A few weeks back I was in a place called Marina Beach in Chennai. The place is a popular attraction among the locals. Hidden in plain sight though, is a small group of people who have a story to tell. When I was walking by one day taking pictures, a woman called me over. Not knowing the language, I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. I recorded a few photographs with my camera, and then later on went with a friend who can speak Tamil to hear their story. The following is what they told me.
CHENNAI: The heat at Marina Beach in Chennai can get so high, that goats try and find shade to shield themselves from the sun that beats down on them. Along the stretch of roads past the roadside eateries and the fish-vendors, there is a small group of tents, if they can be called so.
The tents are made of used gunny bags and plastic sheets kept up by poles and scavenged iron bars. Inside one, a woman makes dosa for a meal. In another, a girl, no more than ten years old, is putting an infant to sleep.
The families have been living here more than seven years.
“We used to live in houses which we rented out, just over those shops”, one of the women point to a series of buildings a few hundred meters away.
“But then the landlords wanted the houses and we didn’t have anywhere to go, so we came here.”
The 20 or so “tents” house 50 families. Since a large number of tents attract the attention of the authorities, the residents here say that they remove tents now and then to try and be inconspicuous; this will buy them some more time to stay at the beach.
“There was a tent where you are standing,” Rajbhan Rekha points to a spot on the ground. “We took it off because the police are asking us to move, and if they are lesser tents, then they don’t force us so much.”
Two months ago however, the police wanted to move them out.
“Police came and started beating us with sticks and tried to chase us away. We told them that we have nowhere to go, and if they chase us from here we’ll kill ourselves,” says Dhanasekera Dhanalakshmi. The police withdrew threatening to come back with more personnel, but never did. Things have been calm so far.
Most of the women here are either widows, or their husbands have left them.
“We send our children to school,” says Rekha. But as a result of the dirty living conditions, children often fall sick.
“The doctors tell us things to do, but all we can make sure we do is to boil the water that we use” she says. Shopkeepers nearby allow the dwellers to boil water.
According to Dhanalakshmi, the boxing-day Tsunami of 2004 washed away all they had. “All the tents were washed away”, she says.
Another pitches in, pointing at a girl no more than ten years old, “She was an infant then, and she almost got washed away. I fished her out of the water.”
Dhanalakshmi and Rekha sometimes manage to find daily work.
“We go on daily work sometimes to wash clothes or to cook. The shopkeepers help us find work,” Rekha says. They are however reluctant to go away from where they are.
“Who is going to protect our houses when we are not here? We are scared to go out, because the Police might come and break down our tents, and nobody would be able to stop them” says Dhanalakshmi.
The dwellers say that life on the roadside has more risks than the casual oberserver sees. “Sometimes in the middle of the night, drunk men come and sleep alongside us” she says. “Once a man came to my grand-daughter, who had only attained puberty a short while before, and started fondling her.”
Dhanalakshmi says that protesting to these advances are futile.
“When we try to chase them away, they tell us that we are staying here illegally and we have no right to protest them coming” she adds, and says that the entire group – men, women and children – now resort to sleeping on the beach for safety.
“All we need is a house which we can lock” she says. “That way I can protect my grand-daughter.”
