Guardians of the Chowpatty

 The contrasting realities of beach cleaners and cleaning drives

The sun smiles on the brown sands of the Girgaon beach, just beginning to slip out of the blanket of the horizon. It’s beautiful if you keep your eye on the sky and the sun. If you look down at your feet, things don’t look so good. Plastic bottles, discarded and rotting flower garlands, empty food packets and cartons abound. And this is where the beach cleaners come in. They have been hired to keep the beaches clean after the revellers and the picnickers have dirtied them and gone home, satiated with sun and sand. 

As the world stays asleep, embraced in the comfort of their own safe and clean blankets; a figure clad in a t-shirt with a raincoat over it and with well-worn sandals (chappals) makes his way across the beach, putting it back into place, piece by piece. Raj Kumar, is one among the many guardians of the Girgaon beach. You could even call him its fairy godfather. He arrives every morning in the wee hours, and only leaves when the moon has made its grand appearance. At 85, you might think he would want to be resting at home, having chai-nashta. Instead of picking what he would like to eat, Raj Kumar is on the beach, picking up litter. 

“Isme bhi toh kahaniya hai,” he says. (They have their stories too.)

Having come to the city of dreams, Mumbai, back in the 1990s, Raj Kumar had soon found out that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it seems to be a target for anyone who likes to litter.

Niku (he goes by only a single name) is another one of Girgaon’s guardians. He is 65 years old and has been living and working in Girgaon for the last thirty years. Having spent more than half of his life here, it is safe to say that this guardian knows what he’s doing.  “We are actually advertising professionals,” he laughs while he says this. “What do you think beach cleaning is all about? It is nothing but advertising. The beach needs to look clean, only then people will come.” He says he lives five minutes away. When pressed, he says he lives on the beach itself. 

Geeta Devi, one of the few ladies spotted on the beach, comes from Bihar. Pointing towards a truck located at the opposite end of Chowpatty, she mentioned this is where most of the cleaners live. Niku also says, “Hum sabka khaana, peena, sona wahin hota hai.”  (We eat, sleep and live in the same place.) While most of the men had no complaints, Geeta Devi had one request, “Thoda pagaar agar badha de toh sahi rahega, bachhelog hai, ladieslog hai…’ (It would be good if they raised our salaries a little. There are women and children here.) With charming honesty, she says: ‘Do-chaar bande hai jinko bhi daaru-sharaab ka paise chahiye na?” (There are a few men here who need money for alcohol too.)  They earn three hundred rupees a day and this means very little in a city of this size. 

“Bachpan guzar gaya,”  says another cleaner named Ramu. (Our childhood has passed.)

As the hours pass, their small garbage bags keep getting filled while the beach is able to breathe a little more easily. They look at each other and laugh, cracking jokes and humming to themselves all while trying to give a new life to Girgaon. 

With all the work that they do on a daily basis, neither do they have appropriate clothing nor the sandals that would help them work more efficiently. Unfortunately, while the beach has a million fairy godmothers, the lack of support experienced by Raj Kumar, Dattaram, Niku and the others is apparent. The work they do is so integral to the multiple chains of life, and doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. They simply continue to do the work they do because of the sense of duty that they have.

On the other hand, ironically, perhaps with a much lower intensity, is the work carried out by beach clean-up drives. The individuals involved in these get required equipment as well as  good publicity. Social media loves a good activistic story, so the coverage for such drives is also intensive. One may also wonder if the very individuals volunteering for such clean-up drives, are the same ones contributing to the waste generated on different days.  While these drives are useful, they only last for the few scheduled dates. They greatly help the cleaners with reducing the amount of labour they would have had to go through, but what happens to the next days? 

These cleaners do the work and they don’t get the photo-ops. I watch as they fan out again, looking for the detritus of other people’s celebrations.