Foreword to the Kindle Edition
This novel was inspired by many of the women and men I have met in the course of my work: by their ability to keep alive their dignity, humanity, and even sense of humour in the midst of poverty and overwork; by their aspiration not merely to survive but to create a better world, to do something beautiful. However, poor people in isolation are powerless; if they compete with one another as individuals or groups, a few may come out on top, but the majority always lose. Therefore one of the most crucial and admirable qualities of these women and men is their capacity to build relationships of solidarity, friendship and love across traditional barriers of caste, religion, language and even nationality. The spontaneous warmth and generosity I have encountered among working women in widely separated parts of South Asia never fails to move me, and I think it would not be an exaggeration to talk of a common culture which they share despite superficial differences.
There have been many changes since I wrote this novel in the 1980s. For example, information and communication technologies have been revolutionised, and the value of the rupee has fallen to less than a quarter of what it was then. The prices of essential commodities, utilities and services, especially food and public transport, have risen correspondingly or even more. Wages have increased, but at the lowest levels have not kept pace with inflation. At the opposite pole, there has been a vast accumulation of wealth, and consequently the gap between rich and poor has widened to obscene proportions. Lured by sky-rocketing real estate prices and the prospect of union-free workforces, many industrialists have sold their factories in Bombay and either subcontracted their work to small enterprises or shifted production to other locations where vicious union-busting is the norm even in large-scale industry. The big pharamaceutical factories have disappeared, as have many other large factories, and along with them the relatively well-paid and secure jobs they represented. On a more positive note, formal workers are now more aware of the importance of fighting for the rights of informal workers, democratic independent unions have proliferated, and these unions have formed an all-India federation that counteracts the earlier isolation of independent unions.
Organisations and ideologies whose vision of the future is not a better world shared by all but an exclusive domain where totalitarian groups claiming to represent the majority community persecute, drive out or exterminate minorities, have grown enormously since then. These tendencies were responsible for the most shameful episode in the history of Bombay, the anti-Muslim pogroms of December 1992 to January 1993; it is because the Shiv Sena changed the name of the city to ‘Mumbai’ in the wake of the pogroms that some of us persist in calling it ‘Bombay’. Tireless work by anti-communal activists temporarily succeeded in turning back the tide of violence and hatred to some degree, but ugly scars remain, most notably the ghettoisation of Muslims and legacy of terrorist attacks (which had been unknown in India prior to 1993), as a consequence of which security has been increased massively in places like airports. The victory of the right-wing extremist Bharatiya Janata Party in the parliamentary elections of 2014 and its subsequent actions mark giant steps towards the creation of an autocratic majoritarian state.
Such supremacist, far-right groups and movements are not confined to India, but are all too evident in other parts of the world. What they aim to achieve is ethnic cleansing to eliminate other communities, and an authoritarian imposition of control over their ‘own’ community, particularly the women in it. Their brutal denial of the freedom to be or do anything other than what they prescribe results in the progressive brutalisation of the whole of society unless it is challenged and opposed at every step. If the original situation of diversity can be described as an imperfect but rich and beautiful multi-coloured woven design, anyone with sense can see that these attempts to tear out all the threads except those of one colour would destroy the fabric of society and ultimately leave an ugly, tattered rag.
Faced with this nightmare, it is all the more important to hold on to the dream of creating a more just and caring world, because dreams can become a material force if steps are taken to make them a reality. The creative potential for such a movement surely exists among the working people – especially the women – in our part of the world. And at this level, as the characters in my novel find, there is no contradiction – though there may be a tension – between individual and collective goals; there is an interdependence between the possibility of having the freedom to develop as individuals and the establishment of egalitarian, mutually affirming relationships with people of all backgrounds who share the same goal.
Rohini, Bombay, 2018.
Preface to the Sheba Feminist Publishers Edition
I know it is not usual for a novel to have a preface, so perhaps I should begin by explaining why I think one is needed. Anyone who writes a novel presupposes a good deal of background knowledge on the part of its readers – historical, political, geographical, and cultural. To put all this background in would mean inserting passages which sound as if they come out of a conducted tour, or else extensive footnotes – neither of which is very appropriate. On the other hand, lack of background knowledge can be a real barrier to comprehension for readers from another part of the world: words are more easily translated than daily experience. The only way to overcome this communication gap is for us to find out more about one another, which requires imagination, but also information. This preface is an attempt to fill in some of the essential background for readers who are not familiar with Bombay, or India. (Those who are, need not read any further.)
