MUMBAI’S MEN AT WORK

It’s called the city of dreams. The crowded city that makes space for everyone. They come to Mumbai from all over the country, some to realise their dreams, others with no such grand ambition—just a desperate desire to make money. Mumbai keeps their households running and they in turn keep the city running. It was these migrants who were the target of last week’s attack on North Indians by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). The taxi driver, the vendor, the milkman—all vital cogs in the economy machine that Mumbai is.The Sunday Express profiles Mumabi’s ‘migrants’

Radheshyam Yadav, 43
Yadav came to Mumbai from Jaunpur in UP as a 10-year-old boy and has been working in a dairy since. It is run almost entirely by North Indians who work here from morning to night. According to Yadav, at all cattlesheds across the city, 90 per cent of the workforce is made up of migrants from the north.
‘‘If we are forced out of the city, the milk supply of the city will snap’’
– By A. Srinivas

Ramashray Babulal, 52
When the 7/11 blasts rocked the city, Railways trackman Babulal was one of the first on the spot where the first blast took place. Babulal who came to Mumbai from UP and has been working on the tracks for 27 years, says he can’t think of any place other than Mumbai as home now.
‘‘When the 7/11 blasts took place in Mumbai, I helped those in need as a fellow human. I did not see their caste or religion or whether they were North Indians or Maharashtrians’’
-By Ashish Shankar

Ram Raj Yadav, 45
Yadav came to his city of dreams when he was just 13. He started working at the Prakash Cotton Mill and when that went bust, he joined BEST as a driver. Originally from Allahabad, Yadav is hurt by all that is being said and done by politicians.
“I work with Maharastrians at my workplace and we are as close to each other as brothers”
-By Mahendra Parikh

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Satyanarayan Yadav, 40
His grandfather came to Mumbai from Varanasi and sold gola or ice candy at the Ram Krishna Mission in Santacruz. Yadav’s father followed in his father’s footsteps and now he too is a golawala. He believes in the saying ‘Vasudaiva kutumbakam’, which means we all are part of one family. So what is everyone fighting about? he asks.
‘‘Mumbai is as much my home as my village was’’
– By Ritika Jain

Sadhu Kanojia, 50
Kanojia came from Gorakhpur 25 years ago and was lucky enough to land a job at a dhobi ghat at Asalpha in Ghatkopar that had just opened back then. A lot has changed in the city since. ‘‘First we used to wash all the clothes by hand, now the washing machine has made things easier,’’ he says.
‘‘Politicians come and go but we will still be living here’’
-By A. Srinivas

Satnam Ramgopal Moria, 61
Moria is originally from Azamgarh, UP, but Mumbai became his home a long time ago. He has been selling vegetables every morning at the Dadar Market since.
‘‘I earn my bread and eat it here. Probably I will die here too’’
-By Ashish Shankar

Lalchand Dubey, 48
Dubey reads about the violence on the streets of Mumbai in the newspaper. He has been driving a taxi in Mumbai for the past 14 years but has never been this scared to take out his cab. He is from UP but is now unwilling to disclose his origins and is clearly disturbed at the sudden attention the media is taking in him and his roots.
‘‘About 60 per cent of the taxi and rickshaw drivers in the city are from North India. The city will cease to stop functioning smoothly if we are forced to leave’’
-By Ashish Shankar

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Ram iqbal Yadav, 40
He came to Mumbai 27 years ago, to the city where he thought the money flow was swifter than water. From farming in his native in Jaunpur in UP to making bricks at a factory in Mumbai, Yadav now works in a flour mill. ‘‘My boss. the late Shiv Sena corporator, was kind enough to give me a job at the flour mill and the meagre earnings that I get, I send to my family in my village who need it the most. If I won’t feed them, then who will?’’ he says.
‘‘Will I have to take permission from some politician to feed my family now?’’
– By A. Srinivas

Shyam Narayan Yadav, 49
Yadav came from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai 20 years ago and has been teaching students of class I to class V Hindi at a Hindi and Urdu medium BMC school. He doesn’t understand why MNS chief Raj Thackeray is creating such a fuss over identities and wants everyone to take a leaf from his history lessons and live together in peace.
‘‘Why divide the country in parts? Let us all be Indians’’
-By Ashish Shankar

Dr Ravi Kanth, 27
Kanth shifted base from Patna to Mumbai to get his postgraduate degree in medicine from the KEM hospital in Parel. After graduating a year-and-a-half ago, he decided to stay on and finish his residency here. Kanth, who lives at the hostel at Elphinstone, is very upset with the recent violence in Mumbai.
‘‘I came to Mumbai because I felt it was one of the few truly cosmopolitan cities in the country’’
-By Ritika Jain