Beyond its notorious face Dongri harbours legacies of service and spirituality from water carriers and surma makers to the Baba Gor dargah celebrating the Sidi Dhamal folk dance festival this month-end
"DIN! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
The lines closing Kipling's jingoist verse distract me fleetingly. The next moment I'm hooked by the cryptic crispness with which Sagir Sheikh states "1819". He has the date pat, rooted deep to his ancestry. "That was when my baap-daade from Haryana came here to practise our profession," he says, massaging the shoulder on which he hoists the goat-skin bag called mashaq.
Hand-stitched traditionally by tailors from Rajasthan, this basic tool of trade is what Sagir walks in loping gait with along narrow paths of Pydhonie and Dongri, towards the end of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Road. Like their father Allaudin, he and his brother Khanu represent an ancient water-carrying fraternity dubbed Bhishti, probably from the Urdu "behesht", meaning heaven. "Giving water to the thirsty is a blessed thing. He who performs the task earns a place in paradise," Khanu declares.
Mohmmad Anis, whose father set up Dada Nanji Kamarsi Surmawala in 1930, applies his special cooling surma mix on a customer’s lower eyelid. Pics/Atul Kamble
"Precious because it revives, water stored in leather pouches smells musky and tastes of an altogether different sweetness," says Sagir. "Some carriers now use metal or plastic pots with a stopper to pour from. Can that be the same? What's tough is, no one wants to pay for water." So business is erratic and thin for these vendors patiently awaiting customers who instead access water tankers driven to their doorstep. When roads were laid employing labour-intensive infrastructure, these men were much in demand, quenching workers' thirst and pouring over vast coal tar stretches for steamrollers to flatten.
Sidi Abdul Rauf tends to the shrine of the Abyssinian agate merchant turned saint, Baba Gor, at the Sidi Dargah in Tandel Street. His mother, Asooma Ben Makwa, presided over the dargah before him
The carriers often pay hafta to be allowed parking for the patra - a wheelbarrow-like cylinder containing the water, attached with handles and small tyres. "Our bodies misalign and hurt while we angle ourselves balancing the mashaq to avoid spillage. One shoulder permanently hangs an inch lower," demonstrates another carrier, from a bunch of bystanders crowding the Char Null (four taps) crossroads. Dodging dirt mounds and kittens trying tiny leaps between abandoned scooters, I reach this junction with umbrella repairer Isaak Moosa Chhatriwala guiding me through the gullies of his childhood.
A still from the 1964 Hollywood psychological thriller, 36 Hours, hangs prominently in the surma shop. This scene from the George Seaton-directed film shows a trio of highly popular stars of the time: Rod Taylor as the doctor examines the eyes of the patient, played by James Garner, with Eva Marie Saint acting as the nurse
On the shores below Dongri hill, Koli fishermen mended nets and built boats, note Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra in Bombay, The Cities Within. They explain the later influx of various communities: "Muslim immigrants from across the country as well as Afghans, Persians and Arabs had begun to settle at Bombay after the occupation of the islands by Muslim rulers of Gujarat in the 14th century. Memons, Deccani and Konkani Muslims, Sheikhs, Pathans from Afghanistan and Julhais or weavers, belonged to the Sunni sect of Islam. Persians or Moghuls, the Khojas and Borahs formed part of the Shia sect."
Bhishtis were once far more familiar figures, pushing patras in and out of Bombay bylanes. Supposed to provide sustenance for the Mughal armies during Emperor Akbar's reign, a Bhishti gave Humayun water during battle. The Sheikhs share that their maternal grandfather, Eidu, worked with the Raja of Bikaner's force. Desert wars saw the enemy strategically aim straight at Bhishtis' bags. During the Raj, Bhishtis were trusted to follow troops wherever they were stationed. Finally, even Kipling's brazenly berated Bhishti is respected by the colonial soldier. Entering the line of fire to offer the narrator a drink, the loyal water-carrier succumbs to shots. (The word "Lazarushian" might allude to biblical Lazarus, resurrected from the dead, suggesting Din's resemblance to the worn leather he dispensed water from.) "Cleaned and maintained applying sarson ka tel, a mashaq lasts a couple of years," says Sagir. "Each holds a 25-litre load selling for about Rs 20. We fill up from the well in Hazrat Sayed Aashiq Shah Bukhari Masjid."
Bhishtis continue one of the oldest practices surviving since humans discovered they could store water in the skin of animals hunted for food. "On our father's side, Rehman Sheikh first left Narnaul in Haryana, 200 years ago. Bombay's new stone buildings under erection needed to be sprayed as they rose," Khanu says. Bhishtis then washed streets spotless, catered at wedding feasts and supplied water to the red-light area ringing the Pila House (playhouse) theatre district.
