Castaway Mountain

by Saumya Roy

  or returned to their villages to escape attention—I later read that Jehangir had given a statement in the Lohiya Committee report: Inquiry Report on the Cause of Fire at Deonar Dumping Ground (submitted on May 11, 2016). He concurred with Javed Qureshi’s statement, saying that younger pickers consumed drugs to keep working. They often burned wire to extract the copper, with the fires sometimes getting out of hand.

  TWELVE

  truly, in this there is a lesson for men of insight—From the well-known translation of the Koran by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. While Yasmeen was not sure this was the verse she recited that afternoon, she sometimes did read and recite it.

  Shahenshah-E-Chembur, or the Emperor of Chembur, presiding over a kingdom of poisonous chemicals and disease—In September 2019 the Bombay High Court ruled that city dwellers resettled in the two colonies in the halo of these refineries were to be resettled and paid compensation. The court relied on medical and environmental studies that showed air quality in the area had deteriorated as these refineries and factories around them had multiplied. One study measured benzene at 88.67 Mu/m3 in these villages, increasing the cancer risk and health problems. An earlier study had shown benzene at the Deonar grounds to be 286 Mu/m3.

  THIRTEEN

  the shrine of Mira Datar, the patron saint of exorcizing spirits in Mumbai—I found Beatrix Pfleiderer’s book Red Thread (Delhi, India: Aakar Books, 1994) helpful in reading on the history, legend, and rituals at the shrine of Mira Datar in Gujarat.

  waste-to-compost plants and power plants around the world—From draft project report and environmental clearance documents made by Tata Consulting Engineers, Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai.

  higher than in most other cities the authors studied—From the Tata Consulting Engineers project report on environmental clearance; Tata Consulting Engineers, Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai, http://forestsclearance.nic.in/DownloadPdfFile.aspx?FileName=0_0_5114123712111AdminAppA-III.pdf&FilePath=../writereaddata/Addinfo/

  FOURTEEN

  money was due to her family—Based on documents where Yasmin gave her consent for medical trials.

  to quell their stink—Obtained through a Right to Information (RTI) request.

  FIFTEEN

  the toxic halo that seeped in and settled into those who lived around—From the Tata Consulting Engineers project report on the waste-to-energy plant (Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai).

  feeding the ever-burning fires—From the municipality’s Air Quality Monitoring office, quoted in the project report (Tata Consulting Engineers, Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai: Feasibility and Detailed Project Report (Mumbai, India, October 2016)). Air quality data for after 2015 was obtained through RTI requests.

  would get fed to the plant—A spokesperson from Tata Consulting Engineers did not respond to an emailed questionnaire. Tata Consulting Engineers, Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai: Feasibility and Detailed Project Report (Mumbai, India, October 2016).

  “… facilitating drying and combustion,” the report said—From the Tata Consulting Engineers project report (Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai).

  SIXTEEN

  The account of the accident and Farzana’s medical condition was obtained from the medical papers released from Sion hospital with Farzana’s consent, the police charge sheet and from interviews with family members, pickers, municipal officials, etc. The police charge sheet includes Farzana’s medical report, Hashim’s statement, and so on.

  but they seemed to be lost—I had applied for these registers through the Right To Information Act but was not provided copies of the registers for the day of the accident and the weeks after.

  SEVENTEEN

  September was the month for pre-bid meetings—From the Tata Consulting Engineers project report (Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai).

  EIGHTEEN

  that “this will be one of the largest plants in the world.”—Vishwas Waghmode, “Deonar: Tenders Floated for Waste-to-Energy Project,” Indian Express, November 9, 2016, https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/deonar-tenders-floated-for-waste-to-energy-project-4365155/.

  NINETEEN

  one in the city even predated the mountains—Municipal commissioner’s reports from 1897 (Snow, Annual Report of the Municipal Commissioner of Bombay for the Year 1896–97) show that there was a Garlick’s incinerator in the city. It was sold as scrap when the cuchra trains began ferrying garbage to Deonar.

