Midnight's Children

Hardnews travels across the midnight streets of the exiled and homeless citizens of the capital of the world's largest democracy and discovers that this winter death and dying is as ritualistic as every winter. Only that no one's reporting it any more. Photographs and text by Akash Bisht

As the deathly cold wave recedes in Delhi and north India, the exiled and homeless on its streets feel a sense of quiet happiness: they think that the worst is over, now they won't fear death every night under the open skies. But some of them are still unsure - will the chill return yet again to kill? "In mid-January we thought that the winter would pass soon, but it got even worse and we just prayed that it gets over soon," says Mohan Das, a daily labourer, who coped with this winter in the open-to-sky streets of Paharganj near the New Delhi Railway Station. The capital this year witnessed one of its coldest winters and thousands of homeless on the streets of this upwardly mobile city of the cocooned rich and powerful were braving the cold by wrapping themselves with newspapers, wall posters, torn blankets, plastic sheets, sacks, polythene, torn pieces of cloth and cotton in the garbage can, anything that could provide some warmth.
Delhi has reportedly more than 100,000 homeless people who can't afford to rent a shelter, of the few, filthy and dilapidated ones run by the government. Every night thousands of these abjectly poor can be seen sleeping on rikshaws, pavements, bus stops, parking lots, beneath flyovers, outside temples and dargahs, in Hanuman Mandir in CP and Nizamuddin, outside Jama Masjid and old Delhi Railway Station, across the blind and invisible map that lies outside the prosperous Lutyen's Delhi or the posh South Delhi. These homeless people are abused and fleeced by the police; men are beaten up while women are routinely harassed. Women and children are the most vulnerable ones as they not only find it difficult to brave this hostile weather but also have other demons that chase them on these bloody cold night streets. Women and girl children often face sexual abuse while children are at the risk of substance abuse and trafficking for begging and organ trade.
Speaking to Hardnews, many sleeping on these streets confirmed that this year a lot of people died due to the cold wave but no one took notice of it. Earlier, some of these deaths were reported by the mainstream media but this makes news no more. However, this year, the Delhi government had made temporary arrangements for such homeless people but most of them complain that they could still not avail of these facilities. Some say that they had to bribe the caretaker of such shelters. These people do not have access to basic amenities such as clean blankets, shelter, water and sanitation.
"The homeless of this rich man's city are no one's concern: we die, we live, who cares? For us all seasons are a test of endurance and it's just a matter of time before we succumb and hope for a better life in our next birth," says Narendra Lal, a rikhshaw-puller in Ajmeri Gate.
Next birth? After the incredibly cruel tragedies of this world? In which next world of which utopia?
The camera captures the images. Like a cold-blooded click of a cold-blooded finger. The cold moves inside the bones, the eyes, the intestines, like an inevitable messenger of death. The winter night is still alive in this dying and this death. And the next world, truly, seems far away.