Both, those actors and ladies of the night possibly bought bottles of surma - that stock cosmetic common to their respective trades - from Dada Nanji Kamarsi Surmawala. Having outlined the eyes of clients from babies to bade miyans all the way from 1930, the proprietor is about to shut shop for good. "My daughter Razia is a teacher in Croydon, one of my brothers is a barrister in London and the other a scientist in Manchester. Nobody will manufacture surma after me," says Mohmmad Anis Shaikh matter-of-factly, pottering around his atmospheric shop.
It being Thursday, a morning before Jummah, sixth and the holiest day of the Islamic week, people buy their favourite fresh kaajal and attar. Bypassing stacks of standard brands like Mumtaz and Shama, the 74-year-old reaches, with an air of accomplishment, for the special cooling surma he learnt to concoct from his father Gulam Nabi Taufiq. It comprises germ-ridding antimony imported from Jordan, pearl powder, dried lime and aromatic herbs in rose water. Advice prominently pasted on a showcase reads, "Sachche motiyon ke Unani surme hamesha istemaal kijiye (Always use Unani surma from real pearls)" and announces Mohmmad Bhai's availability for free treatment from 10 am to 12 noon. Every two minutes of those two hours clock overwhelming evidence of faith in his ministrations. A non-stop flow of schoolboys, veiled housewives, neighbouring shopkeepers and bandaged beggars cram the bench facing his counter. "Chachu, surme ki salai do na - a smear of your surma stick" is the refrain. Mohmmad Bhai attends to afflictions with a steady-swift swathe of dark surma rimming lower lids, believing Ayurveda extracts soothe enough to arrest ophthalmic issues. "Good surma can't cure cataract but slows it ripening to a stone. How these eye chart alphabets are read tells me if a cataract is kuccha or pucca."
He speaks in an excited rush of English, Hindi and Gujarati as I sip my second cup of mohalla chai. "My father was no ordinary surmawala but a poet writing in Gujarati. He was Gujarati-educated, hailing from Navsari. Setting up the shop 10 years after he arrived in 1920, he won aristocratic friends including the owners of Mercantile Bank and Mumbai Samachar."
Waving me with enthusiasm into the workshop behind, Mohmmad Bhai uncovers a cornucopia of charms. His absolute joy are dusty piles of fine art books. Pleased that I'm as admiring of these volumes as I am of the weights, measures and pounding equipment on display, he says, "We brothers inherited many creative interests from our talented father. I shall retire happily." Stronger eclectic strands merge at the Baba Gor Dargah in Tandel Street just ahead. This is a revisit for me. Fifteen years back I interviewed middle-aged Asooma Makwa, heading elaborate rituals of a relegated ethnic group. Mujawarji, as the matriarch was deferentially addressed, appeared the archetypal community elder, puffed with purpose and charismatic command bringing every colourful scrap of local news to the shrine she presided over.
Sidis originally descended from African bonded labour. Landing in western India from the 11th century, they went on to briefly be mid-1600s Bombay royalty centred at the southern island fort of Janjira. Mainly Muslim, some of them are Hindu and Christian. "Sidis relate to their symbolic past and yet model themselves as modern citizens," says Beheroze Shroff, director of multiple documentaries on them. "Displaced to Gujarat and Karnataka they lacked a coherent identity. Gathered at the shrine of the Abyssinian agate merchant turned mendicant, Baba Gor, they decided to serve as mystics and healers in their adopted home."
Flanking the medieval saint, from whom the Makwas trace a lineage of fakirs, Baba Gor's siblings rest with him. Convinced her dargah distributed the best khichdi in pure ghee to Sidi dock hands, garage mechanics and film extras across town, Asooma Ben had added, "There's real magic in our music and energy in our dances." The Africa-meets-Gujarat-in-Bombay culture throbs with robust rhythms and folk dances like Goma – from the Kiswahili "ngoma", this translates as "drum" and denotes any occasion where ceremonial drums beat.
"The Sidi Dhamal festival begins on March 28. And this year marks an auspicious 786th Urs," informs Asooma Ben's son, Abdul Rauf. "Our Somalian forefathers were a brave warrior race. We are Habshis from the Bantu minority." Habshi was the term for captains of Abyssinian ships delivering slaves to the subcontinent. With neither the hauteur nor imposing demeanour of his mother, Abdul Rauf quips, "God is the doctor, I am the compounder. Carrying out His instructions, I must spread my problem-solving power wisely."
A woman expecting advice gets it too firmly, slightly tempered with shayari. I recognize the whiff of her perfume from Mohmmad Bhai's shop. He has kindly gifted me the same rose scent. Suffused with the fragrance of gulab and the lilt of Ghalib, I stir myself a third tall glass of tea.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at mehermarfatia@gmail.com/ www.mehermarfatia.com
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