Sorry, can’t offer shelter from storm

Subir Roy

As our matronly maid Mamani went about cleaning our flat, it struck me: what happens to her family? I knew people like them lived in jhuggis with a tin roof, which is easily blown away in 100-km-plus winds.

But Mamani’s lot in life was more daunting. She and her rickshaw-puller husband shared their one-room home with two disabled children. Her 30-year-old daughter could just about move around but not speak. Her son, in the mid-twenties, was worse off. He could barely get off the bed and also not speak at all.

I asked her how she was preparing for the storm. She simply smiled. You can perhaps park a boxful of valuables and clothes at someone’s place but what about the children? There was no response from her.

That set me thinking. We could create an emergency shelter in our housing complex for her children. I went down and started a conversation with the security guards. Was there a room somewhere on the ground floor near one of the toilets which the guards used where two disabled people could spend the stormy night? There wasn’t any. There was the well-stocked senior citizens’ club room with the cards table and carrom board and there were a couple of rooms filled with chairs which were taken out during events.

Then it struck me. There were two guard rooms next to the two gates which the guards used mostly to change and keep a few clothes. One of them was full but the other was almost empty. They all knew Mamani and when I told them the need to find a shelter for her unfortunate children, they readily agreed. I was certain they themselves lived in the sort of jhopri that Mamani called home.

I came back home and told her about my grand plan, which, of course, had to be approved by the society’s secretary who worked for a do-gooder multilateral agency. As soon as he heard me out, he told me he was all for it, but had to clear the idea with fellow committee members.

After half an hour came the bombshell. The secretary was on the phone listing the doubts that the others had raised. What if seeing what we had done for Mamani’s children, other jhopri people also wanted a shelter in our complex! Besides, the guards said they needed the room to change. Somewhat rudely I cut him short saying I had got the sense and ended the call.

Telling Mamani ‘Sorry, my plan didn’t work’ was the easy part. I just couldn’t get over the fact that we middle-class people could not find shelter for a single night for two disabled people. The gods must have seen it all from above. The severe storm largely passed the city by and Mamani and family were not harmed.