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‘When I make good profit, I eat dal chawal’................Deepa Suryanarayan
The LT Road in Mulund is home to Chhaya. Like any other street child, Chhaya eats, drinks, bathes, works and sleeps on the road. Last year, when she turned 16, Chhaya took a free train ride to her muluk (village) in Saurashtra where she delivered an under-nourished baby boy. “I call him ‘Gora,’ as he is fair,” she says. Asked about the father of her child, she says, “I married just to keep the other boys away.” But it was a bad decision, for not only does her husband snatch all her earnings but he also beats her up when he doesn’t get his daily dose of ‘solution’ (glue).
Now, Chhaya carries Gora in her makeshift pouch, along with two trays containing trinkets and hairbands that she sells on the train for Rs 5 each everyday. “I make around Rs 100-150 a day.”
Chhaya’s day begins at 5 am. Darkness allows her the privacy to perform her morning ablution. “Before marriage, I used to sleep on railway platforms and fear being attacked by boys.” She now sleeps in the relative safety of her husband’s plastic sheet ‘home’ near Mulund station. She catches the first train to CST to pick up goods for sale from one of the various wholesale shops in Crawford market. She then begins doing rounds of trains on the Central Railway.
Chhaya says the most difficult aspect of her ‘job’ is dodging the cops and not getting caught. “It is a nightmare — The goods are confiscated and I have to part with not only my day’s earnings but also whatever little I have saved.”
On a good day, at around one pm, Chhaya and her friends take a small break to grab a wada-pav or two. And then it's back to the grind till 9.30 pm. “Most nights we skip dinner. Sometimes, when I make a good profit, we have dal chawal," says Chhaya.
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