In the Bonesetter's Waiting Room

by Aarathi Prasad

  ‘There was one couple referred to me,’ said Nayreen. ‘Both were HIV positive, but the husband blamed the wife, saying that she had given it to him. That wasn’t true, it was quite the other way around. Anyway, as I told you, people in Dharavi will try everything, so the husband went to some untrained Ayurvedic doctor – at least the man claimed to be a doctor – who said he could cure the husband, but he was very expensive. Now the wife was pregnant with their second child at the time – their first child was also HIV positive – but when our doctors recommended a termination, the husband refused to give permission. The whole family was convinced it was her fault. They took away her first child and were treating him with whatever this self-proclaimed Ayurvedic doctor was charging them for. She was distraught. We intervened legally and the child was returned to her, but he did not survive. The husband also died. The good news is that she survived, and she has now remarried a man who is also HIV positive, so she has a family again. Her second child is free of HIV.’

  ‘The same thing happens if a woman is depressed,’ Gauri explained. ‘Her in-laws will abandon her. If a doctor or counsellor diagnoses depression, the husband just says she’s mad and leaves her. There was a depressed woman whose husband was schizophrenic and had erectile dysfunction and his family blamed it on her because they said she was mad. Her husband tried to use her illness as grounds for divorce.’

  Fortunately, the Indian courts knew better. The judge told the woman’s in-laws that they could not remove her from her home, that she was not ‘mad’ if she could get better with treatment and ordered that she should receive appropriate care that would improve her condition.

  ‘The problem is,’ Nayreen told me, ‘women need sleep when they are on medication, but they are not allowed to rest. They are still expected to wake up early to do the cooking, the chores, so the husbands and in-laws see this “laziness” as justification for assault. There is no respite.’

  Inside the maze of lanes and alleyways that formed the capillaries of the slum, I met three women who had experienced abandonment and abuse first hand and who now work with SNEHA to intervene and support others in the same situation. Their homes and their places of work were deep in the warren of lanes, and so that I was able to get there – and out again – Nayreen’s colleague Bhaskar offered to show me the way.

  Ankle-deep in filthy water made worse by the rapidly accumulating rains, I followed Bhaskar off 60-Feet Road and into another world. Past sweetshops and one-room barber salons, small vegetable stalls and video stores that became pornography cinemas by night, we entered through a lane flanking one of Dharavi’s waterways. Liberally strewn with all manner of rubbish, the canal also served as a sewer. The slum’s infrastructure facilitated this – some of the settlement’s communal toilet cubicles were designed to protrude over the water. There was only room here to walk in single file. Bhaskar spoke little and walked fast and I struggled to navigate the uneven, submerged paving slabs to catch up with him in my sodden shoes. A small boy walking behind me was becoming increasingly irritated at my slowing him down, so that from behind me I could hear an unrelenting Hindi narrative describing my incompetence as he made several failed attempts to overtake. Eventually, as we turned off the canal way into the rows of tiny, brightly painted brick houses, I saw his spindly legs speed off into the distance. My young daughter was with us and I saw her look of utter desperation as she gave up trying to keep our umbrella open – though by no means large, it was wider than the lane between the houses.

  As we came to what seemed to be a dead end, Bhaskar gestured left, inviting us to see the toilets. Six cubicles were laid out in a square, three either side of a small passage. At the end was a large hole in the wall that served as a window. It overlooked a swamp, a reminder of what the entire area was before it became Dharavi. It was bleak and wild and, had it not been heaped with still higher piles of rubbish than I had seen in other parts of the slum, it might even have been beautiful. Bhaskar explained how plans were afoot to seal the hole in the wall. ‘These toilets are for women,’ he explained. ‘Boys know that and come here. They jump through this hole, grab the girls and take them out there – sometimes with their consent, other times not. It makes it a dangerous place for the women in the community.’ It was a horrible thought, to imagine a girl abducted, molested and then abandoned in that stinking, muddy marsh.

  A few steps on we arrived at a pastel-pink building which was home to Chandravati, a pretty, chubby woman in her late thirties who served as one of SNEHA’s sanghinis, or female community workers. As I took off my soaking shoes before entering, her husband went to stand outside the front door. When I stepped in, I realised why. Her house, like all the houses in Dharavi, was a windowless, waterless, bathroomless ten-foot-square box and within it lived her entire family. Three of her seven children were lying on the floor as Chandravati attempted – unsuccessfully – to rouse them from their siesta to get them back to school for the afternoon. The room looked as though its primary use was as a kitchen, with various pots lining the shelves of one wall. On the opposite wall was a television and a narrow charpoy where she and her husband slept, though it was hard to see how they could both occupy it at the same time. She offered us a seat on its mattress and snapped one of her daughters into action to run out and buy us biscuits and soda to snack on as we talked.

  ‘Don’t the kids want to go to school?’ I asked Chandravati, who was still cajoling the sleeping trio.

  ‘My son is not so keen but my daughters are,’ she told me. ‘They like school … but they don’t want to go out in the rain.’

  I didn’t blame them.

