Chapter 294 Children
There is a wide sidewalk between the seawall and the avenue, which is deserted and clean.
On the other side of the six-lane coastal avenue, it bends inland in a crescent shape, and as far as the eye can see, it is full of wealthy and prosperous areas: high-end residences overlooking the black sea, expensive apartment buildings, consulates, high-end restaurants and hotels.
But if you go a little further north, you will see a completely different scene.
There are restaurants, bars, shops on the streets, and even vendors selling cigarettes and paan roaming on the sidewalks.
In just a few steps, it seemed like two different worlds.
It's not that people consciously avoid wealthy areas, but that there are police patrolling every night.
They would drive their jeeps down the main streets and after 11 o'clock, force the shops to pull down their iron gates, cover their windows, and cover the stalls in the market with white cloth.
Beggars, secluded gentlemen, and call girls who had not yet returned home or hidden were all driven off the nearby sidewalks.
Silence and calmness descended. The streets, which were bustling with people and traffic during the day, became unimaginably quiet at night.
The wealthy area was like a ghost town at night, and later in the evening there were even police conducting raids.
According to Mumbai law, people are not allowed to sleep on the streets.
But nearly half of the city's population is homeless, many of whom eat, sleep and live on the streets.
Everywhere people were sleeping on the pavement, with only a thin blanket and cotton sheet to keep away the night dew.
Individuals, families, and entire villages who had fled to the city due to drought, flood, or famine slept on the stone sidewalks and at the doorsteps of houses, huddled together to avoid being left alone.
It is impossible for the police to arrest all these people, so they can only ensure peace in the wealthy areas.
They patrol the empty streets, searching for criminals, suspects, homeless, unemployed men.
However, sometimes when the police carry out the crackdown, they are as "pragmatic" as when they crack down on the call girls on Wanbroth Street.
They will turn a blind eye to a certain extent, but don't expect much sympathy from them.
Dervishes and other religious practitioners were exempt, but the elderly, amputees, the sick or injured were driven away and moved to other streets.
The mentally ill, people with eccentric behavior, musicians, acrobats, snake charmers and other traveling performers were occasionally treated roughly.
When encountering a family, especially one with young children, the police usually just give them a stern warning not to stay on the streets for more than a few nights and then let them go.
Any man who could prove he had a job, such as a business card or a handwritten employer's address, would be allowed in, no matter how menial the job.
A lone man who was clean, respectable, and who showed some education could usually avoid arrest by explaining himself verbally.
Of course the most important thing is that if you can pay for it, then nothing will happen.
In the end, only very poor, homeless, unemployed, poorly educated, and single young men are left, becoming the group most likely to be caught by the police.
Dozens of these young men are arrested every night across the city and are very useful.
Some people have the appearance characteristics of a wanted criminal, well, then you are one.
Not only can the police close the case quickly, but it also counts it as a major achievement. With tens of millions of cases in Mumbai, isn't this a good way to settle the accounts?
Even though the police know that some people are innocent, they still let them take the blame because they can get paid.
The real suspects will pay the police to get away with it, and the poor and young people who are arrested are the best expendable materials.
While Ron and Anand were sitting on the roadside eating, police officers were knocking on the street with bamboo sticks.
The Mumbai police do not have the money to buy thousands of metal handcuffs, and even if they had the funds, the police would probably embezzle them.
They used long, rough ropes made of hemp and coconut fibers to tie the right hands of the arrested people together.
Although the rope is thin, it can tie up these people because most of the people living on the streets are malnourished and thin.
They were demoralized and unable to escape, so they could only accept capture obediently and quietly.
After arresting more than ten or twenty men and tying them up in a row, the search team took them back to the police station.
The police in Mumbai also do not carry weapons. They only have bamboo sticks, no batons, guns, or walkie-talkies.
If they really get into trouble, they have no way to ask for help, so they can only rely on luck.
Just as Ron was about to discuss with Anand what work to do, there was a commotion on the street.
There were sounds of girls crying and shouting and cursing.
"It's Rajiv!" Anand shouted.
"Huh?" Ron was stunned for a moment before he realized what was happening. "Why is he here?"
Rajiv was the boy who did medicine business with Anand. It was Ron who brought him out of the leprosy slum.
Now he was surrounded by several policemen, with several children in tattered clothes following behind him.
"Ron, I'll go check it out." Anand said as he tried to get up.
"No need, let Anil deliver the message." Ron winked.
Anil led his men over and the noise soon died down. The policemen bowed and nodded towards this side and saluted.
Ron just nodded and stopped paying attention. Rajiv and the children arrived at the roadside shop safely.
