NO, THAT’S NOT US
Ekta M
The powrakarmikas (PKs) in our ward are tough, feisty and dignified women who do not tolerate residents’ tantrums or the BBMP’s unreasonable demands. They always appear like they have a command over the road. They work hard from 6 am – 2 pm. They are swift on their feet and agile with their hands. There are around 108 PKs in my ward and 40 of them gather, three times a day, to punch their biometric attendance, outside my house. This acts as proof that they are at work for which they are compensated 12000 INR per month. They are all, mostly women. They are all, mostly, Dalit women. “No, that is not us. We are not women who cook at home, we are women of the streets,” remarked M, as we shared a tea at the local chai kadai.
Garbage has grown as a horrific monster in my head, gnawing at my conscience, especially since my last film on the deaths of manual scavengers in UP, MP and Rajasthan. The smell of the landfills, open drains and septic tanks evoke a strong memory of death for me. That memory returns each time I see people carelessly throwing garbage bags because they know someone is there to pick up after them. With the pandemic, people’s fear of death is reflected in their obsession to sanitize; clues of which are visible in what they dispose of, without thinking twice that someone else may have to touch what they may have infected. I have seen used masks, half used sanitizers, medical waste, used tissue papers amidst endless parcel boxes in the garbage. The ‘garbage problem’ has been framed as a civic issue in a city that needs to be litter free – framed as a concern of the middle and upper class people who wish to live in a sanitized and developed smart city shaped by Brahmanical values of cleanliness and purity.
No, that is not us. We are not women who cook at home, we are women of the streets.
I live in a mixed neighborhood, Indiranagar in Bangalore, where around every ward there is an Ambedkar Colony. The geographical segregation marks the kind of jobs people do in this area – scavenging, burying and cremating, clearing streets and dead animals, domestic work – anything that involves cleaning. Cleaning all kinds of filth produced by another class and caste group. The 56 private security startup employed in the neighborhood, evidently suggests that residents require one more layer of distance by being secure from ‘miscreants’, ‘thieves’ and ‘criminals’. After the first wave, the Resident Welfare Associations vulgarly employed the 24/7 service, where security guards (mostly migrant workers from Punjab) are seen moving smoothly without a sound, on electronic bikes, protecting their mansions and empires, creating a foul air of fear and suspension of the ‘other’. “No, that is not us. We have been here for years, and suddenly they look at us as their enemies. They could have informed us too, it feels like they have done this against people like us.” said the PKs from our ward, who were recently followed by the 56 private security till she left the area.
A grotesque garbage dump forms every week next to the office. S, a 76 year old man works hypnotically and clears it, day after day after day. P, his daughter, also a PK, tells me, “Nam tande 3-4 times mental aag bitidru. Kelsa ildre, mental aag tare. Ivaga Chennagidaare.” “My father already went mad 3-4 times before. Without work my father goes mad. Now he is better.” He lost his job in 2019. But he still wears his BBMP jacket and works for no pay. No pension, no PF, no health card. P sells the plastic he gathers and pays her father Rs. 10-50/- to keep the fiction that he is working, alive. He has a stiff drink by the afternoon and heads home after his day at work. I asked her if we could do something – “Shall we put God’s photos, paint the wall, surveillance for the area, and complain to the MLA? How can people not see that this is wrong?”
“Aiyo, Leave it madam, as if people don’t know. Nothing will change here.”
We would have been leaders by now, driving cars and all that… but we are still sweeping. It has been 35 years.
No, that’s not us. I can’t keep quiet. Not after I found out that all the PKs were at work on Ambedkar Jayanti, while the rest of us had a public holiday.
I felt it was a good idea to make a film and put it out during the lockdown, so that we could expose this blatant discrimination and injustice. Since the pandemic hit in May 2020, untouchability has become more visible. The PKs in our ward shared horrific stories of how people did not give them drinking water, threw garbage at them from a distance, did not let them take shade near their house if it rained, did not get paid on time, worked without safety gear etc. We started filming long interviews with a few PKs who were willing to speak out without fear against the BBMP and the residents. Demands of the PKs to the State and the public, the process of garbage collection and disposal, the daily schedule of their work should be enough to shame the public and state, I thought. We trailed garbage from our homes to the landfill. By the end of it, we were disgusted by the filth we had collectively produced, as a people, system and an ecology.
Strongly built on caste lines, this mess has carried on generation after generation for centuries. I had very good footage of PKs in strong voices stating clearly what they need. On reviewing the footage, I was scared if I would make another film of workers stating injustices and discrimination? Who exactly would watch it? The workers already know it, the State is in denial, the middle class is apathetic, or guilt ridden, which does not change anything for the workers. Then what is the point of the film? Besides, what about their own ways of asserting their identity outside the frame I might construct? Like N’s horror film in his basti, U’s herbal remedy for corona, M’s nails red, A’s coloured hair? I heard multiple voices of the PKs screaming out in my head – “No, that’s not us, no that’s not us.” Is this the only way that we could tell the story? I was paralyzed with fear. I could not edit the film.
As a collective, we had several arguments about the frames of representation: is oppression the only narrative? Why are ‘we’ missing from the film? What kind of alliances can we build with other caste groups? How does our power and privilege show in the editing process? What will we reveal and self-censor in the edit? Some PKs had joined the union, some were disillusioned by the union. What about clashes in our political views and social values? I was stuck.
But my friendship with the PKs carried on. Soon, I was shooting at M’s daughter’s engagement. I went to her daughter’s wedding. Her son’s funeral. Her first vaccine shot. I reviewed the footage again, I felt closer to all of them. “No, that’s not us. We would have been leaders by now, driving cars and all that… but we are still sweeping. It has been 35 years.” laughed U as she downed her 30 ml.
I tried to reckon with conflicting voices on the edit table. Now, I can see collages appearing. The tone of the protest has not changed – it is still shrill and angry. The demands will be the same – no toilets, no office, no drinking water, no holidays, no housing, no pension, no health card. Remember what Marx said, Conditions determine ideas. Remember M who said “We will die and come back as sweepers and we will still be waiting for our PF, for the toilet…” All these voices came back to me and collided with the anatomies of garbage – of glass, pads, masks, stale food, rotten smell of hydrogen sulphide. I want this film to reek of it. Can it? I will try. No one shows up at work one day and they are dancing vigorously to the beat of the tamte, in torrential rain. I want to make a film that will make us shiver. Can I? I will keep trying.
It’s 2 pm, everyone has left after work. She gathers the dried coconut leaves, sits under the tree, and starts to make her broom. No, that’s not us.
We will die and come back as sweepers and we will still be waiting for our PF, for the toilet…
***
Illa, Ad Naav alla? No, that’s not us, is a working title for films that we will keep trying to make so that we can continue to search and cancel older, familiar representations. There is no one film. It is a collection of scratches that demonstrate the process of viewing and editing footage and engaging with the politics of representation. The exercise is to dismantle the familiar and find new ways to identify with the image of the pourakarmika. We will be guided by the quiet resistances that we have observed through the camera, to disrupt preconceived notions of labour. We will not hesitate to experiment, play and fight with our conscience in this process. Image, text and sound carry huge baggage and maintain the necessary distance between us and them, to keep caste relations intact. No, that’s not us, is a way to dig deeper than the eye approves.