A new book spotlights the resourceful yet invisible workers who prop up Mumbai

Mehmoodbhai a lsquotoilet operatorrsquo is proud of the lsquomodel toiletrsquo installed in the informal settlement in Mumbai where he lives He played a key role in getting it made by mediating between the local residents a few NGOs and municipal officials in the Slum Sanitation Program SSPThen there is Nirmala A selfdescribed health worker or social worker in the Kamathipura area ndash Mumbairsquos oldest red light district She has the trust of most of the residents and people in that neighbourhoodThese are two among 36 colourful and vibrant profiles featured in a new book titled lsquoBombay Brokersrsquo It was conceived and edited by Lisa Bjorkman an anthropologist who has previously authored two books about Mumbai lsquoPipe Politics Contested Waters Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbairsquo and lsquoWaiting Town Life in Transit and Mumbais Other WorldClass HistoriesrsquoOne of the dilapidated buildings in Kamathipura an area that was part of Ratoola Kundus research Photo Courtesy Ratoola KunduHer connection with the Maximum City goes back to 2008 when she was here for a research project about water infrastructure for her PhD ldquoAs with any other city but perhaps particularly with Mumbai the more time one spends here and the deeper one digs the more one discovers there is to know and explorerdquo she saysEverpresent but invisibleThe idea for lsquoBombay Brokersrsquo was conceived over a dinner in Mumbai in 2017 when Bjorkman and a friend were having a conversation about the many skilled people they had encountered during their research here Bjoumlrkman had been telling a story about a ldquoplumberrdquo named Sunny His proficiency in procuring official water connections for households without residential documents fascinated her ldquoEven though people wanted to pay for water connections and engineers wanted to provide water the policy framework was full of contradictions that complicated the process Sunny was able to manage these contradictions and so was able to make the water connections possiblerdquo she explainsThat is when Bjoumlrkman set out to gather such stories from urban researchers and anthropologists who were working on or had worked on research projects in Mumbai The idea was to write up profiles of people who were not central in their research in Mumbai mdash neither the film director nor the water engineer for example mdash but who always seemed to be omnipresent While this type of personrsquos job doesnrsquot usually have an official title they are indispensable in whatever it is that the researcher is trying to understand say how movies get made or how buildings get builtShe sent emails to almost 70 ethnographers to enquire if they knew such people ldquoEvery single person I wrote to they wrote back in a heartbeat And they said the question isnrsquot whether I know a person the question is which one of them should I write aboutrdquo Not everyone had the time to contribute and 36 profiles made it to the final book which took four years to put together Published by Duke University Press and dedicated ldquofor Bombayrdquo it features the likes of Shazia a lsquoproof makerrsquo and lsquorumour navigatorrsquo Afzal Taximan among othersBjorkman asked each author to address four basic questions while writing up their profile ldquoThe first question was what do these people actually do What does their expertise allow to happen The second was what are the knowledge and resources these people possess and how did they become experts of these workrdquo Bjorkman continues ldquoThe third question is my favourite part How do other people talk about the expertise of these characters Others might talk of these people as lsquoagentsrsquo or lsquokhabrisrsquo but some describe the same labour as lsquokindnessrsquo or lsquosocial workrsquo And the fourth question was about what kinds of gaps need to be bridged todayrdquoA colourful cast of charactersPrasad Khanolkar assistant professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IITGuwhati wrote a chapter on lsquoMehmoodbhai ndash Toilet Operatorrsquo He says ldquoThe book is about characters who mediate when things are lsquobrokenrsquo mdash when there is no money or one is lsquobrokersquo when relationships or infrastructures donrsquot work or are lsquobrokenrsquo when cities are lsquobrokenrsquo into fragments by conflicts and frictions and so on So the book is about individuals and their practices who experiment and invent ways of making things happen in lsquobrokenrsquo situationsrdquoThe chapter lsquoNirmala ndash Kamathipurarsquos Gatekeeperrsquo is written by Ratoola Kundu an assistant professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciencesrsquos School of Habitat Studies ldquoThese are characters in our field work that we need to engage with But they donrsquot find a way possibly into our academic writingrdquo she says talking about the idea Bjorkman approached her with ldquoAlthough our academic writing tends to be nuanced but we donrsquot know exactly how to sort of place them in the story But they enable us to see and approach the field in a different wayrdquo According to her they may be exciting or mundane characters but the kind of work they do they definitely energise the city in very different waysLisa Bjorkman left and Ratoola KunduGiven the many words used to describe these people and their work why did Bjoumlrkman settle on lsquobrokerrsquo ldquoActually there was a lot of back and forth about the word because itrsquos a very loaded term We realised that even if we donrsquot use the word others will surely use it So we decided to deal with the concept headonrdquo she explains ldquoWe called it lsquoBombay Brokersrsquo because were trying to problematise this category of lsquobrokerrsquo and to really explore it Everybody thinks they already know what a broker is or does Were saying if we actually retheorise this concept empirically and look empirically at what all these people are doing then we end up somewhere else mdash both theoretically and conceptually mdash and thatrsquos so much more interestingrdquoSo how do Mehmoodbhai Nirmala and other characters fit into the concept of lsquoBombay Brokersrsquo Khanolkar opines ldquoMehmoodbhai is not a charactertype to be judged In many ways he canrsquot be because he is deceptive and elusive I was more interested in that form of operating in a citymdashwhere everyone works with each other despite knowing that the other might deceive you So deception was something I am exploring in my workrdquoAs for Nirmala Kundu says ldquoWe were looking at the Mumbai cityscape in the urban context In order to be able to broker they also need to have incredible amount of knowledge and make that knowledge work not just for their own gain but to be able to create bridges and access to various informationrdquo Kundu continues ldquoNirmala fits the bill in that sense because her work with commercial sex workers over the years has enabled her to break into that field regardless of the environment and develop a certain amount of trust with the women thererdquoMumbai is made up of many Nirmalas and Mehmoodbhais who mostly remain in the background yet play an intrinsic role in the cityrsquos daily functioning While these 36 profiles do give a peek into the variety of Mumbaikars who make the city interesting there are many more that have the potential to be featured in a book like thisIs there a chance of a sequel ldquoI donrsquot know ndash maybe See my idea is also that this is not a book only about Mumbai What Irsquom really curious as well is what if we ask a similar question in other cities Say the Italian city of Napolirdquo says Bjorkman But when it comes to Mumbai Bjorkman quips ldquoWouldnrsquot this be a great Netflix series I am hoping some creativetype will fall in love with the book I want Nawazuddin Siddiqui to play Rasheed ndash the lsquobrokerrsquo who delivers my gas cylinder to the chawl in the bookrsquos introductionrdquoAlso Read How a Mumbai lensman inspired students with hearing loss and cancer to click pictures even amid lockdown