This is the story of Rakeshbhai Chamanbhai, a 37 years old fruit vendor-cum-daily

wage laborer who currently lives on the footpath off Satellite Road in Ahmedabad,
with his wife, 4 children and some other extended family members.

I met Rakeshbhai through some young volunteers of YUVA, an NGO which works for
the education of underprivileged children and youth in Ahmedabad. Rakeshbhais
eldest son, Rahul (age 14) is one such beneficiary of YUVA. When I went to his home
for the first time with these volunteers, Rakeshbhai had just returned home having
earned his daily livelihood and spent the majority of it on buying atta for his familys
daily needs of nutrition. He was sprawled on his Charpai, tired from his 12 hour
ordeal of selling fruits in the heat. His 4 sons were playing around this only piece of
furniture in the home, while his wife was seated on the floor, preparing dinner for
the family. He immediately recognized the volunteers and received us warmly.
When we told him of our purpose, he readily agreed to tell us his story. He
instructed his sons to disburse, made room for us to sit, and began his narrative.

A Childhood that never was

Rakeshbhais family belongs to a village near Palanpur in North Gujarat, where his
grandfather and father worked as landless laborers. His father came to Ahmedabad
in the hope of a better life for his family, and Rakeshbhai was born here, the second
of three brothers. As per his recollection, his family has been selling fruit on the
streets of Ahmedabad since before he was born. He remembers attending school
intermittently till 4th standard, partly at Ahmedabad and partly in his village. His
fathers heavy drinking habits led to a severe appendix problem, created adverse
financial conditions for the family and his mother became the sole bread-earner of
the family. The pressing need for an extra hand to earn money forced Rakeshbhai to
quit school after this. He recalls his family of five surviving in the city on average
earnings of around 20 rupees per day.

Soon enough, his fathers medical health deteriorated and the daily earnings were
no longer sufficient to meet both the familys daily needs and increasing medical
bills. 3 people (Rakeshbhai, his mother, and elder brother) selling fruit off a cart was
a luxury. His younger brother was too young to work. So, 7 year old Rakeshbhai
went back to his village with his aunt to work as labor, or whatever work he could
get, while his family stayed on in Ahmedabad. This is how he spent the next 5 years
of his life.

He came back to Ahmedabad when he was 12 years old, when one of his uncles
helped him get a job at a garage as a motorcycle mechanic. The garage was far
from where he lived. He had to travel 1.5 hours daily from his home by bus to go to
work, but at least he had the comfort of coming back to his family. He worked here
for 4 years. I asked him for a reason on why he quit, but he wasnt very comfortable
answering this particular question, so I did not press. He then worked intermittently
in odd jobs, and also spent a few months working in a steel factory. He says that his
hands used to get cut by the steel wires, so he left that job. Finally, at the relatively
experienced age of 16, it was time for him to join the family business of selling
fruit. The time had come to find a wife and settle down in life. 16 year old
Rakeshbhai got engaged to his wife, Pushpaben, who is 2 years younger to him.

In the winter of 1993, things went from bad to worse for Rakeshbhais family. Newly
engaged Rakeshbhai was riding pillion on a friends motorcycle when he collided
with a tractor carrying iron rods. One of the rods went through his arm, fracturing it,
and he was bed-ridden for 30 days. But the worst was yet to come. An internal
injury caused serious damage to his kidney, but this went unnoticed by the family.
Continuous stomach aches were dismissed as minor side effects. Soon, he
completely lost bladder control. A combination of shame and ignorance about the
seriousness of the situation meant that he hid this from his family for 2 months.
When at a family function in his native village, Rakeshbhai suffered serious stomach
ache, he was rushed back to Ahmedabad in agony and admitted to Shardaben
Municipal Hospital in Saraspur for 15 days.

He curses the doctors of the municipal hospital, saying that they were incapable of
understanding his problem, and did not diagnose the issue properly. So he went to a
private doctor, where he was operated a full 3 months after the accident. The
operation cost the family 2.5 lac rupees, which was way beyond their financial
resources. The family took out all their savings from the bank and sold their
ancestral house in their village. They were still short of 1 lac rupees, so they took a
loan from the fruit proprietor. I asked him why he did not go to a bank for a loan. To
which he replies that this is how they always used to borrow, and they never
thought of borrowing from the bank. 45 days later, Rakeshbhai was back on his feet
vending fruits to pay off the debt.

