As hooch tragedy toll climbs to 91, Malwani struggles to cope with sorrow

Wails from the one-room tin shanty can be heard over the din of the rain. “Now that your father's dead, why don't you kill, eat me up and finish it off for good!” sobs Naseem Ansari 40 says flinging down the broom she's used to hit her nine year-old Jasmeen, crying for food. Its been a day since her 42-year-old husband Abdul Munaf Ansari, was buried at the kabrastan nearby on Thursday morning. He was among the 91 who died in the Malvani hooch tragedy. “I kept telling him I want to get operated but he refused. Now he's dead and I'm left with this brood of children to feed,” this mother of five told dna.

While her eldest Razak, 20, married, lives with his wife and two-month-old child in a shanty across the basti, its her and her eldest daughter Rabia's earnings (Rs 4,000 a month) as house-helps in the housing societies surrounding the slum that support the family. “My husband was a daily wage labourer. While he got work irregularly, he was also given to not venturing out if he had enough to buy a drink.”

Naseem Ansari with her children

She admits none of her children go to school. “We don't have enough to feed and clothe them. How'll we bother with fancy things like school?” Behind her Jasmine and her youngest Razia, 3 have begun pushing each other on the wet floor of the shanty where the Ansaris have sought refuge since the funeral. “Our plastic sheet hut is leaking from all over because of the heavy rains and the mud floor has been reduced to slush. We could not have mayyat (funeral) there, so an acquaintance of my son let us get the body here for the last rituals before it was taken for the funeral.”

On Wednesday Abdul hadn't gone out for work and the Naseem had fought with him over this. “I saw people were getting violently sick and told him not to drink, worried that any sickness would cost money to treat. Rabia saw him getting a bottle of hooch home. She tried hiding it but he hit her and she had to give it back.”

She remembers coming back in the evening to find him drinking. “He said he's fine and nothing would happen to him. Till midnight he was fine but then he began puking. His belly was hurting so bad that he kept hitting himself hard in the stomach and screaming. When his condition worsened we took him in an auto to Bhagwati hospital at 2 am on Thursday where he died soon after being admitted.”

The sepulchral grey of the sky over Lakshmi Nagar could well be the cape of death which claimed 91 Malvani slumdwellers' lives. Across the settlement another home, another bereaved family. The 10x8 space is barely enough for two people to lie down. Its packed with 11. The family of Vinod Ramdhanak Yadav, 32 who died yesterday have all come visiting from the neighbouring Ambujawadi slum. “We were all up till late with the funeral and cremation. It was all so sudden. We are so tired that everybody's just trying to sleep,” pointed out Vinod's wife and mother of two (Bhoomi, 10 and Vignesh, 8) Varsha Yadav.

Vignesh wakes up whimpering. As she pats him back to sleep she reminisces about her love-marriage to Vinod. “We are Maharashtrians. I was working as a maid in a building far from here and would walk out till the main road and take a BEST bus in the morning. That's when Vinod would set out with his hired autorickshaw. He'd offer to drop me till my work place. Initially I had my reservations since he was North Indian but then I agreed. We soon fell in love and got married when I was only 17, against our parent's wishes,” remembers Varsha whose family hails from Mahad in upper Konkan. “His parents hail from Patna and had fled caste persecution. He was very keen on our children going to school and took personal interest in their studies,” she remembered wiping an old laminated photograph of the couple taken soon after their marriage, with the end of her 'nightie.'

Varsha Yadav showing an old laminated photograph of the her and Vignesh

Incidentally it was Vinod who went walking through the rain, hailed an auto for Abdul Ansari and his wife Naseem. “He was helping with the funeral rites as people began dying like flies around us. Little did I know that I would have to watch his funeral too,” she says. “He began getting sick on Thursday night after he came back from Mamta Akka's liquor vend. We took him to a local doctor but he said he could do nothing. Even at Bhagwati hospital they said take him to Shatabdi. There he breathed his last at 5.30 am yesterday.”

At the vend there is no sign of not only Mamta Akka but her family too. While the police are looking for her, her pet dog sat guard outside the closed home looking forlorn.

Mamta Akka's pet dog outside her house

“Her immediate neighbours Raju S whose fmaily hails from Nagapattinam and the Lakshman Tiwari have both died,” Umashankar Yadav a shopkeeper in the neighbourhood told dna. “Raj was in Nagapattinam when the tsunami hit. He survived that and imagine dying like this.”

Though local MP Gopal Shetty came visiting the area in the morning, his visit has not struck any confidence among locals. “He has promised compensation, help with children's education and a lot more. While that is great nobody is talking about how I'll feed my children immediately,” Uma S said. While she sells idlis at a local kiosk, her husband Raju was a daily wage assistant to a plumber. “I had to borrow money to buy the sacrificial rooster which we have to keep at the body's head during the funeral.”

The sacrificial rooster laid on S Raju's body