Free India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation by Oliver Balch

food.
    Along from the kitchen, in the other corner, stands a squat lavatory. It is curtained in behind bricks and a wooden door. The size of a phone box, it doubles as a shower room. (Doubling up, I learn, is essential when you live in half the minimum space necessary.) Jyoti refuses to use the in-house loo for reasons of habit and privacy. Instead, she prefers to toilet with her girlfriends in the public lavatory block. She makes her way there every morning in the pre-dawn light, armed with toilet paper, toothbrush and an eagerness to be updated on the latest goings-on in the slum. Still, just having their own lavatory differentiates the house from its immediate neighbours. It’s a status thing, much like having a bidet in Billericay.
    The most obvious symbol of success balances on a metal support attached to the far wall near the bed. The Samsung colour television presides over the room from just above head height. ‘Twenty-one inches,’ says Babu. ‘Any smaller and my eyes would spoil.’ He subscribes to fourteen paid-for channels at a total cost of seventy rupees per month. Most show re-runs of popular Hindi and Western movies. For a year, he has been hassling the local dealer to add the Pix channel to his package, ‘but he is not listening only’. When Babu is not watching animal documentaries, he likes action flicks. Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone count among his favourites.
    The TV rack holds a Phillips DVD player as well. Babu frequently sits up late into the night to watch pirated films that he buys at one of the many pavement Blockbusters around the city. He has a few blue movies squirrelled away too. These he reserves for the very early hours when Jyoti is asleep. If she wakes, which she sometimes does, she scolds him fiercely for his devilry.
    A knot of black wires extends from the back of the Japanese television to four small speakers spread around the room. Babu bought the surround-sound system with his last Diwali bonus. His boss was hoping he’d buy a fridge or water purifier, but to no avail.
    Babu comes and sits beside me on the bed. He pulls out a collection of family photos from a plastic bag beneath the bed. The low-resolution scenes, blurred by thumbprints, are typical of such collections: birthdays, first days at school, family outings. Curiously, there are none of Babu’s wedding. I ask why. ‘No camera,’ he explains. He pauses a fraction, as if contemplating what to say next. ‘We had a private party only. Nothing fancy.’ The wedding breakfast, it turns out, consisted of a six-pack of beers back in the slum.
    Mixed-faith marriages, even at the bottom of the social hierarchy, are best celebrated quietly. As it is, Jyoti’s family situation doesn’t lend itself to happy get-togethers. Her mother died when Jyoti was young, immolating herself with paraffin and a match. The family cried murder, however, and pointed the finger at Jyoti’sfather. Under pressure from her aunt, Jyoti testified against him in court. Her father was duly imprisoned. She later recanted. It was too late. He’d already died behind bars. Jyoti and her five siblings bounced around family members for a little while, but eventually ended up on the street. ‘That’s why none of them have a good education and why everybody is doing violence with each other,’ Babu notes. Jyoti eventually landed herself the job as a maid in Kuffe Parade. ‘Then I got into a love affair with her,’ Babu says. His tone is unromantic and everyday. ‘And one day I went to get married.’
    A soft, metallic thud sounds from the corrugated iron roof, disturbing what has become a rather sorrowful stroll down memory lane. ‘Just a pigeon,’ Babu says, his ear attuned to every noise and movement in and around his one-room house.
    The interruption allows for a welcome change in subject. Babu lays the photos aside. Sometimes kids from his alleyway clamber on to the roof to lie out clothes to dry, he explains,