Kanji Bhai and Nanji Bhai Rathod have a habit of squinting all the time, whether they are on top of a hot tiled roof or under it. Though the brothers are ten years apart in age, they have similarly wrinkled skin and waves of creases on their foreheads – the side-effects of working as dambarwalas or roof tar workers in Mumbai for at least 25 years.
For eight months a year, the Rathods and their colleagues spend up to ten hours a day on the city’s rooftops, coating them black with layers of molten coal tar to waterproof buildings before the monsoon. In May, as Mumbai’s temperatures reach their peak, the dambarwala’s work increases almost three-fold, as everyone scurries to plug leakage spots in their buildings before the first rains.
Dambarwalas are ubiquitous in Mumbai all through summer, toiling on scorching rooftops or stirring large drums of steaming coal tar on pavements. The city may be swathed in blue tarpaulin sheets during the monsoon, but for most people, coal tarring is a essential before the sheets go up.
Hundred degrees Celsius
The Rathod family has been in the dambar business for more than 100 years, and work has only increased with growing urbanisation in Maharashtra and Gujarat. From Diwali till the end of June each year, Kanji Bhai, Nanji Bhai and the ten labourers under them work on waterproofing contracts from factories, offices and large residential buildings in a routine that gets busier with each passing month.
“Tarring a roof can be exhausting work, but we are dealing with hot dambar – at least 100 degrees Celsius – so we have to work with full concentration,” said 45-year-old Kanji Bhai, who doubles as a tarring labourer as well as the accountant for the family business named after his father, Haribhai Waterproofing.
Nanji Bhai, 55, shows off the burn scars on his glove-less hands as if they are battle wounds. “You know, if a big drop of dambar splashes on you, it can burn the skin right up to the bone,” he says. “I have been working for 30 years and I have lots of these marks all over my body.”
It is 6 pm on a still-sunny Friday and the brothers have just finished their second day of contract work with a canteen operator in Chandivali, an industrial zone in Mumbai’s western suburbs. They will need two more days to finish tarring a large asbestos roof over the canteen’s kitchen building, but the Rathods and a third labourer already look spent.
“The first day on any new assignment is easier – it involves inspecting the site, measuring the roof and placing orders for the tar and other raw materials,” said Kanji Bhai.
A 2,000 sq ft patch of roof would require at least 300 kilos of solidified coal tar, which the Rathods purchase from designated wholesale bazaars in the city. Coal tar is available in blocks of 100 kilos for Rs 5,000 each, but dambarwalas also need to buy rolls of flattened tar sheets, firewood to melt down the tar blocks and special khadi cloth strips used to make mops for laying out the hot dambar.
‘It sticks better when it’s sunnier’
On the second day of an assignment, the raw materials have to be transported to the site in a hired tempo as early in the morning as possible. “We start heating the tar blocks by around 8 am so that it melts by the time the sun is high and bright,” said Nanji Bhai.
For complete, high-quality waterproofing, he explains, a dambarwala must apply an initial coat of molten tar, followed by a layer of heated tar sheets, topped off with two more coats of liquid dambar. Ironically, the midday shift from noon to 3 pm – when no cap or scarf can shield you from the glare of sunlight on shiny black tar – is the most crucial time for a dambarwala.
“Oh, we would love to take a four-hour lunch break at this time so we can rest in the shade,” said Nanji Bhai, laughing loudly. “But the tar sheets stick better to the liquid tar when the sun is at its peak. So we have to keep working.”
The intense heat and glare does take its toll, no matter how hard a dambarwala concentrates. “We try to drink water every 15 minutes, but on three occasions I have fainted because of heat strokes,” said Nanji Bhai.
There are other perils too. Kanji Bhai recounts the time, 11 years ago, when the edge of a roof he was standing on suddenly gave way. “The bucket of hot tar I was holding fell splashing down on the footpath, but fortunately, no one was injured. I fell too, but my arm got stuck in an iron railing so I dangled there till people rescued me.”
Caste politics
The dambar business doesn’t pay as well as Kanji Bhai would like it to, but he keeps at least a 50% profit margin on all their contracts to support their large joint family. His rate for tar waterproofing is Rs 60 per sq ft of roof, and clients are charged in instalments – half before the work begins, 40% at the end of it and the final 10% in the monsoon, after two heavy bouts of rain. “We take our final payments on the day of Nariyal Purnima, our auspicious festival,” he said.
The Rathods like to think of themselves as veterans in the dambar business, with distinct ideas about the hierarchies of the waterproofing world.
“See, we are from the Kharwa caste of Kutch, and we do only professional waterproofing,” said Kanji Bhai. Many of the major tar contractors in Mumbai are Kharwas, he explains, and they do everything from chemical waterproofing on walls to combining tar sheets and molten dambar on roofs.
This sets them apart from the local dambarwalas hired by small residential buildings in the city. “They are from the Vaghri caste, so they are not professional – they just walk around with buckets of tar offering to fix people’s roofs,” said Kanji Bhai.
Despite their intense community pride, neither of the Rathod brothers want their school-going sons to continue the 100-year-old family business. “When we retire we will go back to our village in Gujarat,” said Nanji Bhai. “But our children are from a new generation and we won’t let them get into such labour work.”