The Head of a Family

2 months later, Rakeshbhai took another loan of 1 lac rupees and got married. I
asked him why he took another loan for marriage when already burdened with debt,
to which he looked back at me inquisitively and replied Chotti shaadi kar ke naak
thoda katani thi.

When I asked him about his married life, I got the sense that he tried to rush
through the matter. He vaguely started bad mouthing his parents-in-law stating that
they created problems in his marriage. What I got from the conversation was that
his wife left him after 6 months of marriage, and they were separated for 2 years.
Even after 2 years, he had to give a written statement to his parents-in-law that he
would not harm his wife in any physical way. I am not very sure of the truth of what
might have gone on in the situation, but judging by his demeanor throughout this
conversation, I am inclined to believe that maybe he was more at fault here.

On the financial front, his loan burden had at this stage reached a point where he
was unable to pay the interest on his balance payments. He states that the private
money lenders sent goons to beat him up and threatened him and his family. After
an incident when he was badly injured and his father beaten up in such a fight, he
fled the city and went back to his village. He stayed here for 2 years and started
working again as farm labor with help from relatives. He tells me that when he
returned back to Ahmedabad, he paid off a portion of his debt, and later on was
fully able to pay it back.

At the age of 23, Rakeshbhai became a father for the first time. Today, 14 years
later, he is the father of 4 sons, Rahul (14), Kapil (12), Sagar (7), and Prakash (5).
His father passed away 5 years ago, elder brother is back living in the village
permanently, younger brother has passed away from cancer after years of tobacco
and alcohol abuse, and mother lives with his grandparents in another part of
Ahmedabad, Megani Nagar. His younger brother left a wife and 3 young girls, who
live next door on the footpath. I asked him if he smokes and drinks, to which he
sheepishly laughs and nods his head in agreement, showing off his decaying teeth
in the process.

Today, Rakeshbhai is the sole bread earner of his family. He goes to work every day
at 7 in the morning and comes back by 8pm with daily food supplies of 1.5 kg atta
and other groceries and vegetables. When I asked him if selling fruit was sufficient
to meet their daily needs, he shook his head and told me that whenever he gets the
opportunity, he tries to find work as a daily wage labor on construction sites. He
also knows fencing of plots from his young days, when he worked in the steel
factory. So he tries to look out for that as a part-time activity. Labor work is hard,
and his body aches almost every night, but the important thing is that he is able to
earn 150-200 rupees daily. His wife spends the day taking care of the household.

Life on the Street

The family has been living on their current location for the last 5 years. In this
sense, their lives are relatively stable. I asked him if he dreams of one day moving
into his own home. He got really angry at this question. He told me that he and his
neighbors had been told by the government that they would be provided housing
in the near future, but despite repeated promises, nothing had been done in the last
5 years. Every time they enquired about the housing, they were told to wait for 3 to
6 months. He seemed to have lost hope of ever living in a house again.

He told me that often, Municipality officers come to the footpath and asked them to
relocate to another place. At times they take some of the familys stuff, or break
their belongings in an attempt to make them leave. This happens especially when
bade saahab are passing through the road in their cars. According to him, the
officers have instructions to clear the roads to ensure that things look orderly.
We then moved on to a discussion about his general living conditions. He told me
that there was a major problem he faced in getting drinking water for the family.
Normally, when he goes to societies while selling fruit on his cart, he keeps a few
empty cans and bottles on the cart with him. There, if he finds some tap or other
water source for fresh water, he fills enough to last him a couple of days. A lot of the
times society guards dont allow him to do this, and he has to repeatedly request
people for the same. If for a few days he is unable to get fresh water, the family
drinks whatever is available. The family uses public facilities for bathing, which is
charged at 20 rupees per person. So they have to alternate, one day for him, one
day for the wife, and one for the kids. Laundry is another matter altogether. The
nature of his work makes his clothes extremely dirty, but a lack of space, water, and
other resources makes it difficult to wash clothes on a daily basis. So the family has
adopted a system for this. Once every 15 days, the whole family goes to Megani
Nagar, about 20 kilometers from their place, to his in-laws house by bus, with a
large bundle of dirty clothes in tow, and return by evening with clean clothes after a
hard days work. On such days, there is no earning in the family, and whatever is
saved from the previous 2 weeks of work is used up for subsistence.

