ISSUE 48

For the first time in her life, Manoma woke up to silence. The usual sounds of people, crows and dogs were replaced by an eerie nothingness that seemed to expand over the whole world. She listened closely for any faraway sounds. She could hear the constant flow of traffic and the ever-present flow of the Coovam river. Not one human voice was to be heard.

She got up and rewound her sari wondering all the while whether her decision to stay was wise. When the slum clearance board had ordered everyone in Sathyavani Muthu Nagar to move, she hadn’t bothered. Her children had left. Her husband Durai, who died last year had left, permanently. Most of her neighbours had left. They had moved to the new development, a little away from the city; vacant spaces in the city were hard to come by and she supposed whatever little space there was, couldn’t be wasted on fishing folk. Yesterday, the day before the bulldozers arrived, her daughter Devaki visited her and showed her pictures of the new building and their new home, with its bare walls and still new, dusty floor. She called again last night, ‘Amma … nalai masine anuppuvanga. Nee innum yedukku ma anga irukkai?’ With the bulldozers’ imminent arrival, in a panic-stricken voice, her daughter asked her why she was still here. Manoma didn’t know. Did she think they wouldn’t send the bulldozers? She wasn’t that naïve.

She just knew she wasn’t ready to leave yet, to say goodbye to all she had known and lived.

Every moment of Manoma’s life was accompanied by an orchestra – conversations, cooking vessels, children playing, street vendors proclaiming their deals, dogs barking, crows cawing and beneath all this, the constant murmur of water flowing. Silence was rare where she lived, in the fishing community by the banks of the mighty Coovam river in Adayar. Truth be told, the Coovam is no longer a river, if by river you mean a body of clean water. The Coovam is Chennai’s sewage drain. People who pass over the Adayar bridge stretching over the river, pinch their nostrils or hold their breath, to avoid inhaling the offensive smell rising from the river. But for Manoma and the people in her community of Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, the river, its smell, its sound and all it carried, set the stage for their lives.

Manoma had lived by the river all her life. Her parents had moved to Chennai, part of the eternal, universal tide of migrants from villages to cities, looking for a better life. They settled by the banks of the river, in a kudusai, its thatched roof and mud walls their home. In the last forty years, many such kudusais sprung up around them, until Sathyavani Muthu Nagar became Chennai’s largest slum. Slum. The word evokes a world of despair, dirt and desperation. Ugliness. The city’s middle class looked down upon slums. Politicians promise to raze them to the ground. But to Manoma, the slum was her home. The place where she knew every neighbour, where she’d helped with numerous child births and equally numerous funerals; where her children were born and her parents passed on; where she’d stopped countless fights between husbands and wives, heard the same couples lost in the throes of passion a few days later, where they had celebrated her daughter Devaki’s coming of age as grandly as her wedding; where her son Selva had made friends for life, where when Durai died last year, where women cried with her as she beat her chest.

Just as the river never stays still, this sprawling slum, built into the banks of the river never stopped. You could see, hear and smell the buzz of life here.

When she was still a girl, she used to love hearing the story of her birth. Her mother went into labour just as the warning for a severe cyclone was announced. They heard the announcement on the radio which the teashop in the corner left blaring throughout the day. Soon rain, thunder and lightning filled the air. Her father ran in the rain to fetch the midwife who lived at the far side of the settlement. The midwife, already busy with a difficult delivery, sent him back with instructions, saying she would follow as soon as she could. Her father wrung his hands in despair as her mother cried out in pain, while her body was being torn to create a passage for the new life it had nurtured for the last nine months. Many women in her mother’s family had died in childbirth and even as she was in labour she felt the cold hand of fear grip her heart. Her tears now mixed with fear … she didn’t want her child to grow up motherless. She prayed to Malaiyarasi, their village goddess. ‘Kapathu ma!’ Oh mother! Save me. Save my child. Save our lives. Protect us. So much was meant in this cry that came from the pit of her being, rising up to the heavens where the Goddess lived. Her mother said what happened next was only because the Goddess answered her prayers. The ayah next door heard her mother’s screams and came to check on her. Realising that the delivery would happen any moment, the ayah took charge. And she was born.

Her mother gave her a grand name. Manoranjitham, the flower famed for its beauty and fragrance. She’d never had a chance to smell the flower. She’d only seen it once in the Palani Murugan temple – it was a small yellow flower that looked less like a flower and more like a bunch of overripe leaves. It didn’t have the beauty of the javandi poo or the delicateness of the malli poo. But to her, it had a significance that was shrouded in mystery.

Manoranjitham.

Only her husband called her by her full name. Not all the time. Only when he was drunk and horny. To everyone else she had always been Mano. Once she became a mother, she was Manoma.