For eight months a year, the Rathods and their colleagues spend up to ten hours a day on the city’s rooftops, coating them black with layers of molten coal tar to waterproof buildings before the monsoon. In May, as Mumbai’s temperatures reach their peak, the dambarwala’s work increases almost three-fold, as everyone scurries to plug leakage spots in their buildings before the first rains.
Dambarwalas are ubiquitous in Mumbai all through summer, toiling on scorching rooftops or stirring large drums of steaming coal tar on pavements. The city may be swathed in blue tarpaulin sheets during the monsoon, but for most people, coal tarring is a essential before the sheets go up.
Kanji Bhai Rathod stirs molten tar in a metal drum.
Hundred degrees Celsius
The Rathod family has been in the dambar business for more than 100 years, and work has only increased with growing urbanisation in Maharashtra and Gujarat. From Diwali till the end of June each year, Kanji Bhai, Nanji Bhai and the ten labourers under them work on waterproofing contracts from factories, offices and large residential buildings in a routine that gets busier with each passing month.
“Tarring a roof can be exhausting work, but we are dealing with hot dambar – at least 100 degrees Celsius – so we have to work with full concentration,” said 45-year-old Kanji Bhai, who doubles as a tarring labourer as well as the accountant for the family business named after his father, Haribhai Waterproofing.
Nanji Bhai, 55, shows off the burn scars on his glove-less hands as if they are battle wounds. “You know, if a big drop of dambar splashes on you, it can burn the skin right up to the bone,” he says. “I have been working for 30 years and I have lots of these marks all over my body.”
Nanji Bhai's hands bear old and new burn scars.
It is 6 pm on a still-sunny Friday and the brothers have just finished their second day of contract work with a canteen operator in Chandivali, an industrial zone in Mumbai’s western suburbs. They will need two more days to finish tarring a large asbestos roof over the canteen’s kitchen building, but the Rathods and a third labourer already look spent.
“The first day on any new assignment is easier – it involves inspecting the site, measuring the roof and placing orders for the tar and other raw materials,” said Kanji Bhai.
A 2,000 sq ft patch of roof would require at least 300 kilos of solidified coal tar, which the Rathods purchase from designated wholesale bazaars in the city. Coal tar is available in blocks of 100 kilos for Rs 5,000 each, but dambarwalas also need to buy rolls of flattened tar sheets, firewood to melt down the tar blocks and special khadi cloth strips used to make mops for laying out the hot dambar.
A fragment of solid coal tar before it is melted.
‘It sticks better when it’s sunnier’
On the second day of an assignment, the raw materials have to be transported to the site in a hired tempo as early in the morning as possible. “We start heating the tar blocks by around 8 am so that it melts by the time the sun is high and bright,” said Nanji Bhai.
For complete, high-quality waterproofing, he explains, a dambarwala must apply an initial coat of molten tar, followed by a layer of heated tar sheets, topped off with two more coats of liquid dambar. Ironically, the midday shift from noon to 3 pm – when no cap or scarf can shield you from the glare of sunlight on shiny black tar – is the most crucial time for a dambarwala.
“Oh, we would love to take a four-hour lunch break at this time so we can rest in the shade,” said Nanji Bhai, laughing loudly. “But the tar sheets stick better to the liquid tar when the sun is at its peak. So we have to keep working.”
The intense heat and glare does take its toll, no matter how hard a dambarwala concentrates. “We try to drink water every 15 minutes, but on three occasions I have fainted because of heat strokes,” said Nanji Bhai.
There are other perils too. Kanji Bhai recounts the time, 11 years ago, when the edge of a roof he was standing on suddenly gave way. “The bucket of hot tar I was holding fell splashing down on the footpath, but fortunately, no one was injured. I fell too, but my arm got stuck in an iron railing so I dangled there till people rescued me.”
Caste politics
The dambar business doesn’t pay as well as Kanji Bhai would like it to, but he keeps at least a 50% profit margin on all their contracts to support their large joint family. His rate for tar waterproofing is Rs 60 per sq ft of roof, and clients are charged in instalments – half before the work begins, 40% at the end of it and the final 10% in the monsoon, after two heavy bouts of rain. “We take our final payments on the day of Nariyal Purnima, our auspicious festival,” he said.
The Rathods like to think of themselves as veterans in the dambar business, with distinct ideas about the hierarchies of the waterproofing world.
“See, we are from the Kharwa caste of Kutch, and we do only professional waterproofing,” said Kanji Bhai. Many of the major tar contractors in Mumbai are Kharwas, he explains, and they do everything from chemical waterproofing on walls to combining tar sheets and molten dambar on roofs.
This sets them apart from the local dambarwalas hired by small residential buildings in the city. “They are from the Vaghri caste, so they are not professional – they just walk around with buckets of tar offering to fix people’s roofs,” said Kanji Bhai.
Despite their intense community pride, neither of the Rathod brothers want their school-going sons to continue the 100-year-old family business. “When we retire we will go back to our village in Gujarat,” said Nanji Bhai. “But our children are from a new generation and we won’t let them get into such labour work.”
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