  ‘Ninety per cent of the kids here do go to school now,’ Bhaskar explained. ‘It’s improved a lot. But once they get married they stop. They still marry young here, boys and girls. The boys work, the girls will be housewives.’

  Just then, another of Chandravati’s daughters, much too small for her seventeen years, appeared at the front door with a friend. She was dressed in a new ornate sari and jewellery. Her mother explained that she had recently been married, but that her new home was a long way away, albeit in a nicer neighbourhood. Now, there were only eight people in that beautifully kept little pink box. Though that must have offered some small relief, and Chandravati seemed very matter-of-fact about it, I thought the girl looked a little too young to have already left home and, despite her pride at having a daughter who had clearly married well, I could see her mother missed her. Still, at least she was away from the immediate danger of the toilets next door.

  The danger posed by those toilets was what originally motivated Chandravati to volunteer with SNEHA. That and the reluctance of the municipal corporation to clean blocked drains, the problem of drug addiction among young men and the general harassment of women and girls in the community. She began intervening directly in cases of violence that the community reported or when she saw any girl being harassed by ‘goons’. She and three other local women joined forces and became the Dharavi’s ‘vigilance inspectors’. Once, for example, when they heard that a boy had dragged a girl into the creek from the toilet and molested her, her team staked out the toilet until he eventually reappeared, whereupon they detained him and handed him over to the police. They also made sure that the police patrolled in the area regularly. What she and her colleagues had managed to achieve in an often lawless and dangerous place through sheer determination was impressive. But Chandravati was clear about what she still wanted to see happen in Dharavi. ‘My dream,’ she said, ‘is to help empower women and girls to be courageous and live better lives. I want them to stop crying when they face violence and instead ask for help and support at the right time to free themselves from the situation.’

  A community meeting was to be held that afternoon on the other side of the main canal, organised by two of Dharavi’s other sanghinis, and I wanted to listen in. Stepping once again out into the narrow slum lanes, I turned to see her husband quietly head back into the house, now emptied of children and guests
.

  My daughter and I took an auto-rickshaw to get to the meeting – partly because of the unrelenting rain and partly because of Dharavi’s immense sprawl. As we walked from the rickshaw back into the maze we passed one of the little temple squares – the only non-claustrophobic spaces among the dark narrow lanes – and arrived at the home of Bhanuben, another sanghini. This time there were fifteen local women in the sparsely furnished ten-foot square kitchen-cum-living room, sitting cross-legged and taking up almost the entire floor space. As we entered, wondering where we might sit, Bhanuben, a jovial but forceful woman in her mid-forties, dressed in a sari and sporting a large bindi; and fellow sanghini Shirin, a much younger woman draped in a black hijab and jilbab, welcomed us in as warmly as if the room was of palatial proportions. We folded our legs into the shape of the last visible pieces of painted concrete. Shirin stood nearby, leaning in to translate in case I missed any of the discussion.

  By then, the talk that had paused when I entered was once again in full flow. It had come to Bhanuben’s attention that there had been several child marriages – eleven- and twelve-year-olds. Had anyone else come across this? Many of the group chipped in – it was a matter of grave concern, for both boys and girls who were leaving school prematurely to raise families. What might be done about it?

  The next point on the agenda was a deeply fascinating question that wouldn’t have been given a second thought in those places where mothers arranged play dates and coffee mornings, but which felt distinctly out of place in Dharavi. ‘What do you do for yourselves?’ Bhanuben asked. ‘What makes you happy? Is it singing, is it dancing? Do you spend some time on yourselves every day?’ She spoke forcefully and seemingly from a well of experience, so that, as they were raised, she swiftly, skilfully and kindly put down every protestation or excuse from the women in the group.

  ‘I do not have any time to do something for myself,’ the young woman next to me said. ‘I am always cooking, or looking after children, or my husband. Where is there time?’ She laughed at Bhanuben’s deliciously ridiculous idea.

  The woman directly opposite me was far less cheerful. ‘I have three children and I look after them on my own. One of them is ill. He has epilepsy. I cannot afford his medicine. I cannot find work.’ It was true, jobs were difficult to come by and life was hand-to-mouth for all the women present. In state-run hospitals, a nominal charge of ten rupees (ten pence) is made for medications, but I knew from my conversations with Nayreen that even that small amount might present a choice between treatment or their children’s next meal. I could see that ‘me time’ was the farthest thing from her mind.

  ‘That is why we are meeting here,’ Bhanuben said. ‘There is support. Come to Chota Sion and tell SNEHA that you are needing that medicine. We will help you. There are twenty-four hours in a day. I am not asking you for all of them. I am asking you to take half an hour for yourself. Half an hour a day to do what you enjoy. You can do that. Raise your hands if you will do that. What time of day will you make time? What will you do?’

  A few tentative hands rose into the air, unsure, like weighted balloons ready to drop at a moment’s notice. But the more hands that went up, the more other women were emboldened to join in until nearly everyone agreed to give it a try. ‘When I was a girl I wanted to sing,’ one of the group offered her pledge. ‘I really wanted to learn, but my parents would not allow me. I was very angry at them. That is what I will do now, I can spend some time singing.’ But at the back of the room, another of the women sat quietly. She looked melancholic, beyond sadness, her face devoid of expression, her eyes empty. It was the look of someone recently bereaved, though she has lost no one to death.

