Mumbai’s Azad Maidan: A ground of appeal

This particular day, with the Mumbai winter just settling, Choudhari’s eyes track the flight of a cricket ball on the other side of the fence. That is where one can see life, on its many cricket pitches. Boys, all in white, always noisy, always in motion, always in moments of finality. Every time a cricket ball is flung up in the air, Choudhari’s eyes trace the flight of the red dot till it’s caught.

Tell him his cause sounds absurd, he calmly interjects, “So does porn.”

Separated by an iron fence, Choudhari is sitting at the dystopian end of Azad Maidan, the legal space marked for protest in Mumbai. Outside the gates of what is Mumbai’s Jantar Mantar, the city moves without a blink. Everyone has a deadline to meet. A police official posted at the ground says people cross the gates only when every other option fails. Watching the ground everyday, he says, “is a slow lesson in democracy and patience”.

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When the Bombay Fort was built by the British in 1718, the area in front was kept as an open space to ensure that no one could trespass undetected.This area was known as the Esplanade. When the Bombay Fort was demolished 142 years later, a part of the Esplanade was re-appropriated to create four recreational spaces — the three maidans Azad, Cross, Oval and the Cooperage.

If cricket is the lifeline of Azad Maidan, its south-east rim is the bastion of people who are begging to be heard or noticed. At the gates of the ground, one can always spot “Mokashi madam”. She has been here for 20 years. She won’t talk or tell you her story. Officers say she is tired of repeating it. She is often heard saying, “Azad Maidan madhe sagle azari ahet (Everyone is unwell in the Maidan).” In the grounds, the wait can be long, but those who cross the gate believes they are exercising their democratic rights. “We salute her every evening when we leave this place. She is the ground,” says a police officer on duty here. The protest gates open everyday at 10 am and the protestors are allowed to stay till sunset. Once the gates shut, they move their belongings and causes to the pavement outside, waiting for another day to begin. Nobody protests on weekends. The Special Branch, the intelligence wing of the Mumbai Police, and a police outpost of Azad Maidan Police station, mark the entrance to the ground. They act as a channel between the protestors and the government, conveying their messages to the Mantralaya every day. A daily register keeps track of the progress of the protests. Daily protests are common, and many are symbolic — often, it’s a salary that hasn’t been hiked, a caste that is not reserved, or a land that has been falsely acquired.

A common face at the Maidan is Sawant Lulaji Bapurao. Lulaji, as he refers to himself, isn’t sure of his age. On most days, he feels like a senior citizen. He mostly wears borrowed clothes and, after sunset, he eats at the local mosque. His only belonging is a big plastic bag full of appeals and copies of every letter sent to every department. At night, it becomes his pillow. His sister, a labourer, was raped and killed in Dharmapuri, Beed district in 2000 after she demanded wages. Lulaji blames the village landlords. He alleges that the witnesses were killed too — one in a motor accident, another by electrocution. A third witness was badly injured, and one found dead under mysterious circumstances. There is no FIR till date on his allegations. He says another of his siblings was abducted from her house in Wadala in 2001. He says the threats continue.

The police records confirm he hasn’t left the grounds since 2000, except for trips to the Mantralaya and to Nagpur, the Maharashtra government’s winter capital. The officials say he needs to “act instead of holding sheets of paper”. They point to different dates when he has been asked to present himself in front of agencies concerned, but he has failed to keep them. In the ground Lulaji sits with his trademark piercing long gaze. Sometimes, he says he goes blank. “What do they want me to do? There is only so much a distraught man can do,” he says. “A government which cannot get an FIR registered has no face to speak.”

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Residents of Bhogda Chawl, protesting against the demolition of their chawl. (Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)

If you are a visitor at Azad Maidan, no two days are identical. But if you are a protestor, then every minute hurts. Flags go up every day. Most await the day when they can take them down with ceremony. Conversations inside a tent here are tinged with dark humour. The protestors come up with absurd scenarios to make sense of their situation. The day’s question is “how to escape a bulldozer”. Someone raises a hand — she will stand behind a plantain and offer a banana if the bulldozer moves. The laughter that follows is hollow, almost painful.

“Two years can make even the wait seem senile,” says the group’s matron, Sulochana Shigavan, 68. These people represent 206 families of Parel-based Bhogda Chawl, and together they are fighting for a fundamental right— to live with dignity. Their chawl was illegally demolished on March 30, 2015, and a quarter with no civic amenities given as temporary residency. Since then, they are here every day. Together, they represent former mill workers, tuition teachers, housewives, tailors, retired BEST conductors, cargo operators, nurses, BMC employees — all forming one “joint kutumbh”— and like Shigavan puts it, “the failed Marathi middle class”.

The BMC bulldozers erased their chawls in two weeks. “If you had seen us the day they arrived! We just stood crying, never saying a word,” recalls Hema Sharma, 50, a fellow resident and now protestor. Every politician has a photograph with the chawl protestors, says Shigavan, “including two chief ministers.” She even sneaked into a press conference in the adjoining Press Club and asked Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray a question: “Would you have left your mother to rot if her house was taken away?” He was frisked away immediately. At sunset, they go their separate ways — to their belongings kept in houses of relatives, a fridge in Sewri, a cupboard in Mazgaon.

