Sona Pujari-Street Banker

Sona Pujari has a voice like a foghorn and the heart of an angel. And she's the only banker I know who refuses to get paid for her work! She's also homeless. She's my Hindi teacher, a friend, and she has more dignity than any amount of Senators, Presidents, Governors or whomever.

And there ain't nothing like her in Boston! So, where to begin?

Let's try Wednesday mornings, around 11, in the old stone coach house that serves as the office, meeting place, sanctuary, and bank for the women of Mahila Milan (literally translated as "Women Coming Together"), the organisation established by the pavement dwellers of Central Bombay to empower themselves and eventually build homes of their own.

It's a day like many others. Jockin, the little dynamo who is himself a slum dweller, lies sprawled against the wall, on the telephone to someone. It could be the Mayor or a housing activist from South Africa. Sadak Chhaps (Street kids) are outside in the yard, generally goofing off.

And History (with the capital H) of a sorts is being made between Shekhar and Sona Pujari. Shekhar sits cross-legged on a bamboo mat behind the school desk that serves as the bank counter. Round him are piled handwritten ledgers for the various savings accounts that the pavement dwellers have set up so they can save their down payments for their eventual houses.

On the other side of the desk sits Sona, petite, coffee brown, decked out in a gold and green sari.

This morning, Sona is learning to write. Shekhar tells Sona where to sign, how to write the total in each individual passbook:

"Two hundred and five, plus five....
"Makes two hundred and ten?
"Yes!"
"OK. So I write Two here?"
"Yes, then One."
"Where?"
"Here! Write a One, and then a Zero.
"That's what I have written! Are you blind? Use your eyes, boy!"

And so it goes; Sona says the name of the accountholder, the amount to be deposited this morning. Then signs her own name and writes a new total, all of this in English.

I look at Sona today, well dressed, articulate, good-humored, proud, and I think back to when we first met and she told me of her childhood and how she first came to Bombay over twenty years ago.

"I am Sona Yadav, I'm from Karnataka, and I live in Kamathipura 14th Gully. And I used to live in one of the houses that do business there. And after that I came to live on the street."

Simple words that contain enough pain and misery to fill several lifetimes.

Sona's brothers hated her. They treated her like Cinderella. She had rags to wear and all the chores to perform. Where Sona's parents were in this little domestic fairy-tale I don't know. She never mentions them.

When Sona was twelve years old, the brothers married her off. This is normal practice in most countries. It was too in the West until the turn of the century, so please don't get high and mighty about it. Just accept it and listen.

When a woman marries in India she moves into the household of her husband's family. Husband and wife rarely, if ever, set up home as an independent unit. It's not custom and it's just economically viable. You literally enter the house of your in-laws and take your allotted place, as cook, general drudge, bearer of sons (and daughters, but in that order). You have to endure the whiplash tongue of your mother-in-law, Queen of the House, and, maybe, the unsolicited attentions of brothers-in-law and any other randy males who happen to fancy you.

You bend your back, bear the insults and your body, and wait your turn to become Queen Bee. It may sound awful, but in practice you get some pretty happy couples and good marriages, and when things work well it can obviously be fun.

Not in Sona's case. Her new family beat her. And, the ultimate disgrace, she was sent back to her parent's house. A divorce was pronounced. Sona was just fourteen.

What to do with her? Her sweet brothers had a great idea. They told Sona, already a pious girl, that she was going to enter a Hindu temple, as a Devdaasi, or Servant of God.

"Of course, I was frightened. But I had to get out of the mess I was in. I had to eat. I didn't want to think about the future. So I just left."

I don't think Sona really understood that Devdaasi has become a euphemism for prostitution, that the temple was in fact a brothel, and that the Gods she had pledged to serve were truck drivers and migrant workers in need of urgent pleasure and release.

I'm sure Sona's brothers also forgot to add that the owner of the temple - four wooden cubicles to be shared with ten other Devdaasis, had bought Sona and her virginity for 5,000 Rupees ($170 at current exchange rates but worth ten times that much in purchasing power)

But the brothers were rid of Sona, rid of a younger sister who had brought shame on the good name of their family by returning home from a failed marriage.

Sona was now remarried, but this time for keeps and at some profit. She was married to God, and God didn't demand dowry, just her body. So, the deed was done, and Sona came like cattle, on the slow train up from Karnataka to Bombay.

Right from the start, she hated the work, refused to accept her fate.