To begin with, Bombay – at least in the opinion of most of us who live there even if, like me, we migrated there as adults – is different from any other place in India. The most industrial and cosmopolitan city in the country, its inhabitants come from all regions, religions and castes, despite the periodic efforts of the Shiv Sena (a regional Hindu chauvinist organisation) to purge it of non-Maharashtrians and non-Hindus. ‘Bombay Hindi’, a kind of link language which is somewhat different from pure Hindi, has evolved to enable people with many different mother tongues to communicate with one another. People from different communities live and work together, but some barriers remain. Food, for example: what you may or may not eat is strongly governed by religion, and this may inhibit some from sharing food with people of other castes or communities.
Another consequence of the industrial culture of Bombay is that many women work outside the home, and there is a relatively high degree of freedom for women. Under the Factories Act, facilities provided for women workers include workplace creches wherever thirty or more women are employed, but this law is not usually implemented unless the union fights for it. Many employers have responded to the necessity to provide facilities for women by ceasing to recruit women into the large-scale sector of industry, so that women are increasingly being forced into the small-scale and informal sectors which are not regulated by the Factories Act and other labour laws, and where they therefore have virtually no rights and are often subjected to sexual harassment. Many are domestic workers; almost all middle-class households and a few working-class ones employ part-time workers, commonly called bais, to do the washing and cleaning. Cooking and childcare are more usually done by women of the family, although sometimes workers are employed for these jobs as well. Many bais work for several households in order to earn enough, since the work is very poorly paid. Live-in domestic workers are less commonly found, usually in more upper-class households.
Terms indicating family relationships are not necessarily used only for actual relatives. The term for an older relative may be used to indicate respect even if the person addressed is not actually older. In most families in India, relationships are still strongly patriarchal. Some communities practice menstrual taboos, and arranged marriages are still the norm. Child marriage is illegal, but continues to take place; likewise the giving and taking of dowry was outlawed by the Prohibition of Dowry Act 1961, but the practice is spreading rather than declining. Polygamy is legal only among Muslims but a report in 1975 revealed that it is practised to an equal degree among Hindus. Owing to the government’s population policy, contraception and abortion are available free of cost; the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 provides for single mothers to have abortions and for married women to terminate pregnancies without the consent of their husbands.
The climate in Bombay is hot and very humid. There are three seasons: a very hot summer which begins in March and continues until around the second week of June; then the monsoon, with heavy rains which tail off in September; after the monsoon it briefly gets hot but then cools off for the winter in November. It never gets really cold. A heavy monsoon causes a great deal of inconvenience, yet it is welcomed because water shortages are common, especially during the summer. Only favoured parts of the city get running water for twenty-four hours daily, while people in other areas have to collect and store water for use during the day. If the previous monsoon has been a bad one in the lake area from where the city gets its water supply, the cuts may be severe – for instance, thousands of households may get only fifteen minutes of running water per day, and slum households may have to fetch water from considerable distances.
Residential accommodation in Bombay is in short supply, and consequently property prices have rocketed. More than 60 per cent of the city’s population lives on the streets or in bastis consisting of unauthorised structures built of anything from brick and asbestos to plastic sheets and coconut leaves. These have no sanitation apart from open drains, which sometimes get blocked and overflow, especially during the monsoon. There may be public toilets near by; if not, residents have to find an open place to serve as a toilet. Each basti has a few public water taps which are shared by a large number of families. Many of these shanty towns are controlled by underworld ‘slum lords’ who have their own lumpen gangs and have to be paid large sums of money for the ‘right’ to build huts on the land. But these structures remain illegal, and families may lose everything they possess when municipal squads come and demolish the slums because the land is wanted for some other purpose. Other working-class families live in chawls – one to four-storey tenement buildings where the separate apartments (usually one-roomed) open on to a common corridor. In old chawls there are shared toilets, but most new chawls have toilets in each apartment. The rest of the residential accommodation consists mostly of blocks of flats, which increasingly are replacing the old bungalows. Some of them are very luxurious, in sharp contrast to the bastis that may be situated alongside.