  Farzana’s wedding was only months away.—A randomized control trial by Abhijit Banerjee, Cynthia Kinnan, Esther Duflo, and others at the MIT Poverty Action Lab had shown that micro-finance loans helped increase business investment, but increased profits only for those that were already the most profitable. Conducted in Hyderabad, the study found that loan-takers invested in growing their businesses, but those that were already profitable had grown the most. I too had found that the small profits they made were wiped out by sudden illnesses, weddings, deaths, or village trips. Hyder Ali, Moharram Ali, and others often stayed in this cycle of making small profits and then losing them to emergencies.

  TWENTY-ONE

  asking to extend its life for four more years—Draft project report by Tata Consulting Engineers for the waste-to-energy plant at Deonar, (July) 2016. (Development of Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Project at Deonar, Mumbai). The accounts of the court proceedings come from my own notes. I attended hundreds of hours of court proceedings, moving slowly from the back to the front to hear. I later read, in Dr. Rahela Khorakiwala’s book From the Colonial to the Contemporary: Images, Iconography, Memories and Performances of Law in India’s High Courts (New Delhi, India: Hart/Bloomsbury 2020), that this was known as “auditory autism.” https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/bombay-high-court-raises-a-stink-tells-bmc-to-identify-dumping-sites/story-Sfb9BRQlmSlI5K0uCDEz6M.html.

  the cessation of dumping building debris, had happened—From R. K. Sharma’s petition to Bombay High Court.

  barbed wire to be installed along the creek’s edge—Minutes of the court committee meeting.

  more construction debris than garbage had been dumped on the mountains over the last few months—From Affidavit filed by R. K. Sharma in Bombay High Court.

  growing only by 1 percent a year for the next twenty years—Report by All India Self Government Institute submitted to Bombay High Court (All India Institute for Local Self Government, Scientific Assessment of Impact of Future Development in Great Mumbai on Generation of Solid Waste, June, 1, 2017).

  construction waste every day—CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Institute, Studies on Quantification and Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Mumbai Region (Nagpur, India: May 2016).

  some of the garbage the contractor ferried, and billed for, never existed—Chore Committee report, in Indian Express, July 12, 2017, https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/show-cause-notices-to-4-officials-for-conniving-with-garbage-contractor-mumbai-4746554/.

  10 percent overweighing of garbage so contractors could be overpaid—Lohiya Committee report (Inquiry Report on the Cause of Fire at Deonar Dumping Grounds on January 28, 2016).

  garbage that emptied from trucks, not mud—“Deonar Dump’s Garbage Collection Data Goes Digital: BMC,” The Asian Age, December 17, 2016, https://www.asianage.com/metros/mumbai/171216/deonar-dumps-garbage-collection-data-goes-digital.html.

  TWENTY-TWO

  trees had mysteriously grown on the hills, though they had only a thin topping of soil over its core of decomposing trash.—William Bryant Logan, “The Lessons of a Hideous Forest,” New York Times, July 20, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/opinion/sunday/forest-garbage-trees.html.

  TWENTY-THREE

  within 100 meters of a court, hospital, or educational institution had to be a silent zone—Bombay High Court or
ders passed on August, 2016 (Narsi Benwal, “Ganesh Chaturthi 2017: August 2016 Order on Silence Zones to Prevail, Says Bombay HC,” The Free Press, August 24, 2017).

  restrained him from passing any further orders on the issue—Supreme Court orders passed on September 4, 2017.

  no one was sure exactly how many people had lived and died on the slopes of Mount Koshe—Elias Meseret, “46 Killed, Dozens Missing in Ethiopia Garbage Dump Landslide,” Associated Press, March 13, 2017.

  even after their contract with the municipality had ended—According to the police charge sheet on Atique and Rafique Khan.

  many of them had made the long journey away from having nothing—In their opening essay in Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation (HarperCollins, 2012), Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot quote the National Sample Survey data showing that Muslims’ average monthly expenditure was just ₹800, equal only to that of Dalits and Adivasis. Dalits and Muslims make up nearly all those who lived around the mountains. Upper-caste Hindus spent ₹1,469. The data is from 2004–2005.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  a little less than two years after Oka had banned it—Orders passed in the Supreme Court on March 15, 2018 (Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry v. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and Others, Special Leave Petition (Civil) D23708/2017), https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2017/23708/23708_2017_Order_15-Mar-2018.pdf.

