Chapter 3 Baya and the other sweepers at Chelana
Baya was eleven years in 1977 and already a fullfledged sweeper. She carried out her duties according to ageold village customs. The villagers treated her as an untouchable. Baya and her mother worked in a number of mohallas including that of the Charan, Mali, Rajput, Dakot, Brahmin and Muslim. Tan Dan's family was one of her clients. He followed Baya in her work one day in December 1977. We will start this book about Bhangi sweepers by showing what Baya did that day.
When Baya woke up at sunrise, she started to sweep her houses as soon as she was out of bed. That was her habit. Her mother prepared tea. The milk they got from their goat. After chatting a little with her neighbours, Baya went off to her duty, just half an hour after she had woken up.
The Bhangi families had nine houses in a row at that time, and Baya's house was in the middle. Baya lived there with her parents, brother, sister and a goat. December nights are chilly at Chelana. Men and animals alike shiver of cold and the sleep is uneasy and incomplete. Also for the family goat lying in the angan. When the sun rays started to warm up the body of the goat, she felt comfortable at last, and drowsed, undisturbed of Baya's energetic sweepings.
Baya collected the dust and dirt of the angan in a small heap in which there were also goat droppings. This fertile dust she put on a kunda, i.e. an iron pan, and carried it to the partition wall between the Bhangi and Gavaria Banjara mohallas. There the Bhangi families kept compost heaps, one for each family. When it had become fertile soil they sold it to Tan Dan and some other irrigation farmers with papaya fruits plants and vegetable nurseries on a small scale.
Baya's hens
In a corner of the mudwalled house compound, there was a big clay pot, matka, in which Baya's family kept their hens during the night. As the deshi hens kept by the Bhangis were so small, there was enough space for two or three of them. During the night Baya put a stone slab over the open top of the matka to prevent attacks from small wild predatory animals such as wild cats, dogs, and foxes. Also mungoos killed hens.
At Chelana only Muslims and Bhangis kept poultry birds. People of most other castes did not like eggs at all. They considered poultry husbandry a dirty habit and anti-religious. Brahmins and Baniyas told it was against the principles of ahimsa, non-violence, to eat eggs. Eggs were called murgi ke bacche, i.e. the hen's children. For the egg to be fertilized the hen must have had sex with a cock, which not always is at hand, though. Orthodox Hindus do not want to consider that aspect.
The poultry bird flocks of the Bhangis are often small, just a few hens. One or two matkas are often enough for a Bhangi household. Occasionally it happens that the flock increases in size, up to a dozen hens or so. Then the Bhangi family make a small poultry shed of stones and wood, but the big flocks seldom last long. Predatory birds like hawk and eagle (cheel) as well as crows reduce their numbers and so do diseases. After some time the matka pots may be used again as a handy shelter.
The small deshi murgi hens run around on their own anywhere. They can stand hardships and know how to feed themselves without any help. The eggs of these hardy birds are extremely small, though.
Still, such a small egg is more expensive than a big egg from a poultry farm near towns. Common people believe, there is more power in the small deshi eggs, than in the big ones sold at the bazar.
Baya as a sweeper
She left her house after having cleaned her own house, having had a morning chat with her neighbours and a breakfast with tea and stale bread. Some of the family's small hens followed her for a while, when she left. Then she walked away with her broom and her basket along the sandy village lanes full of limestone pebbles. In between stonewalls, some greenery of thorny bush, low thatch-roofed houses and big houses with roofs of long stone-slabs. She would sweep in front of the houses allotted to her family as jajman. Baya's family had in its jajman some seventy to eighty houses all over the village.
Baya made two rounds. On her first round Baya swept, cleaned and remove dirt at her jajman houses. Then she had another round for collecting her reward - a stale roti bread from each house. The sweeping and the subsequent roti collection work took about five to six hours. Most days Baya was home again at about noon.
Baya at some jajman houses
After a few hours Baya and her mother came to the house of one of their jajman clients, Raghunat Singh. He sat on a chair at the opening of his angan yard (in Marvari called chauk). Beyond that opening Baya and her mother were not allowed to go, as they were considered untouchables. No Bhangi was allowed to enter the angan of any Savarn Hindu.
The area the Bhangis should sweep every day is the area outside the angan opening. Perhaps ten square metres. The area is called buvaro. It is for sweeping that place, they get a roti bread of this jajman family every day. Baya stood waiting outside Raghunath Singh's house with the basket for collecting roti on her head.
Raghunath Singh, the owner of the house, was a Rathore Rajput. He had been employed in the army as an officer of low rank, not much above an ordinary soldier. He had to leave, when he got paralysis. After that he mostly sat at home living on his army pension. In addition he rents out portions of his house, which is bigger than he need for his own family. Raghunath Singh also got an income from renting out his agricultural land.
He was married and had a few small children from his second wife. His first wife had died many years earlier. At Chelana it happens now and then that women die from their husbands, when they are still in the middle of their life. Although they are a few years younger than their husbands, as a rule, it is common that the wife dies before her husband. It is also common that the widowers marry a second time. As for Tan Dan's own relatives, his father Tej Dan remarried after his wife died, Tan Dan's brother Nathji also. Tej Dan's wife died of small-pox and Nathji's out of pneumonia. Chiman Dan's wife is dead. Chen Dan has remarried after his first wife's death. Prabhu Dan was looking for a new wife after his wife had died. They all belonged to Tan Dan's Detha Detha clan at Chelana. On the other hand, Charan wives who become widows are forbidden by custom to remarry.
A part of the reason for the high mortality among middleaged women compared to that of middleaged men could be that women face bigger hazards with regard to their intimate hygien, for example at child birth.