Waste Wanted

Today is Vasanti’s lucky day. She found two over-ripe guavas in the garbage amassed from the last train. Digging her hand in the huge rug, she pulls out the pale, unappetizing fruits and splashes them with the remnant crystal water of the mineral bottles she collected from the train. Clandestinely, she rests the guavas at the corner of her soiled navy saree, rolls it into a knot and swings it over her shoulder.

Clutching a long broom under her left armpit, she separates all the plastic bottles from the trash, throws them in a crumbling carton, picks up her sack and strides to the end of the platform number two of the Chennai Central station, to deposit the collection.

Her angular body swinging to the rhythm of the tingling sounds of her anklets on bare feet. Jasmine flowers dangling on her dark, unkempt hair, striking a contrast.

“I am a train cleaner. I don’t clean the platform,” Vasanti clarifies as she spreads the ‘Opportunities’ supplement of The Hindu for her food box. She squats in a corner of the sullied platform, joining her colleagues. Resting her aching back against the thick rusted metal beam, she pulls out a rumpled polythene bag, containing her afternoon meal.

A single mother feeding her two sons, on a meager thirty rupees a day wage, she has no choice but to cull out food from the trains while she cleans them.

Before depositing all the plastic she collects from the trains, for which she is paid ten rupees per kilogram, she cumulates the water from the bottles into one for her consumption.

A streak of red sindoor shimmering on the parting of her oiled hair, hiding the scalp, a big maroon bindi decorated on her sun burnt forehead, chiming glass bangles and a nose pin, all symbolic of her wedded status, yet, no mention of her husband.

“Her husband left her,” Laxmi, Vasanti’s unhesitant thirty-five year old colleague volunteered. “Her younger son is tenth fail and has polio. He doesn’t work. And her older son is a coolie but he doesn’t bring home any money,” she adds.

Amidst a strong stench of fish and filth, Vasanti, shy and embarrassed, opens the lid of the little white plastic box. Half filled with boiled rice and curry, she delves her fingers in the food unenthusiastically, as if the question, in a jiffy, killed her appetite.

Vasanti and Laxmi, two of the many who migrate to the cities in search of work, end up getting exploited under private contractors as much as in their homes. Working for twelve hours a day and cleaning about fifteen to eighteen trains daily, many like Vasanti make no more than Rs. 1000 per month. To augment this meager income, they sell used plastic.

As Vasanti sat harmlessly swallowing her rice-curry, a sturdy figure, in mud-coloured uniform, her supervisor, came to inspect the stranger she is spilling the beans to.

“Don’t tell your name,” he warned Vasanti in his heavy voice, “I will tell the boss.”

Vasanti nods, without meeting his eyes.

“Ya, Ya, we know what to do. Let us eat our food,” Laxmi, evidently the more outspoken one, playfully shoos him off.

Foxing suspicious glances, the man leaves.

With no trade union or workers’ group to eavesdrop their grievances, these women work obstinately, day after day. Every year, the railway department releases tenders for these secondary jobs on the station. The lowest bidder wins.

Vasanti, a fourth standard drop out, now thirty-two years old, succumbs to all the injustices inflicted on her. “I may loose my jobs if I protest. There is no one to support me,” she says helplessly. “My son works, but he drowns it all away in alcohol,” Vasanti renounced.

Holding the rim of her saree she whispers that the money for this uniform too came from her own pocket. “I had to pay hundred rupees to the contractor for this,” she quetches.

With a stony face, she rattles how the women working under the present contract have no medical aid, even when hurt on the job. Without any protective gear, they soil their hands; the minimum wage rules are flouted, even though the tenders are approved by the State governments. There is no limit on the working hours or days. If they fall sick, chances are that someone else will replace them within a day.

Vasanti unties the knot on her saree’s edge and picks one guava, the smaller one. Effortlessly, she squishes it into two portions and hands one to Laxmi who gayly accepts it.

As Vasanti takes the first bite her eyes become glassy with tears. Her hollow stare like a dark tunnel with no light at the end, tells many abject dreams, as she slowly chews the soft fruit pulp.

“This one,” she ties the other guava in her saree knot, “I will give to my younger son.”

In the ado of the busy cities, hiding behind the rich-coloured sarees, many Vasantis kill their dreams.