Each household is entitled to a ration card (although not all succeed in getting one) with which they can buy rice, sugar, wheat, kerosene and cooking oil at controlled prices from their local ration shop. There are often shortages or delays in the delivery of rations and, almost always, long queues waiting to get them. The overcrowding in the city is reflected in the schools; except for a few very expensive ones, these often have sixty to seventy children in a class and run two shifts a day, morning and afternoon. It is even more evident in the public transport system, which consists of buses and local trains. Travelling by these can be a nightmare, especially during peak hours, and the whole system breaks down completely at least once every monsoon due to flooding. Many companies run their own bus fleets to bring employees to work from several fixed points and take them back after work; this is popularly known as ‘point-to-point transport’. Others run between the workplace and one or two points, usually stations.
The workforce of Bombay is polarised between the highly unionised workers in large-scale industry and the largely unorganised workers in the small-scale and informal sectors. The gender division of labour is somewhat different from what it is in other countries or even other parts of India, with many garment units staffed largely by men. There are few craft or industrial unions (except in textiles); most trade unions fall into one of these categories: (l) independent or employees’ unions, run entirely by the workers themselves; these vary from being extremely militant to being ‘chamcha’ unions controlled by management; (2) units affiliated to central unions which are linked to political parties, or to professional unions run by local leaders; here factory-level activists are usually dominated by the outside leadership; and (3) an intermediate type: employees’ unions which have as an office-bearer (usually president) a leader of a central or professional union; these vary from being basically independent to being fairly dependent on the outside leader for negotiations with management and major decisions. Agreements are generally signed for a period of three years, and negotiations, on average, go on for twelve months, sometimes for much longer. However, wages do rise between agreements because of Dearness Allowance (D.A.) which is linked to the Consumer Price Index and constitutes the largest component in many Bombay wage settlements. There are different types of D.A. schemes, some of which are much more effective than others in off-setting inflation.
There is virtually no social security for most of the population. The Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (E.S.I.S.) provides for sickness and maternity benefits for low-paid workers and their families and is financed by contributions from workers, employers and the government. However, E.S.I.S. hospitals and clinics frequently lack the necessary medicines and equipment, so that workers may be forced to get private medical treatment. Better-paid workforces usually negotiate their own medical and maternity benefit schemes with the companies that employ them.
What more is there to say about Bombay? If you pay it a short visit, your dominant impressions are likely to be of crowds, dirt, colour, and a desperate struggle for just about everything. But those who live there for any length of time generally find it difficult to think of settling down anywhere else in the world, and this is largely due to the warmth and vitality of the people living in it. I hope at least some sense of this comes across here. This book is dedicated to all the women with whom I have worked.
Rohini, Bombay, 1990.
(Description on back cover:
Inspired by the lives and struggles of working-class women, men and children in Bombay during the 1970s and 1980s, To Do Something Beautiful was one of the 20 selected titles for Feminist Book Fortnight and went to the top of the Alternative Bestseller List when it was first brought out by Sheba Feminist Publishers in 1990. A social history novel with a large cast of characters, its form mirrors its content as women who are initially isolated come together to fight against poverty, exploitation at work, sexual assault and harassment and domestic violence. There are no generalisations about their relationships with men, some of whom are also fighting for workers’ rights, and the relationships between adults and children are complex and varied. Their multifarious projects aimed at creating a more just and caring world do not end with the novel, but continue beyond its last page.
‘It has a very fine exploration of relationships between women – very supportive relationships between very poor women in India.’
Alice Walker, Hot Wire
‘The kind of book which should keep awake socialist economists and activists alike.’Sheila Rowbotham, Z Magazine
‘A vast, panoramic novel… in the genre of social history novels, like George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Drabble’s The Radiant Way.’
Rukhsana Ahmad, Spare Rib
‘This novel is an absolute must for anyone interested in the personal politics of making gardens out of dunghills; anyone interested in hope!’
Helen M. Hintjens, Journal of Gender Studies
Kindle and paperback editions of To Do Something Beautiful are available at https://www.amazon.com/Do-Something-Beautiful-Rohini-Hensman-ebook/dp/B07DCGN2SJ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= )