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Mohan Pethkar and his wife Sauvimal keep their son company in his protest. (Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)

On afternoons, there is a good chance that you will come across Sauvimal Mohan Pethkar, 68, taking a walk around the ground. She and her son Dattatraya — and intermittently, her husband Mohan — have been here since March 20, 2014. Dattatraya is adamant; he wants compensation for a patch of 3.25 acres of his ancestral 7 acres property acquired by the government. In 1881, the British had acquired 1.75 acres to build a meter gauge railway track, in what then was the Southern Maratha Railways. Much time has passed, and the tracks have given way to an inter-city highway, with the state allegedly having “acquired an additional 1.50 acres” of his land for expanding its road network. Today, the Miraj Sangli Highway, which connects to NH4, crosses over Dattatraya’s ancestral farm, he claims.

“I wouldn’t have bothered, but I stumbled upon these papers when I returned to my ancestral home after my divorce in 2005. The fight is that old. At times, I am surprised that I am still not tired,” he says. Today, Dattatraya wants a compensation of Rs 2,600 crores. “In 2005, I began the protest demanding only Rs 2.75 crores for the land. There is an Aurangabad bench order which says that any protest in the state should be addressed in 90 days. I thought it would be resolved on time. Since then, I have sat in Sangli, Delhi and Pune, and now for two years at Azad Maidan. Counting interest over 11 years, it comes to Rs 2,600 crores. I know the number is unfathomable, so is the length of my wait,” he says.

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Shripad, 42 and his father Dharmaji, 79, have been in Mumbai’s Azad Maida since 2012. (Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)

The ground can also be a symbol of daily strife. Shripad, 42 and his father Dharmaji, 79, have been here since 2012. Together, they are fighting cases in three courts across the state. Shripad saw two men leave his courtyard one summer afternoon in 2004. Since then, he has been demanding a probe under adultery, criminal intimidation, and criminal provocation against them. One was his childhood friend. “My wife was abused. We couldn’t file a rape case as she was threatened,” he says. The case took a toll on his marriage and a divorce followed. Now, he has a string of cross-complaints against him, including one for maintenance, and a case under Negotiable Instruments Act put by the accused. On most days Shripad speaks to no one. His silence — fellow protestors say — indicates his anger. “I travel from the ground to Baramati and other courts every week. The cases have been dragging for years. My father leaves the ground and sleeps on the pavement outside. I return and continue here. The courts will act on the cases against me. I am here for justice for myself,” he says.

The father-son duo take 30 minutes every day to put the banner on the fence, ready their papers, in case someone turns up to hear them. During monsoons, like the other protesters, they huddle under the makeshift tent put up by the police. “The nights are long here. Inside the ground, at least there is hope, of someone someday walking in to tell us that the accused have been booked and action has been taken,” says Shripad.

If stubbornness could have a face, it would be Maya Chatole’s. At 57, she is fighting for her slum. A bulldozer razed her “pukka jhopda” in Colaba in January 2008. A Jat from Meerut, everyone here knows her as the “lady who knits”. Last November alone, she has knit three sweaters, two purses and one stole. In between the conversation, Maya waves at a woman who is sitting by the gate. “She is Mona. She doesn’t have permission to enter the grounds. She tried to self-immolate once inside, so the administration threw her out. They want a harmless protestor,” she says. Their slums stood adjoining the army quarters at Navy Nagar. Maya and Mona have been at the ground and the gate since February 9, 2008. A Congress party worker, she walks in everyday and rolls out an old party plastic banner from a Sanjay Nirupam rally she had attended. Now it serves as her mattress at the ground. She says every
political party has been approached, no one has any answer on why her house was moved.

It’s easy to mistake Maya for a tourist. Evenings, when she leaves the ground, backpack and banner in hand, it’s the swagger of a person with a purpose. When she was a child, Indira Gandhi had once lifted her up and held her high. “I was very tiny then. Everyone at home says I didn’t have a shred of cloth on me. They say she hugged me. I want to be famous some day and do social service. I want to be Indira to my slums. The years I have given to Azad Maidan will never come back,” she says.

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Ravindra Gangurde, 62, with his long grey beard and always dressed in white, was an autorickshaw driver in the western suburbs of Mumbai till he crossed the gates of the ground. One day, a chance meeting with a police constable, as he waited for his friend, changed everything for him. His friend never turned up, but Gangurde found a cause. “The police have no weekly offs, get a meagre monthly allowance of Rs 700 for long bandobast hours and they work for days at a stretch without any breaks or leave. I was aghast,” he says. “It becomes everyone’s problem frankly. An uninspired police force will lack motivation and teeth. It will show on the society.” It’s been 15 months , but he has not left his spot on the ground. On most days, one sees him sitting hunched over, writing laboriously to the chief minister. “A day before, the chief minister announced a day’s salary for bandobast duty. It is based on a proposal I had written. Another GR has been passed to increase the monthly duty allowance to Rs 1,400. I have demanded for Rs 5,000 and I will write again,” he says. He believes every word he says. “I can look into any person’s eye and convince him,” he says.

Protests do not come with a deadline, he says. He will leave only after he gets the chief minister to declare an eight hour shift for policemen. Some officers who cross him, smile. “I know they think I am mad. Autowallah policewaale ke liye baitha hai (An autorickshaw driver is fighting for the rights of a policeman),” he says before recalling ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. “Ek nanga hi ‘Eureka Eureka’ bola tha,” he says, both his hands raised in the air (A naked man had once yelled ‘Eureka Eureka’). Even before one interrupts him, he has spoken again. “Paagal hi kranti laata hai (Only the mad bring about a revolution).”