  It was the second fire in two weeks.—Richa Pinto, “Fire Breaks Out at Mumbai’s Deonar Dump, Spreads and Rages on,” The Times of India, March 27, 2018, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/fire-breaks-out-at-deonar-dump-spreads-rages-on/articleshow/63472468.cms.

  had asked to spray foam on the mountain fires instead of water—From minutes of the court committee proceedings obtained through RTI.

  But the court too had stayed in place.—From Rahela Khorakiwala’s From the Colonial to the Contemporary: Images, Iconography, Memories, and Performances of Law in India’s High Courts (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020). The case for finding new space to build a High Court building was also reported in the newspapers.

  brushed against the wires, they died, electrocuted—From an interview with the then chief executive of Tata Power, the electricity supplier in Delhi.

  the Supreme Court’s view, which asked its municipality to fix them—On July 10, 2018, the Supreme Court had passed an order saying that “mountains of garbage” nearly buried the city, and the civic administration needed to fix the situation, https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2015/31019/31019_2015_Order_10-Jul-2018.pdf.

  Oka gave a video talk to law students—Talk to law students at the National Academy for Legal Studies and Research, July 5, 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeTz72F8INc).

  TWENTY-FIVE

  giving them a portion of the money—Special court proceedings, news reports, and charge sheet against Jehangir.

  POSTSCRIPT

  he had said after the judge Justice Dinshaw Davar had ruled against him—Bombay High Court Archives (online)—https://bombayhighcourt.nic.in/libweb/historicalcases/cases/1908%2810%29BLR848.pdf.

  Tilak was sentenced to eighteen months in jail, which only inflamed the anger in both cities—Judgment of first sedition trial in Bombay High Court: https://bombayhighcourt.nic.in/libweb/historicalcases/cases/ILR1898%2822%29BOM112.pdf.

  No new garbage could be dumped there after December 31, 2019.—Bombay High Court orders on April 9, 2019: https://bombayhighcourt.nic.in/generatenewauth.php?bhcpar=cGF0aD0uL3dyaXRlcmVhZGRhdGEvZGF0YS9jaXZpbC8yMDE5LyZmbmFtZT1DQUkyMjY5NzEzMDkwNDE5LnBkZiZzbWZsYWc9TiZyanVkZGF0ZT0mdXBsb2FkZHQ9MDcvMDUvMjAxOSZzcGFzc3BocmFzZT0xMDAxMjEyMzI2MTA=.

  as he stretched the life of the township of trash on—Bombay High Court order, December 19, 2019. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai & Others v. Pandurang Patil.

  a little less than half of what arrived there every day—Vijay V. Singh, “Mumbai: BMC Panel Greenlights ₹1,100 Crore Deonar Waste-to-Energy Plant Plan,” Times of India, November 5, 2000, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-bmc-panel-greenlights-rs-1100-crore-deonar-waste-to-energy-plant-plan/articleshow/79053083.cms.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Castaway Mountain could only be written because the residents of Banjara Galli welcomed me into their homes and lives. I remember returning there early in 2016, not offering loans, but simply to hear more about them. Pickers went on to walk me through the mountains, take me into their homes, the clinics they visited, the schools their children attended, their embroidery workshops, and their kata shops, bringing alive their memories, their scrapes, and their festering aches.