"When I first came over here, they used to try and force us. 'Go there. Do this! Take this customer off. Give him what he wants!' I held out for the first year. Then I gave in. I worked as a prostitute for a year. It was all I could take. At the end of that year, I said to the Garwhali, (the Madame): "Look, I just can't do this anymore. I'll do anything. I'll clean your toilets. I'll clean the whole place. But I just don't want to go on as a prostitute."

Now, the brothel owner quite literally owns the girl (and don't get all self-righteous, because people also own people here, only we prefer to ignore that little reality). If the girl tries to run away, thugs are sent to bring her back. She keeps little of what she earns, has to pay for all her "expenses" (food, clothes, use of the cubicle, visits to the doctor, etc.) and is therefore in a state of almost total financial slavery. Usually to the moneylender, who just happens to be in cahoots with the brothel owner, and who'll quickly suck her into a fathomless pit of loans at 12 percent interest per month.

But some girls do get out, by a mixture of cunning and sheer grit, and by somehow saving to buy their freedom back from the brothel owner. This is how Sona escaped.

"They beat me a lot, and they tried to get me to do it. But I resisted so much that eventually I worked out a deal with them. Instead of doing the business, I would do all the housework for the other girls, do the bazaar, get their food, water, whatever they needed. And that's how I gradually managed to get out and pay off my debts and the 5,000 Rupees my brothers had been paid."

Of course, it wasn't quite that easy. Sona got cheated over some jewelry, had to go back to prostitution on Twelfth Gully (lane) in Khamathipura, Bombay's Red Light District. She even got pregnant by one of her regular customers.

"I just had one thing on my mind, that I must catch hold of some man and get out of here. I got this guy, had his baby, he promised to marry me. But he also hoodwinked me. He told me he would get me out, that he didn't have a wife or any other attachments. He did get me out all right, from Twelfth to Fourteenth Gully, all of twenty yards. But he ditched me."

One child, another on the way. Sona went back into prostitution. She was sinking fast into a quicksand.

And then a friend on Fourteenth Gully said "Hey, come and work with me doing the finishing stitching for Chappals - Indian leather sandals - and that's how Sona finally got out of the Business.

"I didn't even have a cot (a bed) over here. I just slept on the road itself. I used to stitch the chappals and whatever came to hand. Sometimes, I'd sell bananas, sometimes peanuts, whatever I could get my hands on."

But when word reached Fourteenth Gully, that some of the men and women who live on the street were organising so they could save, and negotiate to find land, anywhere, somewhere in the city, to build permanent houses on, Sona was ready and willing and able.

Today, Sona is notorious, but this time as a street banker. Along with Shehnaz, she's one of the two representatives from Mahila Milan responsible for the forty-odd members who live on the street in Fourteenth Gully.

She may be a big chief, but she lives as before, smack bang in the middle of the road. Her two kids, whom she's proud of, are in a boarding school in another part of the city. She says life on the streets, here in Khamathipura, is no sort of place to bring them up. Better they get educated and better themselves. She visits them, takes them presents, but rarely mentions them to strangers.

Her hut is still the smallest on the street. Just eight by five, made of bamboo and PVC sheeting, with a curb stone to anchor the rear wall in case of monsoon floods.

As you'd expect with Sona, it's also as neat as could be. Under the bamboo eaves are neatly stored important papers and spare clothes. In the corner, in the place of honor, sits Sona's deity - the Goddess Yellama, made with loving hands from twisted tin, all clothed with great care and tenderness in gold, green and red silks.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sona carries Yellama, cradled against her shoulder, round the neighborhood to beg for her supper. There's nothing degrading about this. Yellama was herself pretty badly done by. She came back from the grave, thanks to the generosity and faith of ordinary mortals. She's a natural for Sona to worship. Men and women seek her blessings, her darshan, so Sona proudly walks her round Bombay Central twice a week, and goes on a Yatra, or pilgrimage once a year with other devotees. She's been trying to get me to go on it with her.

But this morning, Sona dons her other hat, that of Mahila Milan Savings and Loan officer.

She's still preparing Pohar, a mixture of lentils and flaked rice, when the first customer calls. It's Padmabi, who hands her a Ten Rupee note to deposit. Sona stops stirring the Pohar, reaches into a plastic Ziplock bag, pulls out Padmabi's savings book, stuffs the notes in between the pages, and returns to her cooking.

A few minutes more! Then, she places a tin plate over the skillet, uncrosses her legs, adjusts her sari, picks up the plastic bag with the savings books and sallies forth in search of money.

