MUD

1985. 

Bombay, the city of dreams.

The mud is Gold, the dirt is Gold, the dust is Gold. 

Here everything you touch can be gold.

This is the story of Raju Ghamelawala. 

It was Friday. Clutching a small cloth bundle he was walking barefooted from his small hutment in Zaveri Bazar. 

He was physically tired, sweaty and haggard but his heart was full of joy. Though his feet were sore and bleeding his mind was light and ecstatic.

Quite some time back he had a dream. On waking up and recollecting his dream he had vowed to offer, in case the dream came true, a gold ornament to Goddess Laxmi.

Two days earlier the dream had materialised and he was on his way to fulfil his part of the deal.

He was on his way to Mahalaxmi temple near Haji Ali. 

This temple was historic.

It pans back to decades.

It pans back to the birth of Bombay.

It also pans back to a dream.

                       -------///--------

Late 18th Century.

The East India Company has a foothold in India. 

They are on a spree of development in this country.

Seven islands have created intrigue and a challenge. They are the islands of Worli, Parel, Mahim, Mazagaon, Bombay, Little Colaba and Colaba.

The Company have a plan to join all of them and create a metropole.

However, there is a deep sinking problem.

They are dumpling boatloads of stone and mud into the Worli creek to build an embankment, but it has collapsed time and again. They are losing a battle against the sea.

An engineer Ramji Shivji Prabhu working on the project has a dream: the goddess Mahalakshmi and two others inform him that their stone idols lie submerged in the creek. 

Can some space be made for them on land? 

Prabhu has them fished out and installed them in a shrine built nearby on land gifted by the administration. 

The East India Company engineers now give the reclamation project a try.

The stones and mud are poured in.

Eureka!! 

The wall holds.

That embankment – the Hornby Vellard Reclamation Project completed in 1784 can be said to have given shape to the modern city of Bombay (Mumbai since 1995) 

At the initiative of William Hornby, then governor of Bombay, the next few decades was followed by the construction of causeways to link the seven islets separated by sea and swamp.

The city of Bombay grew through the conjuring up of land from the sea. Embankments were built, hills were flattened, stone, rubble and mud dumped into marsh. The artificial geographic unification would set the ground for the rapid industrialization of the city and its rise in the global economic arena.

The temple built for Goddess Laxmi and two other goddesses is none other than the Mahalaxmi Temple near Haji Ali.

                       -------///--------

1985

Raju along with his wife lived in a jhopadpatti (makeshift hutments) in the back lanes of Zaveri Bazar. 

It was eight year's since they were married. However, they were childless. Attempts to try conceiving were futile and they had given up hope.

One night Raju had a dream. Goddess Laxmi appeared and mentioned that they would soon be blessed with wealth in their household. It would be in the form of a child. Raju sat up in ecstasy.  He immediately woke up Radha his wife and shared the dream. She also was jubilant. They rushed to the mogra garlanded photo of Laxmi which adorned one corner of their hut. Radha lit a match and lit the oil diya. She also took out some incense sticks and lit them. With flooded hands, bowed heads and eyes closed with devotion the couple thanked the Goddess and prayed. As the fragrant wisps of smoke drifted up towards the heavens Raju made a vow. On the first Friday after his wife delivered a baby he would walk on bare feet from his hutment in Zavheri Bazar to Mahalaxmi in Haji Ali and offer a gold necklace to the goddess.

They prayed fervently for this to be accepted.

A few weeks later the good news came that Radha was pregnant. It was a miracle.

Raju Ghamelawallah is a man who searches for gold amidst the garbage, mud and grime of Zaveri Bazaar’s streets.  The name, ‘Ghamelawallah’,  comes from the Hindi word ‘Ghamela’, which is the pan in which they collect the gold-flecked dirt.

Zaveri Bazaar in Bombay is one of India's biggest gold markets. Here gold is everywhere. It has thousands of shops showrooms and gold workshops, small and large, in the narrow alleyways.

