It’s a hot day for a Delhi October, but 36-year-old Prem Kumar, who has been working since 5 a.m., does not have the liberty to tweak his work schedule to suit the weather. Today, his dilapidated wooden handcart is piled five feet high with notepads and he is pulling on it with all his might with arms. The air is filled with the scent of paper and glue as he pulls his load along the narrow streets of Yamuna Bazaar.
The stretch, for which he is paid Rs. 10 per trip, culminates at the other end of the 149-year-old iron bridge known as Loha Pul. Back from his trip, Kumar stops at the service lane along Mahatma Gandhi Marg, drinks water from a tap at the Hanuman temple, washes his face, and then looks at the temple clock. He can’t help but smile. It is 3 p.m. and it’s a Sunday.
Kumar, who migrated from Nepal when he was 12, begins to climb down the garbage-strewn slope, the filthy river bank of the black Yamuna that flows lazily by. He soon reaches a shanty made of discarded blankets and quilts. A bulb hangs on the rags that form the front wall, below it are DVD covers of movies ranging from Hollywood and Bollywood to Bhojpuri and Tollywood. They are clipped in a row by clothespins to a string. Idols of Ram, Laxman and Sitaare placed just above the ‘doorway’. We realise that this dirty tent is a makeshift movie hall, where Kumar is headed this sunny Sunday.
A movie is playing. Inside, it is dark. Bags and soiled shirts hang randomly from the ceiling, and a speaker tightly fastened to a bamboo pole two small wall-mounted fans. It is big enough to comfortably accommodate about 60 men.
The only light coming in is from a 32” TV set that shows a tribe of hunter-gatherers strategising an attack. The movie is 10,000 BC, terribly dubbed in Hindi. But theaudience, sitting or lying on large plastic mats, is loving it. The air is filled with smoke from numerous bidis and Kumar seems to be having a happy Sunday.
In one corner of the room, a man in his early 30s unabashedly puts on his clothes after a bath in the Yamuna that is bubbling with toxic gases from the untreated sewage released into it. At least five men lie flat on the sheets snoring. A few others share meals from plastic packets while fixedly watching the film.
The stench from the filthy river hits you intermittently, as it flows along with flowers, oil, earthen lamps and human ashes from Nigambodh Ghat, the city’s oldest cremation site.
Twenty-eight-year-old Arjun Dev comes out of the hall. In 2009, he ran away from his home in Bihar and is now a daily wage worker in a paper mill in outer Delhi earning about Rs.4,500 a month. Sitting on the sloping river bank he says, “This is the best place to spend our free days. We eat, sleep, watch movies. Those big halls take hundreds of rupees but you cannot even stretch an arm.”
The manager of this ‘hall’, one of the eight situated along the Yamuna, is Rahul Singh. Before taking up this job, he used to work in a toy factory in Sultanpur Majra, where old plastic toys are melted to make new ones. He says that these movie halls are mostly owned by the men who rent out cycle rickshaws. This one is owned by Sher Khan who runs a garage as well as a cycle rickshaw business.
A teenager sits beside Rahul and borrows his bidi. Prabhat is 14, and Rahul’s younger brother. He goes to school “at times”, and runs the hall in Rahul’s absence. Another teenager comes out of the hall to smoke. He doubles up as rickshaw puller and a worker at a cement factory. Too shy to say his name, the boy’s eyes gleam when asked to name his favourite actor. “Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar.” Prabhat dreams of being able to watch films in “air-conditioned halls” someday.
The sound of applause comes from inside. Rahul says that Baahubali and Bajrangi Bhaijaan earned him good money. “They went mad watching the two movies and the hall was overcrowded. They sang along with Salman bhai and danced. Mythological movies like Ramayan and Mahadev have to be screened at least once as they are in demand throughout the year,” he says.
A man with a food cart has come into the hall calling out “Cream roll, patties…” A few hands with five rupee coins reach out and he gives them a cream roll each even as their eyes stay fixed on the television screen.
Suddenly, the room turns dark as the TV set abruptly shuts off. Everyone lets out a sigh of exasperation; several men get up and begin leaving. It’s a power cut. Irritated by the interruption, Hafeez and Tarachand hop into another cinema hall about 400 meters away. Here, under a young banyan tree, three men are busy shoving plastic trash into gunny bags. They earn their living from the garbage thrown into the river.
The entrance to this hall is through an eatery with wooden benches. The rice froths on one stove; another has a red curry sizzling. As the cook stirs the curry, several scrawny chicken claws rise to the surface. “This is a lavish lunch. Four claws for Rs. 20, plus Rs. 10 for the rice. We eat and earn from what you reject,” she says with a smile