Unlike the flower she was named after, Manoma was big; she loomed large over life, occupying all the space her large frame needed, without any apologies. Her pottu, thodu and mookkuthi, would have looked huge on other women, but on her were  sized correctly. Her mother used to say she looked like a goddess. But from the back, things were slightly different. Her sari pallus were always short, hardly reaching her lower back; after winding her sari over her large frame there was never much fabric left for a long train. She wore her long hair in a simple bun at the nape of her neck. Seen from behind, there wasn’t much distinguished about Manoma. As she went about her day, people saw her, both approaching them and retreating from them. But the overall impression she left was of a woman who possessed her life, took charge of it and owned it wholly.

Be it the water queue where the residents of Sathyavani Muthu Nagar gathered, or her fish stall in Kottivakam, or in the darkness of her dwelling, Manoma owned her life.

Like millions of others in Chennai, the people of Sathyavani Muthu Nagar had to collect their daily water supply from the communal water pump every day.  The queues started forming at the water pump soon after midnight. The pump occupied a nondescript corner where one street curved into another. During the day, you might miss it. But come night, this is where the residents of Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, especially, older women and young men who had the responsibility of keeping their homes supplied with water, gathered. Each person in the queue was allowed two containers – and with their plastic kudams of all colours, the water queue looked festive. But the mood was usually far from festive. Fights broke out constantly, both during the wait, and after, when the water was being filled. People fought intensely, as though for their lives. Perhaps, they were fighting for their lives. After all, childish sketches of the planet and a drop of water saying ‘Water is life’ occupied the walls of the school building they passed on their way to fill water. The wait and the fights at the water pump were a daily occurrence, but one that people didn’t get used to. Stories of their legendary heroes and religious figures personified values such as kindness and compassion. Their Goddesses looked upon the world with motherly love. But their everyday lives left no room for such largesse. It was a world where you had to stake your claim and fight for it, else it would be taken from you.

In all her life, Manoma had been directly involved in a fight at the water pump just once. It happened many years ago, when the children were still young. Durai never concerned himself with household things, too busy either working or drinking. Manoma learned to run the household and take care of all their needs efficiently. She learned to make do with the absolute minimum required. Even the way she moved her body left no room for anything superfluous: the way she cut fish, the way she sat at her stall selling fish, calling out to customers, the way she carried the water containers brimming with precious freshness, never spilling even a drop…. Wherever she went, men and women watched her move. And most times, men wanted to do more than watch. They groped her, rubbed themselves against her, leering all the while, knowing they would get away with it. She tried making herself smaller, crouching her back and shoulder, as though collapsing into herself. She took to cocooning her body in her sari – leaving nothing of her body visible. But she couldn’t avoid their ever-present scrutiny nor their hungry hands.

But one day at the water pump, all that changed. On that day, Manoma had joined the line late. Her usual spot was taken up. She found a spot almost at the end of the line, near her neighbour Satya. Satya was nineteen, a few years younger than her and always called her akka, elder sister. She settled down for the wait like everyone else, dozing with her kudams clutched tightly in her hands. It must have been around 2 in the morning, that time between sleep and wakefulness when the world takes on a dream-like quality. Satya shook her awake. She stood in a hurry, thinking the line had started moving. But even as she stood, she realised nothing had changed. Everything was quiet around her. Satya pulled her towards him, and squeezed her breast while thrusting his erection at her. With her understanding came anger. How dare this boy touch her like that? Who allowed him to paw at her body? She shouted at him, making herself larger, feeling the anger course through her body. She slapped him, feeling as though she was swatting a fly, all the while continuing to shout at him. ‘Enna da? Kai enge pogudu? Onnum pannamatein nu nenaichiya’. With those words, she grew into the space around her. She would defend herself against him. He couldn’t help himself to her.

Like carnivores alert to the scent of blood, people gathered around them. Some men threatened to beat him. Women joined in, a few beating him. It seemed like a blur to Manoma, riding a wave, transforming from a small woman who hid herself, into a big, formidable one who held her big body in space with pride.

She grew bigger with age. Her precise movements became languid – slowing but with the grace of a lazy river. Even though she flowed like a river, she turned invisible. Men didn’t follow her with their glances. People, especially those younger than her seemed to look through her. It seemed as though life, in all its rush, was leaving her behind, forgotten.

Even as Manoma thought about all this, people emerged from their huts, rubbing sleep from their eyes. The day was dawning and there was a restlessness, an excitement tinged with fear in the air. It felt as though the day itself was holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable to happen. There were about a hundred people still living in Sathyavani Muthu Nagar. Everyone else had left – what started as a trickle became a flood of exodus as the deadline to the clearance arrived. The ones who stayed behind were a motley crew of older women. Some widowed like her, some had let their husbands resettle in the new development but had themselves stayed back. She had known so many of them since her childhood – Devaki, Sakunthala, Jodhi, Mariamma, Dheepa, Malli, Rani, Gomathi. Her playmates had aged, just as she had. They were old women now. They had known each other from a time this slum was a nameless place for the city’s poor. It was given the grand name of Sathyavani Muthu Nagar but little else had changed. This place, whatever it may be called, or not, had been the stage for her life, for their lives. They took up their brooms to sweep the front of their huts as the sounds of the bulldozer grew louder.