Gold sparkles in ornaments like bangles, necklaces and earrings displayed and also in the slabs of the shiny metal lying in the goldsmiths’ factories, waiting for to be cut. Specks of gold also glitter amidst the mud, dust and grime of Zaveri Bazaar's streets.

When the goldsmiths and craftsmen shower or wash their hands, the gold dust on their hands and body comes off and flows out of the drain. The mud in the gutter is collected to look for the gold.

To have a higher chance of finding this dust some Ghamelawallah’s find out where the goldsmiths live and then follow their trail. They then sweep and work along this trail.

Some gold particles also get carelessly thrown into the streets which get collected by these ‘entrepreneurs’. 

Ghamelawallah’s comes here every morning to sweep every corner of the street.

They lift lids off gutters around gold shops to meticulously collect dust and sludge.

Raju similarly tried to do this collection from every corner of the street. He scoured for every speck of dust he could find. He collected a heap of dust from the drain and put it into a pan. Once his pan was full, he would go back to his place which now doubled as his workplace.

He would wash the muck with water; if there is gold, it sinks to the bottom of the pan. as shiny yellow particles. He then added mercury to the pan so that the gold sticks to the mercury. He cooked the mixture over a furnace and added nitric acid.  A swirling pungent smoke emanated as he watched the mercury vaporise. Only gold is left behind. This is collected over some time and then beaten together to form slabs that are sold off to a goldsmith.

Easy though it sounds, it is a very difficult task. Finding the valuable gold dust is like searching for a needle in a haystack, there are days when no gold at all is found. It is just plain dust, mud, muck and nothing else in the pan. Also during the monsoon, the muck gets washed away so they cannot collect gold dust.

The next few months after he got the news that he would be a dad, Raju walked with a spring in his stride and extra zeal in his work. As Radha progressed through maternity Raju’s gold finding also increased. He had not struck a goldmine but the tiny daily collections were heartening.

Close to the days nearing Radha’s delivery he had accumulated sufficient gold to exchange for a tiny necklace. He approached Seth Rasikal the goldsmith who brought old gold.

Dressed in his traditional Marwari dress, cap and all, Rasiklal was in his dingy hole which he called his workshop and office. A huge three arm ceiling fan noisily rotated, circulating  the hot air around the smoky stuffy room.

Seated on a mattress on the floor he masticated on his paan. The surrounding walls streaked with red lines indicated the destination of the occasional red squirts from his mouth.

Rasiklal opened the drawer of his antique wooden table and took out a touchstone.

This trusted method from the Harappah days would help him test the purity of the thin gold slab that Raju gave him.  

He drew a line with the gold slab on the touchstone to leave a visible trace. Because different alloys of gold have different colours the unknown sample can be compared to samples of known purity. 

Rasiklal made the comparison and announced his inference. Using a pan scale he played around with the weights till he was satisfied that the sides were balanced. He noted the weight. Scribbling his calculation in a small pocket diary with a pencil he arrived at a figure.

He made an offer.

After a bit of bargaining and finally settling, Raju agreed to a figure. Asking for it to be exchanged in the form of a gold necklace he returned home with his prized possession. 

Two days later Radha delivered. It was a healthy, beautiful girl. Both parents were on top of the world .

                       -------///--------

True to his promise Raju had undertaken the walk to the temple. He had clutched onto a small cloth bundle that housed the gleaming necklace.  

As he climbed up the stairs and got the first darshan of the goddess he expressed thanks for blessing their aspirations and fulfilling his dream 

He passed on the ornament to the priest in the sanctum and made his offering.

He was ever grateful to God that he had gained new wealth in his home. The priest decked the goddess with the necklace.   

The gold in the mud of his ghamela had helped him get the necklace, to fulfil his vow to the goddess who had blessed them with a tiny bundle of joy.

Radha and Raju decided to call this bundle of joy and wealth Laxmi.