Most of the fifty women who belong to Mahila Milan in this short street have two types of accounts: a Crisis Savings account for emergencies. Like when there's no work in the rainy season. Or their husbands can't find work. Or there's a wedding back in the village. They get no interest, they pay no interest. They just have to pay back the loan at a mutually-agreed pace, supervised by Sona and Shehnaz.

And then there are the Housing accounts. Nobody withdraws from those. That's their share of the down payment for their eventual houses up in Mankhurd, on the northern outskirts of the city. At the moment, they need to come up with five to six thousand Rupees each in order to qualify for a federally-backed mortgage loan for the balance.

This is not the USA so all the members pool their efforts and their totals into a common pot. The mortgages will be with Mahila Milan as a group, and when they do move, all fifty families move together. Together they can get a house of their own, individually they'll get nada, zilch. That's how it works and that's how they think.

If you want a loan, to start a business or for whatever, Sona will come to check you out, to determine if you're a good risk. If she and her fellow Mahila Milan leaders approve, you can borrow at an annual rate of twelve percent from Mahila Milan. Or take your chances with the local moneylender, at twelve percent a month!

Forget an official bank in brick walls and with marble countertops. They won't let you in the door, let alone take your money or make you a loan. It took the Bank of Baroda considerable time and imagination to accept that Mahila Milan was serious about banking with them. But now, Mahila Milan bank officers like Laxmi or Sona regularly go into the bank to make large cash deposits and nobody bats an eyelid.

Sona pulls down the burlap sacking that doubles as her front door, checks her passbooks in their plastic bag, adjusts her bright green sari and sets off up the lane to do her work.

Sundra Rama slips her Ten Rupees, her regular repayment for a loan. But the next woman says she's not in the mood to even think about savings at the moment. She's thinking about her own particular God. "Come back in the evening, when I'm in the mood."

Then the money starts to come, in ribs and drabs, a steady stream that all adds up. Five Rupees from Sujahari, two Rupees from Nimbewa, some into the Housing account, but most into Crisis Savings.

Occasionally, you get an exception, such as Suresh Gaidkarke, who pulls five crisp Ten Rupee notes from her choli ( (Bodice) and hands them to Sona. Suresh had a baby last month. She needed to withdraw from her Crisis savings to pay for the expenses. Now, she's starting to build them back up. Her husband works as a docker. But having the baby means just the one income. So, anything she can put away now may come in very useful in the not-so-distant future.

Sona typically spends half an hour every day walking her way slowly up the lane, stopping to chat with the prostitutes on the one side, the pavement dwellers on the other.

I often think the residents on Fourteenth Gully give to Sona as they would make offerings at a temple, to propitiate the gods, bring them good fortune. Sona isn't casual about making people learn to save either. She just stands there until you can bear it no longer, and you start to scratch among your clothes and somewhere find a rumpled note - two, five, ten - it's not important.

I sometimes kid Sona that she's really an extortionist, forcing people to save when they don't really want to. Sona plays dumb if I suggest this. Without saying a word, she encourages me to verify with any of her customers.

I pick on Jyoti because last week Jyoti told Sona to her face she had no money, and still Sona came away with two Rupees in Jyoti's savings book. Jyoti is quite forthcoming when Sona plunks herself down, all four foot six of her, in front of Jyoti who's washing beans.

"She does everyday. She comes even when I don't have any money. If I say I'm broke she does go away. But then she comes back the next day, maybe later that same day. Then, I have to give her something. Not because she forces me. But because it's thanks to her that we will eventually get the mortgage to build our own homes. I get the money from somewhere, even when I don't want to save. She simply won't take no for an answer."

Poor Raju! He's not so lucky.

Raju's a few minutes late getting off to work. Sona sees him, stops, looks hard at him, impassively, then nudges her eyelids.

Raju looks at Sona, reluctantly reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out two ten Rupee notes, hands them to Sona and exits the lane fast.

Sona says that's not extortion, merely "Forced Savings."

On a typical morning, Sona will collect four hundred Rupees from the street ($13). And she admits she enjoys collecting money. It's her drug, her fix, and what's best of all, it's doing good for others.

Nor does she get paid to do this. It's her dharma, her duty, her way of being useful to society.

At least twenty of the prostitutes now save with Sona. Four or five have managed to put enough aside to buy themselves out of the Business, much like Sona once did, fifteen years ago.

Sona's finished for the morning. Time to go back to her hut, eat the pohar she left simmering, then walk the half mile to the Mahila Milan office where she'll sit opposite Shekhar and with great pomp and circumstance pay in the money, write the entries in each passbook and then return to spend the afternoon with Yellama, the Goddess.