I asked him about the recent rainfall in Ahmedabad and how he coped with the
same. He pointed to the charpai we were sitting on and told me with an almost
cold indifference that his sons sat on the charpai along with his wife, while he sat
alongside them on the floor. They had found and saved a plastic sheet to save them
from direct rainfall, which they managed to hang overhead somehow in order to get
protection. But it was impossible in the night to sleep in this huddle, so they just
took turns so that 4 people huddled closer together to make room for one person to
sleep. But the problem did not end with the rain. Constant water logging on the road
led to the breeding of mosquitoes which made sleep even harder even without rain.
And the charpai, which I saw was of the traditional jute variety, would get wet, and
took its own sweet time to dry out.

I then tried to find out about his views on his kids education. I learnt that his eldest
2 children, Rahul (14) and Kapil (12) study in the Municipal School in Azad Society,
in the 4th and 2nd standards respectively. The education is provided for completely by
the government, including books, notebooks, stationary, mid-day meals etc. He told
me that buying the school uniform is the only expense he incurs towards this end.
At this moment, 2 of his nieces happened to be playing with his sons. I asked him if
the girls went to school. He just ignored my question. On asking a second time, the
otherwise talkative Rakeshbhai just uttered No. So I moved on. What about his
other 2 sons? Prakash, at 5 years old, is too young to go to school. Sagar, aged 7,
started going to the 1st standard, but his timings were not matching with his
brothers. He was constantly bullied by a few kids, so has decided to drop out, and
will rejoin next year with his brothers, if the timings are more suitable. I told him
that he should not let his son just drop out like that, and should go and solve the
problem in school instead. He replied that he was too busy in his own struggles to
find any time for such things, and that he will try doing that if and when he gets the
time.

I asked the kids if they enjoyed school and went regularly. Both of them said that
they liked it. Usually the teacher comes after lunch as they go in the afternoon shift.
Sometimes, if the teacher is not there, they go to some other class and sit there.

So, what does Rakeshbhai thinks of the future? He says that the present is difficult
enough to start worrying about the future. Bas, yahin jiye hain yahin mitti mein mil
jayenge. But does he have any thoughts about his kids futures? And how would the
family sustain itself if anything happened to him? He tells me that the kids are too
young right now to understand the fruit selling business. If anything untoward
happened, one or the other relative would need to train the kids in the skills of
counting, using a balance to measure the weight of fruit, and bargaining with the
customers etc. For now, he is happy that his kids are going to school. Education, he
says, is necessary for the children, so that people dont fool them when they grow
up and start selling fruit.

The lack of an alternate career choice for the children was central to his every
statement. When I pointed this out, he said that it was very difficult to get a good
job these days. And the whole cycle of education anyways took a lot of time and
resources. Ideally, he would want at least one child to do a BA and get a good job.
But they would have to do so of their own, as he could only afford to teach them till
8th class, as the government provided free education only till there, and paying fee
for an education was too costly. He also talked of an uncle who is a graduate and
works as a security guard at an ATM during the night. But then he calculated that if
a graduate degree earns his uncle 6000 rupees a month, at 200 rupees a day, he is
equally well off. One doesnt need to be an economist to see the trade-offs in this
situation.

What is the truth?

Before writing my final thoughts on these meetings with Rakeshbhai, I want to point
out that there were a couple of incidents where I felt he probably hid some facts or
twisted the truth a bit. Specifically, I am pointing towards the incidents involving his
early married life and the possibility of domestic violence that he might have
perpetrated. A few times during the interview I also felt that he was exaggerating
on his misery just because he had found a listener who could sympathize with him.

A picture is truly worth more than a thousand words. While Rakeshbhai was talking
about how he wants his children to be more educated, he stopped mid-sentence to
smack his youngest child on the head and cursed him because he was pulling on his
fathers leg. The words uttered by his mouth lost their meaning for a while. The
yellowing teeth of his eldest son also aroused a suspicion in my mind about the
possibility of tobacco or other substance abuse by the young child.
For a moment this got me thinking, these people are not really that innocent. Is the
institutional and social fabric of this country wholly responsible for their situation?
Arent they themselves also at least partly to blame for their own miseries? Maybe
it is too late to sensitize people like Rakeshbhai towards their own kids. But then my
eyes fell on Prakash, the youngest of the family, who, 5 minutes after he had been
smacked on the head, was sitting on the floor close to my feet. In deep
concentration, he was running his forefinger through the mud on the ground, trying
to draw a picture maybe, with no one to appreciate his efforts, not even to offer a
word of encouragement. Surely, he was not the villain of this story. But would he
grow up to be one? A sensitization of the society at large towards the problems
faced by these people could surely go a long way in ensuring a better future for the
next generation of the streets.