about the Street

Early this morning the maid explained to me that she has a daughter who is a physician living in Connecticut, a son who is in the Merchant Navy living in New Zealand ,and a third son (she grimaces) has "some job" and lives with his mom. Tonight the lady of the house and I ran an errand together and she drove us to the copy center and then drove me around the neighborhood. Right across the street from Abhishek Bachan's mansion-house (he's a huge Bollywood star and the son of an even bigger Bollywood star) is a squatter's settlement. The Lady of the House had taken me around to these mansions to show me how to get to the beach from the house. We were talking about the maid and her children and she said, "her children are so successful and, you know, she lives in a house like that," pointing to the squatter's settlement, "after all that she has done for them, they don't help her leave." When the maid had told me about her children I thought she was talking about her sister's or brother's kids, because here many communities share the raising of their children. She was talking about the children she gave birth to. Apparently the two living abroad are brilliant and this woman is originally from Gujarat and converted to catholicism in Mumbai. Her church helped to fund the older two kids' educations. The youngest kid,a son, he is a goon for work. He is hired by various types of lending institutions to beat up the folks who do not repay the loans given to them. Her husband works for the railways. ---The middle class in India is growing, but here, especially in certain parts of Mumbai the divide between the haves and have nots is stark and misleading in some way. I say it's misleading because to live in those squatter settlements costs serious money, sometimes as much as a crore or two (approx. between $200,00-$450,00). Also, since the settlements are not in anyway legal, but the government cannot demolish them (this i need to further explore), these sidewalks are sold to builders for large sums of money and then the builders either pay those who have settled there or offer them flats. This scamming runs on all levels. I just read on the wire some news about a man who is a crooked politician who just got elected to a political office. He had sanctioned the building of these illegal structures for many years and now that he has moved up the political ladder, to secure the middle class' confidence, he has ordered a blanket demolition of several of these buildings. The interview was searing, he was very sharp-tongued and unwilling to address this contradiction.