HEADED FOR THE EXIT

Letter writers
BM Rane’s ‘office’ is a tiny shed in
front of the General Post Office (GPO)
at CST. The 75-year-old man has been
making a living by writing letters and
filling postal forms for the last 35
years.
Letter writers, as they are called,
are being phased out by the technology
boom.
“Now people have mobile phones
and do you think they will come to us,
asking us to write a letter? People
rarely send money orders as there are
ATMs,” says Rane.
From a group of around 17 writers,
they have reduced to just seven and
many of them, just like Rane are on
the verge of retirement.
Letter writers have been writing
letters for a meagre Rs5 to Rs20. After
the invasion of mobiles and Internet,
the letter writers are struggling to
make a living.
“This is business and an honest
one. Money was always there and that
was enough to raise my family. My
three sons are independent now, capable
to take care of their families,”
he says.
“The only reason I come here, even
on Sundays, is that I can’t rest at
home. But work or no work, I have to
continue till I retire,” adds Rane.
Fishermen
The original residents of this city, the
fishermen who follow the traditional
way of fishing, are facing a business
crisis.
Many of them are turning their
backs to fishing as it is no longer a
profit-making business.
“Pollution of creeks, encroachments
on koliwadas and efforts to
drive us out of our original residence
had an adverse impact
on our community
and business as well,” says
Rambhau Patil, president
Maharashtra Macchimar
Kruti Samiti.
“Think of the industrialisation
and the sewage
released into the sea. How
can a small fisherman survive
as he cannot sail in to
deep sea?”
Areas such as Sion,
Mahim, Khar, Gorai and Colaba,
where a sizeable number of fishing
community lives, are facing similar
problems.
The fishermen are struggling to
compete with the huge and advanced
fishing ships and trawlers which can
easily move into the deep sea. This
has led to the decrease in the number
of fish coming to the shore.
“Small-scale fishing, right from
Gorai to Colaba, has been hit. The
fishing business and the community
are getting displace, slowly but surely,”
says Patil.
Grade 4 staff
What is the difference between a bank
office now and those 10 years ago?
There are hardly any peons in these
offices now.
“The bank offices needed peons to
transfer files from one desk to another,
arranging them, transferring
cheques and cash. Peons would even
open the office and give tea to other
employees,” says Mahesh Bobhate, an
office bearer of a labour union in the
city.
But the situation has changed drastically.
“Now, it has become a file-free office
and all offices have private security
guards. Now, the employees get
tea breaks. Cash transactions in
banks have reduced with the mushrooming
of automated teller machines
(ATMs) in the city,” he says.
With the exception of a few offices,
the fourth grade employees are a
disappearing tribe.
Typist
Sayyad
Naushad Husain,
63, (in picture)
suffers
from cataract
but never misses
his routine
visit to the footpath
in front of
the Brihanmumbai
Municipal
Corporation headquarters.
This footpath has been his workplace
for last 21 years and he uses his Italian-
made typewriter to type on the
stamp paper. “Is it more than two
pages? No, no! I can’t do it,” he says.
Then turning his head towards you,
he will explain: “I have become too
old to concentrate now.”
Godrej and Boyce, the country’s
only seller of manual typewriters,
has only a handful of pieces for sale
as there is no demand. The typist and
the mechanic of this machine will
be out of work because of this.
“This is the age of computers. I
used to make almost Rs400 to Rs500 a
day till 2000. Not possible now, for obvious
reasons,” he says.
Husain does not rely on mechanics
to repair his typewriter because not
many are left in the city.
In 1981, the Mantralaya had 35 typewriter
mechanics. The number is now
five. After these mechanics retire,
typewriters and typists will vanish
from the government offices as well.
Mill workers
This profession is almost dead, vanished
and non-existent. The worker,
who in seventies and eighties ruled
Mumbai and its politics, is fighting
for his rights.
Today much of the mill land has
been sold, mills have shut and workers
and their families are left to
starve. In many mills, the owners
have stopped paying wages.
“It is a disaster. Mill workers lost
their jobs. They have families to look
after and other responsibilities,” says
Datta Iswalkar, union leader of Mill
Workers’ union.
Mill land have been sold and developed
in the name of revival and
modernisation and mill owners have
been pocketing the money without
doing either. Workers were being denied
any right to the land.
“Unfortunately, we are still fighting
for our legitimate rights. Have
you ever seen a struggle that continued
for more than 20 years without
getting anything? Those who sold
mill lands are not facing any hardships
like we do. We strongly feel that
the government should solve the issue,”
Iswalkar adds.
Few mills have survived the rampant
selling of mill lands.
These mills, though, are almost
non-functional as owners are waiting
for all workers to retire and many of
the workers have been asked to take
voluntary retirement.
The demands on a textile mill policy
has two aspects — the need for a
proper policy framework for the running
of textile mills and the utilisation
of mill land for the benefit of
workers and textile mills.

Poster painters
Mumbai’s single-screen theatres
might not attract the new-age crowd
but its audience was once the pulse of
Bollywood films.
The movie posters put up on the
theatres’ walls used to be hand-painted
by artists until digital prints replaced
them two decades ago.
Billboard artist Lucas Mondal, 59,
found himself out of work.
“I had been risking my life for
years, standing on scaffoldings in the
sun without food or water for hours.
But the prospect of unemployment
was worse,” says Mondal, who was
forced to take up a job of painting
signboards in the Gulf. “The money
was good but the desire to paint film
posters refused to go away.”
The artists find it difficult to face the
challenge posed by technology in
terms of money and time. Now, a producer
or a distributor opts for digital
prints.
There were more than 300 such
painters who used to paint film posters
for a living, but now only a handful remains.
Those who have stuck around
have found ways to deal with the situation.
Some of them are now recreating
the Bollywood magic on clothes, accessories,
furniture, wedding cards,
walls and even garage shutters.
Artist Vijay Kumar says some
artists have had their work displayed
in museums and film festivals in England
and Austria, while some have
been invited to conduct workshops
and lectures in European universities.
The art which was once the most
important part of film’s publicity has
faded with time. These artists may
not paint a new Bollywood film’s
poster, but their paintings will remain
an art form which was once the
film industry’s identity.