Castaway Mountain
Page 26
Dr. A. D. Sawant patiently deconstructed the mountains’ toxic halo and its impact on health. Anjali Bansal, Devina Parekh, Asad Hussain, Sarfaraz Arzu, Tanvi Kant, Shivaji Nimhan, Abdul Rauf Shaikh, Rukshana Shaikh, Dr. Khalid Shaikh, Dr. Vikas Oswal, Birju Mundada, Kishore Gayke, and Prafulla Marpakwar provided invaluable help with research, while Kanika Sharma and Abhijeet Rane helped with legal processes.
The frail Sachin Tambe, who had collected loan instalments, kept walking with me through the skinny lanes around the mountains, helping me trace the pickers, their shifting homes and crumbling lives. Prashant Shinde at Vandana Foundation helped with sending, tracking, and collecting my endless applications for documents.
Biaas Sanyal helped with fact-checking my seemingly unending research. Ashlesha Athavale rechecked the Marathi documents. Both helped iron out my flaws.
Writing residencies helped transform all the interviews and research material that I had collected over the years into re-creating the world of the Deonar township on page. Two Logan Nonfiction fellowships helped me begin, and then nearly complete, Castaway Mountain. Pilar Pilacia and her team at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center provided the warmest cocoon for writing, along with brilliant company and views that were as far from Deonar as possible. Blue Mountain Center gave me a quietness and calm that I had almost never experienced as a Mumbaikar, allowing the world of Deonar to appear in slow motion in my mind, letting me capture it. I began writing this book at Sangam House. Notebooks emptied onto the computer, with Arshia Sattar and Pascale Sieger’s care and to the beat of Nrityagram’s dancers, never letting me stop. My thanks also to Dora Maar House, where I was supposed to be when the pandemic hit and lockdowns shut travel opportunities, and where I hope to work later. Just as this book came from my being filled with the world of the Deonar township, it probably could not have been articulated without the distance of residencies, for which I am deeply thankful.
Residencies also provided the precious company of writers who had written books more achingly beautiful than mine. Lisa Ko and Kiran Desai talked me through their experiences over long walks at Blue Mountain and Bellagio, canoeing and ferry rides, long meals, and frantic emails. Suzannah Lessard, Adrian LeBlanc, and Suzy Hansen provided invaluable advice on finding my voice in the first person, when all I wanted was to turn invisible. Risa Lavizzo Mourey helped me make sense of Farzana’s dire medical records, even as I saw her heal, as did Parina Samra Bajaj. Abby Seiff, Melanie Smith, Rana Rosen, Diane Mehta, Philippa Dunne, and Justin Kaguto Go provided long-distance advice on writing, art, cities, and looking at things a bit differently.
Marco Armiero at KTH, Stockholm, provided insights, anecdotes, and learnings about the Italian waste crisis. Rajesh Parameswaran and Markley Boyer were my companions through the world of New York’s landfills, its waste, and the legends around it.
I am thankful also to Olivia Dontsov, Rachael Small, Sabrina Dax, Alisa Trager, Tiffany Gonzalez, Lisa Taylor, and the rest of the team at Astra House for their careful editing and support. Thanks to Rodrigo Corral Studio for the gorgeous cover design and to Jake Coolidge for the map.
Most of all, I would like to thank my parents and sister. My father ran the Foundation with me, while my mother and sister supported us—nudging me every day to feel our borrowers’ troubles and pain better. Throughout the writing of this book their love inflated me during my failings and deflations, squeezed out my inadequacies, and poured out onto my computer when I stared, completely stuck.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saumya Roy is a social entrepreneur and journalist based in Mumbai. In 2010 she cofounded Vandana Foundation, a nonprofit that provides microloans to entrepreneurs in the Maharashtra region. Soon she began lending to the wastepickers of Deonar, discovering their secret world and intrepid lives, and has stayed, chronicling them. She has written for Forbes India, Mint newspaper, Outlook magazine, wsj.com, and thewire.in, among others. While working on Castaway Mountain, Saumya received fellowships from Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Blue Mountain Center, Carey Institute for Global Good, Sangam House, and Dora Maar House.