What started off as a mild ache in the chest soon intensified into a crippling pain for Damodhar (name changed), confining the painter to his bed and turning his family’s life upside down. It was then, four years back, that his illiterate wife Ramani was pushed into a world she was ill-equipped to face.
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As the clock strikes 4, Ramani wakes up mechanically. She can feel the soreness in her back extending all the way to her feet. The previous night's sleep does little to relax her aching shoulders. All she yearns for is some more sleep and rolls over to her left, cozying up under the blanket in her one-room abode. Her weary eyes fall on her son asleep at arm’s length. Without a nudge, she sits up. An hour later, as Ramani takes her seat in a share auto, she has three things on her mind: debts, her husband’s deteriorating health and food; but mostly, just food. The 42-year-old has lost count of the number of days she has gone to bed starving, but is determined not to let it happen to her son, even if it means she'll have to sweep roads on an empty stomach in Vijayawada’s merciless weather.
The auto stops at Eluru road and Ramani gets down to fetch her broom.
“I began by selling tea at construction sites, but switched to other odd jobs since I couldn't make ends meet,” she recalls, explaining her initial days as the family's sole bread winner. The unlettered woman doesn’t know the name of what ails her husband or the medicines prescribed. All she knows is that he shouldn’t miss a single course if he has to survive. Unable to give Damodhar the care he needs, she has temporarily moved him to his mother’s house. “I’ll bring him back as soon as making ends meet stops being impossible,” she says.
When all Ramani's efforts to pay the bills failed, her relatives suggested that she approach a self-help group to get herself the job of a sanitation worker. And six months back, that’s what she did. “I was ashamed initially, worried how my son would face his friends,” she admits, but the promise of a steady income - Rs 9,725 -- was something she couldn't afford to let go.
Ramani is one of the 3,500 sanitation workers who toil to keep Vijayawada’s Swachh records shining. She and 159 others have been entrusted with the job of keeping the city’s 56-km litter-free zone, comprising Eluru road, MG road and the stretch from Gannavaram Airport to Ramavarappadu, clean.
“We come to work in the hope that we will be paid soon. That’s what keeps us all going,” she remarks. She knows her situation is precarious and that it’s only a matter of time before the debts she has been accumulating swallows her family whole. Ramani and her colleagues have not been paid salaries for the last six months. “Things will get better,” she says beneath her breath.
Early last year, Pune-based firm BVG clinched a three-month contract with the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation to keep the city’s litter-free zone clean. The project tanked in a month when it became clear that the company could neither keep the assigned stretches clean nor pay the workers. The company officials took off in March last without a word on when they would pay the cleaners. Despite the wreck that its first association with a private player wrought, the VMC now plans to implement G.O. 279 that completely privatises the task of keeping the city clean.
Ramani is unaware of how the VMC dispenses work and dismisses the possibility that she may not be paid by the contractors who took over the project BVG discontinued. Right now, she forces herself to think about nothing but the road she cleans. Immersing herself in work distracts her from the pangs of hunger, so she works, from before sunrise till the scorching heat plays tricks with her eyes, creating mirages on the roads she so painstakingly cleans.
Of the 300 sanitation workers who died in the last five years, 80 lost their lives while on duty, most due to heat strokes and heart attacks. Protests calling for the next of kin of the deceased to be given jobs break out intermittently with little result, but Ramani has no time for all that. “We can’t take a single day off. We will lose the day’s salary if we don’t turn up. But since we don’t get paid at all, there’s no way of knowing if our salary has been cut, is there?” she smiles wryly, wrapping the frayed end of her saree around her shoulder. The 42-year-old has fainted twice on duty, but never got medical attention or went home before her shift ended at 2 pm.
"Ten minutes was all I gave myself, then I was back to sweeping."
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In the evening, a bulb flickers as Ramani speaks to her 17-year-old son Sudheer, an Inter first year student, in the dingy room she calls home. She keeps chatting, as if to compensate for the food she cannot offer, distractedly moving about empty vessels and wiping broken frames holding photographs of her first son whom she had to give up for adoption years back because she couldn't give him a decent life.
If Sudheer harbours any feeling of being trapped, his expression betrays none. He speaks with conviction and talks about his impressive exam scores and how he wakes up before day-break to study. His optimism is infectious and soon everybody in the room that can accommodate no more than a bed and a stove is smiling. “I will become a police officer,” he declares a little before he takes leave, rushing to join his uncle at a pushcart, where he prepares and serves kichdi.
At midnight, Sudheer is back home. The Rs 50 he brings is what keeps the family going.