  ‘My husband left,’ she said. ‘I have two children. Now my children do not listen to anything I say. They don’t have jobs. I don’t have a job or money …’ I could see it must have felt to her as though everything was conspiring against her, and it was a heaviness I deeply related to also, having always raised my daughter on my own. She looked defeated, but at least she spoke and was listened to. I watched as Bhanuben counselled her and the group around her offered support. There was not one woman there who couldn’t relate to at least part of what she was experiencing. The absence of a husband through death or abandonment, or the presence of an abusive one, was evidently a burden most had in common.

  Shirin, who had been translating for me, had also experienced this at first hand. Extremely eloquent and clearly very well educated, she had been forced to move out of the marital home with her children after her husband had remarried. Without support from the community group, she would not have had the courage to reclaim the space in her house and regain stability for her children. That was what made her want to do the same for other women who felt powerless, or were in the depths of depression. ‘I am alert and keep my eyes open for women [in crisis], motivate them to ask for help. Abandoned women whose husbands have remarried; women and girls being harassed by the local boys. I am proud of myself to be a sanghini,’ said Shirin. With Bhanuben, she encouraged women to attend meetings for emotional and social support and to train for skilled jobs.

  When Bhanuben wasn’t finding women in crisis, women in crisis were finding her. She would always answer a knock on her door, whatever the hour. Her social work came later in life, twenty-four years after she dropped out of school, aged twelve. She married at sixteen and then began working as a domestic cook, which provided her husband and in-laws with their only income. She always dreamed of studying again, but didn’t know how to. Her husband’s family was very conservative and in their community it was taboo for a woman to go out wearing even ankle jewellery, or even to wear it indoors if it could be seen by other male relatives.

  When Bhanuben finally made the decision to do something for herself – as she encourages other women to do – she was ridiculed by the local council of elders. When the social work done by her team of women started to produce results, they were condemned by the men of the community and their husbands were openly taunted for ‘not having control over their wives and letting them do such work’. But still her work continues. Bhanuben, a born leader, if not a force of nature, was adamant that it should. ‘Joining SNEHA was like being reborn, and in the same way other women should also reinvent themselves.’ Her community group now has over a hundred members who educate and support others in matters of violence and women’s rights. The men of the local council who once ridiculed her now respect her. And many of those husbands who were abusive or addicts have also turned up for counselling at Chota Sion.

  Back at the hospital, Nayreen Daruwala was cautiously pleased at the community’s progress. ‘It has snowballed; people are referred by family and friends. Counselling is slowly becoming part of the culture. Even some men in Dharavi who have had counselling are referring abused women and their abusers to the centre now.’

  But there is still a long path to travel, and its direction is one that excites Nayreen. ‘Mental health is so tied up with violence here. Psychiatrists in Mumbai won’t accept this. They hold only a genetic and physiological viewpoint about mental health conditions.’

  I found it incredible that Nayreen and her team were having a hard time getting psychiatrists in the main Sion Hospital to acknowledge a relationship between violence and the development of mental illness in women. Through SNEHA’s recent interventions – creating the beginnings of a women’s outpatient department and offering counselling services for survivors of violence – Nayreen still hopes to highlight this association to the medics.

  Clearly, many of the women who will go to SNEHA’s outpatient department for counselling will improve over time because of psychological therapies – the 160 sanghinis now serving Dharavi are evidence of that. ‘Almost every woman we interact with have faced some form of violence, either in their homes or in the community,’ Nayreen told me. Not all of them require psychiatric drug-based therapy, but by highlighting an association that most Indian psychiatrists do not currently acknowledge, the hope is that m
ore women who need it will have access to medical help. This is also crucial to changing the culture of how women are treated both medically and socially. From in-laws dispensing tablets to psychiatrists who will not, changing that culture of second-rate treatment for women will mean getting an acknowledgement that women who are depressed in Dharavi are not just ‘mad’, or a write-off to be divorced or abandoned. It will be a recognition that violence and its psychological or psychiatric effects are no longer acceptable or invisible; that women can and will be treated, and in many cases not only improve but also themselves become powerful agents of change.

  2

  Bollywood Bodies

  ACROSS THE BRIDGE over the Mithi River, a fifteen-minute drive west of Dharavi will take you past yet more expanses of temporary, tarpaulin-covered makeshift homes populated by families who cannot afford even to live in the mega-slum. In contrast, the Bandra Kurla Complex, a carefully planned quarter of Mumbai reminiscent of Seoul or Abu Dhabi, feels, as a colleague working in Dharavi described it, like entering ‘an off-world, like in science-fiction books’. BKC, as it is popularly known, has wide roads, towering office buildings clad in mirrored glass, five-star hotels hosting pool parties, swanky pizza restaurants and the American Embassy, set behind metal fences more than three times the height of the average Indian.