Lifestyle - India;Sleeping Rough ( G.Read)

Harsh MANDER


A limited study of four cities reveals how the urban homeless in our metros survive and cope in harsh conditions that deny their humanity.


‘When it is five in the morning, we relax in our hearts, for, every night is to us like a penance.’

It is remarkable that so little is known about the lived experience of homelessness in towns and cities in India: of how urban homeless men, women and children survive and cope; how they sleep, bathe and eat; why they live on the streets and the work they do; their denials and access to public services and food schemes; and how they organise and plan their personal and social lives and their relationships.

We therefore undertook a small investigation into a fragment of this lived experience, of the urban homeless in four cities: the metropolises of Delhi and Chennai, and the cities of Madurai and Patna. I would be sharing in these columns from time to time the major findings of this study.


Roughing it out

The dominant feature of homelessness is “sleeping rough”, being forced to sleep without the protection of walls and a roof, battling the excesses of the seasons, insecurity and loneliness. Homeless respondents in all cities agreed that the most trying and disagreeable season for homeless people were the monsoons, closely followed by the winters. Sixty-year-old Ranjeet sleeps alone in Gandhi Maidan in Patna under the open sky in summers. When it rains, he shifts to the corridors of a shopping complex, but if these are too crowded with the homeless, then he spends the night simply sitting in rain. In Chennai, we were told that many homeless people try to wait out each downpour by crowding into cinema halls buying the cheapest tickets, and watching film after film. If the shower persists beyond midnight, they are left with no option except to stand or squat on their haunches miserably under the shutters of the shops through the rest of the night, all their most precious belongings wrapped in plastic: their ration cards, school books and voter identity cards. Leprosy patients in Patna carry a plastic sheet in their carts, and cover themselves and their cart when it rains.

Many single wandering homeless people carry their entire belongings in a bundle, including a thin blanket, in which they wrap themselves in winter. Manikandan in Madurai has a single blanket, and this he wraps around his wife and children. He lies down on the floor without having anything to spread over himself. He says he is not bothered much by mosquito bites and noisy vehicles, as he is weary after a day’s hard toil. During winters, Ranjeet depends on some friend on the street to share their quilt with him. Many homeless people from all cities reported sharing quilts. Nand Kishore sleeps on a gamcha that he spreads as both mattress and sheet, and uses his folded shirt and vest as pillow. Phelena Devi also sleeps alone in the Patna Railway Station every season, as she feels safest in its bustle. In winters, she covers herself with old clothes to battle the plunging temperatures and in summers, she sleeps on a sheet of old newspaper.


Minimal facilities

In Delhi, for over a hundred thousand homeless people, the Delhi government runs over 14 night shelters, with a maximum capacity of 2,937 people. In other words, night shelters provide a roof for not more than three per cent of all homeless people in the city. There are none for women, or migrant families. The other cities lack even these, although NGOs extend night shelters to a small number of homeless people mainly in Patna. Of the government shelters, the largest in the nation’s capital is the one near the Old Delhi Railway Station. It was the first night shelter opened by the government in 1964, and in winter and the rains, its four large halls are crowded well beyond its official capacity of 514 persons. The facilities are elementary. For a fee of Rs. 6 a night, bare mats are spread out on the floors in each of the shelters on which men sleep, body pressed against body. Ragged blankets are provided for the winter, and there are common toilets and bathing places, erratically cleaned but always in demand. Outside in the walled city, private contractors called thijawalahs rent out quilts and plastic sheets for Rs. 5 a night to homeless sleepers. Iron cots are lined up in the corridors outside shops, for a rent of Rs. 15 per night.

The respondents to our survey said what disturbed their sleep most were the police (17 per cent), mosquitoes (16 per cent), the noise (12 per cent), the weather and health problems (9 per cent each). In Delhi, police brutality figured highest at 32 per cent for disturbing homeless people at night.

The largest majority of homeless people in the four cities are found to sleep on pavements and sidewalks, often in daily danger to their lives from rash and drunken drivers, under ledges of shops and homes and in market corridors. Next come bus stands and railway stations, and then courtyards of places of worship. Single women prefer shrines, children bus stands and railway stations and families pavements. The researcher Arpan Tulsyan in Patna describes the picture of sleeping rough on the streets of the city eloquently: “There are sights of men narrowing themselves and sleeping on congested lanes, women cooking next to an overflowing drainage pipe, with darkened and de-shaped, overused aluminium utensils, and half clad children with running nose, untidy hair, crying, fighting or playing amidst thick smoke generated by burning wood in brick chullha. They sleep on newspaper or rags or on nothing at all. Houses comprise pieces of clothes, lots of plastic and some bamboo”.


Overriding feature of life

Saroja Devi slept after 17 years on the streets in the first shelter for homeless women in Delhi run briefly by an NGO, and said that what she valued most in the months she stayed at the shelter was that for the first time since she had been forced to make the streets her home after being widowed 17 years earlier, she had the assurance of an uninterrupted night’s sleep. “Beizzati. Dishonour”. This was the overriding feature of her life, as Saroja recounted it. “To live on the streets — beizzatti. The policeman beats you with his baton — beizzatti. Any ruffian sits next to you and runs his hands over your body — beizzatti”.

A woman in Patna describes the fear of every night of her life that she sleeps on the streets: “There are lots of dangers; lots of thieves are around who just pick up our stuff and run away. Or goons come to threaten us. One person from the group stays up at night. When it is five in the morning, we relax in our hearts, for, every night is to us like a penance. Yesterday night I was awake throughout.” Buddham Bai, an aged, single, homeless woman in Delhi says philosophically, “I am old, I am a woman and I am alone in the city. Where is there place in this whole world for a person like me? Nowhere! Then what good will come out of being scared?”