If a poor person dies during what is deemed a natural disaster, they become a statistic, nothing more.
Every monsoon, India’s richest city has its tales of horror: of submerged railway tracks, of flooded roads, of open manholes into which people fall, of trees that collapse, often on passersby, and of hillsides that give way.
This year has been no different. People living in Mumbai are more than familiar with the images we see in newspapers and on television.
But the story that mostly escapes attention is the impact this has on the poor, those who must work rain or shine, with no means to protect themselves or their temporary dwellings from being submerged or even washed away.
And when some of them die, when a wall collapses or they fall into an open drain, they appear the next day as a statistic in the media: 9 dead, two from tree fall; 6 dead including one in an open drain, etc.
Sometimes the dead have names. But just that. Names. We do not know anything more about them. Were they migrants? Did they have families in Mumbai? And who will be held responsible for what are routinely registered by the police as “accidental deaths”.
Worse still, even in death, there is no dignity of those mentioning their names bothering either to get the names right or their ages right.
Take for instance Satish Tirkey. This 35-year-old from Chhattisgarh worked as a watchman in Godrej Baug on Malabar Hill, one of Mumbai’s wealthiest localities. He lived with his wife in Simla Nagar, a large settlement next door that is home to drivers and domestic staff who work in the homes of the well-heeled residents of the locality.
Also living in Simla Nagar are taxi drivers, delivery workers, construction workers and others with jobs across Mumbai.
Tirkey’s job included stepping out of the complex to find taxis for its residents. On August 18, despite the heavy rain, he set out to do that. As he walked down the road, sheltering under a large umbrella, the wall on the side of that road collapsed right on top of him.
Residents of the building facing the wall heard the loud sound and rushed out to their balconies to see what had happened. But they did not realise at first that someone had been crushed by the debris. They watched in horror as stones, mud and water cascaded down as if a dam had broken, filled the road, and flooded their building.
Even before the fire brigade arrived, they saw a man dressed in a yellow raincoat being carried out by three young men.
