become a prototype of quintessential, supernal happiness, the presence of stinking, overflowing public toilets right in front of it notwithstanding. It didn’t matter, yes, as it shouldn’t.

Simon and I studied in the same municipal school. Every day, I made sure to reach his thatch half an hour, at times a full hour, in advance of the prescribed school time. The idea was to gape in admiration, even a slight envy, at Simon as he embarked on the elaborate ritual of getting ready for school at about eleven o’clock: the way he luxuriated in his long bath, scrubbing his body with a tablet of fragrant soap and washing it without stinging on bath water; the way he dried himself with a towel of his own and sprinkled a liberal quantity of talcum powder all over his body; the way he oiled his hair, put on a crisply ironed uniform and slipped a polished pair of shoes on. Would I ever get to indulge in such luxuries, I would wonder and slip into fond reveries. That the real reason behind Simon’s organic happiness lay in the religious conversion his ancestors had opted for was something I realized much later in life. And that their newly embraced Christian identity made them eligible for financial assistance and other largesse from missionaries. So large and liberal was the aid, I guess, that they could give away any leftover, as expensive as a chunk of butter, to their neighbours without a second thought. Simon was perfectly healthy and fair-skinned. Average in studies, he had a dandyish streak in his personality, a kind of lady-killer air, not unnatural among boys of his age and background. He would fish out photographs of some girl, who allegedly studied in our school and whom, he said, he ‘loved’ like mad. Later, I realized that the girl in question was none other than Dimple Kapadia, the heroine of the superhit Bollywood flick Bobby (1973). Around Christmas, Simon’s dusky thatch stood out in a predominantly Hindu Dalit locality, thanks to the festive look it wore, with a hanging Christmas star and all. However, for Ma and other chawl women, the distinct Christian culture of the Simons often became a point of light-hearted banter, even mockery.