‘The Many Lives of Syeda X’: The story of an everywoman whose constant battles build our economy

“लोग टूट जाते है एक घर बनाने में, 
तुम तरस नहीं खाते बस्तियाँ जलाने में।”

People come apart in attempts to build a home, 
You don’t hesitate in burning down whole settlements.

— Bashir Badr

If one were to be asked why one reads, chances are one would say it’s the grip of the story or the beauty of the craft. But every once in a while, one stumbles upon a book that fundamentally reorients how one perceives and engages with the world. It rescues from obscurity the people, patterns and dynamics that underpin our collective realities, and makes visible what has been invisibilised by the power structures within which we operate.

Neha Dixit’s first book, The Many Lives of Syeda X is one such work. By tracing one woman’s negotiations with the exigencies of global markets and rising socio-political strife in the country, it casts light on the lives of those who serve as the backbone of our economy and yet remain among the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in modern India – migrants, especially women urban migrants.

In the heart of Delhi

Every year, millions migrate from rural to urban India in search of freedom, security and opportunity. According to the last count, three out of every ten citizens in urban India are immigrants.

Grappling with the aftermath of the 1992 riots, Syeda, Akmal and their three children – Shazeb, Salman and Reshma – left Bazadiha, Banaras in a similar pursuit. To leave was Syeda’s idea, one that Akmal was happy to be on board with as long as he didn’t have to participate in any of the planning or execution. Having done her research and collected her dues, Syeda decided the family should move to Lucknow. However, being the manmauji that he is, in a manner only men can afford, Akmal bought tickets to Delhi instead. In their three and a half decades in the capital, all that has been written about urban India’s promise of infinite possibility rang hollow, their experiences laying bare the truth of the often repeated sentiment in the book – “Dilli bahot behudi” (Delhi is so ill-mannered).

A product of interviews with 900 people over a period of nine years, the book is chronologically structured and explores three significant themes – the reality of women’s home-based, informal sector labour that keeps Delhi’s small- and medium-scale industries alive; the illusion of a sharing of roles and responsibilities in domestic lives; and the role of community in providing solace from both. In doing so, it overcomes the mainstream impulse to dismember women’s lives into isolated experiences of victimisation and, instead, makes an exemplary effort to piece their lives together and tell their stories whole.

Nearly 96 per cent of working women in urban India are concentrated in the informal sector – a largely unregulated sector that accounts for almost 50 per cent of the national product. Over half of these women – over 80 million – are engaged in home-based work, making it the second largest source of employment for women in the country. Despite comprising 7 per cent of the country’s population and often serving as their family’s primary breadwinners, home-based workers are not recognised as “workers” by the state, trade unions, or the women themselves. Consequently, their average monthly income remains less than a fifth of the legal minimum wage in Delhi.

Over time, statistical figures tend to lose affective value – what does a fifth of legal minimum wage really mean? For most elites, its inadequacy is difficult to comprehend. By reiterating Syeda’s wages through most of the 50 jobs she performs throughout the three and a half decades, Dixit ensures the stark market price to wages gap stays with the reader long after they have put the book down. Removing stems from 144 kilos of resins for Rs 1800, making 144 brake wires for Rs 80, 144 school bags for Rs 60, 144 embroidered motifs for Rs 30, and so on. Piece by piece, a monthly wage of Rs 1,000-2,500 for 14-16 hours of work every day. Piece by piece, a livelihood for herself and her three children.

The financial insecurity engendered by severely exploitative piece-based work, at home or in factories, is further compounded by other forms of insecurities at the workplace. The book reveals glaring realities of workers suffering severe physical injuries, of their sexual boundaries being violated, of being hired and fired routinely for being late, falling sick, or tending to family members. Of their lives being treated cheaper than the prices of the commodities they put together, and them continuing to maintain relationships of dua-salaam with the contractors in hopes of keeping the possibility of being rehired alive. It leaves the reader with a lingering question – What is our moral complicity in participating in a system that routinely metes out such indignities to the very people on whose backs it is built?

The state, marked by its conspicuous absence through most of the book, occasionally intervenes to regulate the sector. Its regulation efforts, though, betray a lack of understanding of the society within which it operates and further push Delhi’s migrant population to the margins.

Representing over 85 per cent of Delhi’s population, and playing an instrumental role in building its civic infrastructure and economy, the city’s urban poor occupy less than 20 per cent of its total residential area. Within these homes, the women, despite being primary breadwinners of the household, are rarely ever accorded the respect or freedom that is accorded to the men who have traditionally occupied these roles.

Radiowaali, the sole consistent wage earner of the family, is regularly questioned, insulted and abused by her brothers and their kids till she leaves her maternal home; and once Lalita’s husband is informed of her working outside the house, she is accused of bringing dishonour to the family and turned away from the household that is being run on her wages. Similarly, when Reshma points out to her relatives that it is Syeda who has been providing for the family since they moved to Delhi, she is slapped as a reminder that some illusions must be maintained.

In the family unit, men, notwithstanding the extent of their contribution to the household, continue to be valued; women continue to toil without expecting to be pleased in exchange; and a generational cycle of resentment continues.

Measuring skies and moving moons

Twelve years and 45 jobs later, halfway through the story, Syeda’s personality fundamentally changes under the weight of it all. She goes from being a chatty girl who loves films, music and clothes to an irritable, bitter and quiet woman who inflicts on her daughter the same lack of affection, acknowledgement and appreciation that was once inflicted upon her. And in a story of all that is lost in our bid to build a capitalist economy, the only space of respite is the quiet comfort of a community.

For Syeda and many other women workers like her, this community is forged at Radiowaali’s home –a room in Bhagirath Palace. Here, women lie down, watch movies, sing songs, crack jokes, and talk about their husbands and their jobs over multiple cups of chai. Here, they are asked and they are heard. This is their adda, their solace from the realities of their work and the forcefully maintained illusions of their home.

It is no coincidence that the first and only act of collective action Syeda is a part of is after finding and forging this community for herself. Any form of collective action, after all, pre-necessitates the time, space and camaraderie to reflect on one’s own life and realise that their individual discontentments are also their community’s shared struggles.

Stretched over a period of 15 days and attended by thousands of workers engaged in the peeling of almond shells, the Almond Strike remains one of the longest and largest strikes by workers in the unorganised sector. Not only did it secure an additional per kilo rate, it was also the first time the women came together to ask for something and were heard. It secured them the recognition of being workers. Workers who worked harder than anyone else, and could collectively bring international markets to a grinding halt in their strive to get closer to what they deserved. As Dixit writes, “After all these years, the women did manage to measure the sky and move the moon”.

Moments of respite punctuate enduring hardships, and these hardships continue long after Radiowaali leaves Karawal Nagar. Dixit describes each of them in honest, empathetic detail – drawing out the many lives of not only Syeda, but of millions like her who intricately weave our economy at their homes. In not restricting herself to rigid disciplinary boundaries, Dixit’s work is a testament to all that good journalism promises to be – rich, complex, empowering of those written about, and able to capture the essence of the zeitgeist through the lens of a story.

The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian, Neha Dixit, Juggernaut.