better life in big cities, but these people do not recognize that city life can make their life even worse. Lapierre describes this condition in chapter 1:
“You my eldest son take this money and go with your wife and children to Calcutta. In the big city you will send us whatever you can. You are only
hope of not dying of starvation” p.20
4.1.1.3.2. City
Segal writes in his book The Crisis of India 1965: 19 that the poverty of village is not only less obvious, but also less cruel than the poverty of the city. In
villages, people still have support from people of the same caste. The formal division of different caste rights and obligations gives poverty its place and its support in the
village structure. In the village structure, the upper caste that is served by the lower castes has duties not only to repay them in cash or commodities but also help them
when they get difficulties. However, the poor of the Indian cities belong to no one and to nothing
Lapierre also writes the condition above in the novel. City life is crueler than village life. In big city, people are difficult to ask help from other people especially
when they just arrive in big city. This condition appears because people who live in cities are not only coming from villages around India but also coming from countries
around India. These refugees from villages rarely get help from others at the first time they arrive in big cities. They must depend on themselves because most of them
do not have any friend. They cannot ask somebody to help them to find a job, because other people are also looking for a job. Finding a job in big cities is very
difficult. Sometimes, these exodus of people are compelled to beg because they cannot get any job.
“Hasari questioned them about the possibility of finding work, but they had found nothing themselves yet. To avoid dying of starvation they admitted to
having been reduced to putting their children out on streets to beg”. p.23 The number of people who move to big cities has caused the difficulty of
finding a job. Consequently, those who have already had a job are insisted to maintain their job. Most of them cannot take a rest although they are sick. It is
because most of the employers in big cities do not care with their workers’ condition. They do not care whether their workers are sick or not. They only care with their
financial profit which they can get. If their workers come to work, they will pay them. However, if they cannot come to work, there will be other people who will
replace their job. The shortage of work cause many people waiting to replace the sick workers. It does not matter if they only work as a coolie, a rickshaw puller, a driver
or any other kind of job; they are pleased to take it. Therefore, the workers are afraid, if they take a rest while they get sick, other people will take their job. This condition
frequently causes the condition of workers in big cities gets even worse. Thus, there are many people in cities who die on work. Here, Lapierre described how people in
cities die on work. “As he was passing a workshop where some collies were loading iron bars
onto a telegarghi, a long handcart, one of the collies suddenly began to vomit blood. His companions laid him out on the ground. He was so pale that Hasari
thought the man was dead. When the workshop owner came out, shouting because the telegharhi had not yet gone Hasari rushed forward and offered to
replace the ailing collie. The man hesitated but his delivery could not wait any longer and he offered three rupees for the run, payable on arrival.” p.27
“That afternoon he had learned a harsh lesson: “Since men in this inhuman city die on the job, I’ll damned if I can’t manage one day to replace one of
those dead.” p.28
Segal’s analysis about the city life is precise. The cruelty of village life is better than city life. In villages, the families, the neighbors, and friends are helping
each other, but in cities only a few people who are aware of others. Big cities are really inhuman and Calcutta is one of several inhuman cities in India. Calcutta is a
typical of big cities in India where six million starving people have come in the hope of feeding their families. In Calcutta, poor people are willing to stay on the street
because shelters even in the slum are not easy to get. Others who do not have permanent houses make temporary shelters from bamboo and board.
Those hundreds of thousands unfortunate people eat, sleep, love and die in the street. Lay opinions usually settles on 450,000 for Bombay and 550,000 for
greater Calcutta, or one in ten of the total population in each city, poor people live on the pavements Segal, 1965: 19. The development of city service is rarely equal to
the growth of the people account. That situation causes most part of big cities to be surrounded by slum area. Most of them who live in a slum settle in a small room with
the whole family, besides they often have to take turn sleeping because of the lack of space.
It is also written in the novel that people who live in a slum commonly live with the whole family, sometimes with ten or twelve people, in a little room.
Although these people only live in a small room, they are luckier than others who live in pavements. This condition is mentioned in the novel:
““I was so happy I would have given the moon for a lifetime lease of that hovel,” he recalled later. He was soon to discover how privileged he was: ten
or twelve persons were living in huts like his.” p.66
Poor people who live in pavements compel to stay in it because they do not have any choice. The rent control of a room in slums is very expensive. Not all
people are able to rent a room although only a slum. Here is the evidence that renting control of a room in a city’s slum is expensive:
““Twenty-five rupees?” the Anglo–Indian exclaimed indignantly. “Twenty- five rupees for a miserable room without a window. That’s highway
robbery”.” p.66 The government does not prepare appropriate public toilets for those people,
even the people who live on the pavements are forced to attend to their bodily needs in the street and to use fire hydrants to take a bath. Calcutta is one of the worst cities
in that condition then followed by Bombay and Madras. This is Lapierre’s explanation about the worse condition in India:
“And yet, thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people swarmed night and day over its squares, its avenues an the narrowest of its
alleyways. The smallest fragment of pavement was occupied, squatted upon, covered with salesman and peddlers, with homeless families camping out,
with piles of building materials or refuse, with stalls and a multitude of attars and small temples.”p.31
“The arrival of these successive waves of destitute people had transformed Calcutta into an enormous concentration of humanity. In a few years the city
was condemn its ten million in habitants to living on less then twelve square feet of space per person, while the four or five million of them who squeezed
into its slums had sometimes to make do with barely three square feet each, consequently Calcutta had become one of the biggest urban disasters in the
world-…” p.31
There are many endemics in Calcutta because this city does not have an adequate garbage collector service to clean the whole garbage. Some diseases such as
cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, and rabies infect people. India has a high mortality rate, partly because of poor died and living conditions and also because inadequate
sanitation and nutrition. Here is Lapierre description about this condition: “In the absence of an adequate garbage collection service, eighteen hundred
tons of refuse accumulated daily in the streets, attracting a host of flies, mosquitoes, rats, cockroaches, and other creatures.
In summer the proliferation of filth brought with it the risk of endemics. Not so very long ago it was still a common occurrence for people to die of
cholera, hepatitis, typhoid and rabies.” p.31
4.1.2 Socio-Cultura l Condition of India
