Ragpickers are an invisible part of every city. A neighbor’s 4-year-old girl child once showed me a packet of ground nuts and said that Vijayanna brought this for her from Madurai. One of my aunts packs food for Mari and his family.
Vijayanna and Mari are two of Kochi’s unknown number of ragpickers. While most of Kochi's scrap is picked by those employed by the Kudumbasree scheme, most housing colonies still have two or three ragpickers cum scrap dealers, and often, the relationship would have been one of several years. “I take scrap from six housing colonies. In one colony three or four houses will give waste materials to me. They will not deal with others but rather, wait for me,” said Vijayan, who migrated to Kochi from Madurai 18 years ago.
The job is not easy, in the best weeks they end up earning Rs 1500 to Rs 2000 per week. For Vijayan and his wife Vannakkili, the money is barely enough to pay the rent for the house they live in, situated in a congested colony that houses many like them.
"When we migrated to Kochi, we used to initially beg. Later, I took up this job. I don't make much money, but I'm happy. The families treat me well, many wait for me to come and take food they would have packed for me,"he says. Sixty-four-year-old Vijayan says that he has maintained a good relationship with some of the families he visits regularly to collect scraps. He sometimes gifts them something when he returns from his native after a vacation.
“Some people (that we deal with) send us food if there is some celebration at their house. Some even invite us. One family brought me a sari when they married off their daughter,” Vijayan’s wife Vannakkili delightedly said. This relationship of trust has built up over the years. “We know some of the scrap dealers for the last 5 to 10 years. We sell scrap and waste only to them. We don’t trust anyone else, they (unknown rapickers) may come for theft (using ragpicking to gain entry). But our regular ragpickers are part of our lives,” said Sheela Issac who lives in the Gandhinagar housing colony in Kochi.
Homemaker Rajani Narayanan from Jawahar Nagar Housing colony says that a 65-year-old ragpicker has been visiting her colony twice a week for the last 10 years. “If he does not turn up for a whole week, someone from the colony will call him to find out what happened,” she said, adding that the man often helped out with chores like cleaning. “We give them food and old clothes.” This trust factor works both ways. For a person trying break into new areas for work, families do not trust them easily and Vijayan says that is reason why majority of ragpickers in the city are quite elderly.
“Some people had asked me to introduce them to the housing colonies I go to, as nobody deals with them. That is why you see mainly old people in this field,” says Vijayan. Many ragpickers are above 60. “It is really hard to work at this age as we have to walk a lot to collect things, I walk almost 15 kilometers a day,” Vijayan says. Having come to Kochi from Madurai when he was 25, 66-year old Sharavana has seen three generations in some families, and is sad about the way the city has changed.