Setting up home in a hoarding

Following Rahul Gandhis remarks on migrants from UP working in Maharashtra,tracks the life of a migrant in Pune who has made a hoarding his home

In 2008,when workers of Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena MNS targeted North Indians in Pune,beating up auto rickshaw drivers,hawkers and others,Ram Suhavan,a migrant from UP,escaped unhurt and unnoticed. It would have been hard to find him,living as he does in an advertisement hoarding.

Suhavans home is a small space in between two sides of an advertising hoarding that stands at one of Punes busiest chowks. One side of the hoarding displays an advertisement for residential apartments while the other hosts an ad for a car. The 3-ft wide hoarding that stands 60 ft above the ground,looks over a railway track where a train passes every ten minutes. For Suhavan who cant afford much rent,this is as good as it gets.

Suhavan,43,is from Madedu village near Allahabad and works as a supervisor in a private security company in Pune. He has been living inside this hoarding since four years and now has company. His nephew Mohan too lives with him and seven other people from his village who have joined his security company as night watchmen,eat their meals and rest here during the day.

When I came to Pune in 2007,I got a job as security guard but had no place to live. I knew the hoarding contractor through one of my acquaintances. I told him I would guard the hoarding and would not charge him anything. He agreed and later he started paying me Rs 500 a month too, says Suhavan. He has been promoted as a supervisor and he has brought over a dozen other men from his village to work as security guards.

While Suhavan appears to have made peace with his home in the hoarding,the other boys living with him are far from happy. Sunder,who passed his class XII two years ago and landed in Pune two months ago with Suhavan says,Look at our living conditions. Can we call this a home? When my parents call me and ask me about my home,I tell them I live in a nice house.

The boys may not be happy but Suhavan says if they lived in a room in the slums instead,they would have to cough up rent and would not have been able to save anything.

Suhavan,who has studied only till class II and can barely read and write,hopes to get his 11-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son educated. Every month when he gets his salaryRs 6,000 as supervisor and

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Rs 1,000 for looking after the hoardinghe sends back about Rs 4,000 to his family back home.

Suhavan intends to stay here in the hoarding till he can. Ill move out only if the contractor of the hoarding changes and the new one wants me to leave, says Suhavan. He also has no plans to return to UP. I came here because it was difficult to get a job back home. I left my village 15 years ago and worked in Punjab and Gujarat before coming to Pune. I keep bringing boys from my village to Pune simply because there are no jobs there, says Suhavan. Its difficult to live here but at least we have a job, he says.