"Ron Baba." He bowed and touched feet.
"What happened just now?"
"The leprosy slums are gone, I will go and take them out." Rajiv tried to smile.
The small, flimsy slum made of branches disappeared.
There are only a few children left, and they stayed with their parents until the last moment.
They were orphaned, just like Rajiv.
The youngest was a girl, only five or six years old. She stared at the cup on the table and licked her lips.
"Good girl," Ron smiled and patted her head, "What's your name?"
"Sunita," she said timidly.
"Thirsty?"
She nodded and said nothing.
"Here." Ron handed her the sweet tea.
She took a sip, smiled, and her little face turned slightly red.
"Is it delicious?"
"Sweet." She was very happy and hugged the cup tightly.
She was wearing a red dress with the words "My Naughty Smile" printed in English on the chest.
The dress was torn and too tight on her, and her little feet were bare.
She finished her tea and came skipping over to bring the cup over, the metal bells on her anklets jingling.
"Baba, good man." She said with a smile.
"Sunita is a good girl."
She giggled and snuggled up to Rajiv, rocking him gently in her arms.
Ron asked the store to bring a few more meals, one for each child.
Anand teased them playfully, touching one's head and pinching another's mouth.
He even made faces on purpose while they were drinking sweet tea, causing the children to choke and have snot bubbles on their noses.
"How many have you got?" Ron asked.
“Eighteen,” Rajiv replied.
"Including the ones here, there are twenty-three of them. Are you the only one taking care of them?"
"They take care of themselves and I buy them food."
Children from the slums, over the age of five, have to fend for themselves. The ones in front of me are even more special, they come from the leprosy slum.
Their parents' hands and feet were so deformed that they couldn't even hold on to branches. The children had put in a lot of effort to build the hut there.
They can do everything, from cooking, feeding their parents water, and repairing the leaking hut.
"The place in the slum is too small, why don't you find a bigger house?"
“Ron, no matter how much money we make, we will not leave the Kama compound,” Anand replied.
"Why?" He didn't understand.
"That's where my kids, these kids, can knock on their neighbors' doors at one in the morning and ask for food.
If they don't like the meal their mother cooks today, they can go to a neighbor's house to eat. In our place, children who come to our house are guests of honor and are treated well wherever they go.
But that's not the case where you live. If your future children knock on the neighbor's door at one o'clock in the morning, you will definitely slap their palms.
'No!' You'll tell them off because you don't want the neighbors to think your kids aren't getting enough to eat."
"Yes, very humane." Ron nodded.
“Yes, Kama compound has all the facilities,” Anand agreed.
"Fully equipped" is a term often used in real estate advertisements, referring to properties with modern kitchens, indoor plumbing and elevators.
But the “complete facilities” in the slums have a deeper meaning. In Anand’s words:
"When you come home from get off work and meet your neighbor, you stand in the hallway and greet him. But where we are, if you have an emergency and need to go to the hospital, just say hello and the neighbor will come to help you look after the house without saying a word."
The facilities he sees speak more of neighborhood harmony, something that is lacking in modern apartment buildings.
"Children are protected by the gods. Adults are vindictive and thin-skinned, but when faced with the same thing, children can just turn around and forget it." Anand burped and smiled at the children.
"No wonder you have seven or eight kids." Ron laughed.
"Children are the happy pills and little cotton-padded jackets of poor families." Anand shook his head.
"Well, you enjoyed it."
"Yeah, I like that. By the way, where were we? You said you wanted to install cable TV?"
"I've got a new TV station, the kind with cable TV, and I need to run the lines right to the people's bedrooms. Mumbai has such a large population that a worker can only visit a dozen or so households a day at most.
Although there are many people in Kama Compound, not many are literate or smart. Installing cable TV is a technical job, and I don't have the time to screen them one by one."
"Where is Amol?" Anand asked curiously.
He is the property manager of Kama Compound, and no one knows the residents there better than him.
"I transferred him to Suer Electric, where his expertise can be better utilized."
"Okay, Ron Baba, I'll organize the staff when I get back."
“After the personnel are selected, they will be trained first and then paid 20 rupees for each household they install.”
"Ron Baba, everyone is willing to work for you for free."
"No, people have to eat."
Let's put things in perspective. There's no need to be stingy with such a small amount of money.
Some people in Kama Compound work in his factory, while others help him install cable TV.
The deeper their interests are tied, the more consciously they will safeguard Ron's interests in the future.
All arrangements are in place here at the TV station, and it’s time to go to South India.
(End of this chapter)
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