  I am thankful to all those who chose to be written about. Others, who were barely featured or chose not to be, helped out too, including Saabir Pathan, Miya Khan, Lilabai Pawar, Shakila Shaikh, Shiva Shaikh, Rauf Shaikh, Akhtar Hussain Mullah, Hussain Shaikh, and countless others.

  Geeta Anand read and helped shape Castaway Mountain every fortnight, even when it felt like a stormy, shapeless cloud that I was stuck in. Soon after moving to Berkeley, she told me it was Farzana who glowed through my messy drafts. Remotely she mediated between us, so that Farzana could say the things she could not bear to, and I could ask about them, hear them, and write about them. For helping channel Farzana’s story through my hands, her wisdom, and her friendship, it will probably take me the Deonar townships’ more than hundred-year-long lifetime to thank Geeta.

  My thanks to Taran Khan for walking me nearly every day through my failings and stumblings, in the face of a story that was inextricably stuck within me and had to be told. Manu Joseph kept showing me the light—at the end of writing tangles, apparent publishing dead-ends and mangled Mumbai metaphors. Castaway Mountain’s hardest passes were traversed with Taran’s and Manu’s handholding.

  Alessandra Bastagli, my editor, shaped the script it in ways that felt effortless to me but that took Castaway Mountain to an unscaled height. She helped tell Farzana’s story so it would move readers worlds away from Deonar and make her feel their own. Cecily Gayford, my editor at Profile Books in the U.K., had taken on this project first of all, seeing it for being about Farzana’s incredible journey, one that revealed as much about our world as Farzana’s. Castaway Mountain is illuminated and elevated by the thoughtfulness, grace, and polish of my editors—Alessandra and Cecily.

  Sophie Scard and Alison Lewis, my literary agents, kept guiding this project calmly through a worsening market. To them and Georgina Le Grice, my thanks for taking life in the trash-made homes of Banjara Galli to distant parts of the world, where castaway aspirations made more mountains and other lives. I hope their work will help augment the project to shrink desire and its long, dark trail.

  R. K. Sharma was often my intrepid co-traveler in the world of waste. We frequently walked the mountains, visited waste plants, sat through court proceedings, and drank endless glasses of tea while ruminating about the fate of the mountains. For sharing my obsession, I offer my immense gratitude to him. I had turned to Dayanand Stalin when I figured that I needed data and documents to see the mountains, through their fog. For years Stalin helped me navigate the Right To Information application process, through which I collected thousands of pages of documents that brought alive the world of the mountains.

  Jairaj Phatak, Ajit Kumar Jain, Bhalchandra Patil, Rajiv Jalota, M. R. Shah, Amiya Sahu, and more than a dozen other retired and serving municipal officials who decided to remain unnamed provided context and detail on life at the mountains, on the challenges in managing them and giving them a new life. While the information came from them, the analysis was my own. Chandan Singh and others processed hundreds of RTI requests regarding the mountains with alacrity and patience.

  K. P. Raghuvanshi and Rahul Asthana, both of whom had chaired the High Court committee on Deonar, provided their insights.

  Jennifer Spencer and her team at Praja provided health and education data for the ward around the mountains, which gave much-needed context to the lack of development in the area. J
ockin Arputham, who passed away during the writing of this book, not only held Vandana Foundation in his arms but also provided great anecdotes on how the slums around the mountains were settled, demolished, and resettled. His mentoring and stories are sorely missed as are Rashid Kidwai’s, who passed away weeks before this book first came out.

  Vighnesh Kamath, from R. K. Sharma’s legal team, provided documents and backed up my memories and notes from hundreds of hours of court proceedings. Rohit De and Rahela Khorakiwala helped me make sense of the court through their brilliant books and conversation.

  Although Sukriti Issar had left Oxford to join the Sciences Po faculty by then, she supported my research at the Bodleian Library remotely, helping me trace back the Deonar township’s history from 1927—the officially quoted date—to records in 1899. Nilesh Wadnerkar at the Maharashtra State Assembly Library brought out proceedings and newspaper articles on Deonar.