Saumya Roy, CASTAWAY MOUNTAIN: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai
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[0:41]Sam Yeroy is the author of Castaway Mountain, Love and Loss Among the Waste Fickers of Mumbai.
[0:46]Setting against the towering garbage mountains at the edge of the city,
[0:49]follows the improbable life of Farsana Shak,
[0:52]a waste picker who was born at the feet of these mountains and grew up in the shadow
[0:56]of Mumbai's rising detritus, finding friends, genes, love and life.
[0:59]Sam Yeroy is a journalist and co-founder of Vondana Foundation,
[1:03]which supports the livelihoods of micro entrepreneurs.
[1:06]Castaway Mountain was among NPR's best love books for 2021
[1:09]and is being translated into several languages.
[1:12]Welcome, Sam Yeroy. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books
[1:16]to discuss Castaway Mountain, Love and Loss Among the Waste Fickers of Mumbai.
[1:21]Thank you for having me.
[1:23]This is such a pleasure.
[1:24]Where are you these days? Are you in? Where are you for the Zoom in the world?
[1:28]Yeah, I'll just move last week to work with California to teach at the University here.
[1:34]Oh, wow. Okay.
[1:35]Oh, so no, I'm sorry. It's early.
[1:37]No, okay. Just for this semester, I'm teaching about writing on India, actually.
[1:42]Oh, that's so interesting.
[1:44]Okay. Would you mind telling everybody what your book is about?
[1:47]Sure. My book is about the garbage landfill of Mumbai,
[1:51]except when you think of a landfill, you think it's buried into land,
[1:55]but this is actually rising up like mountains that are 120 feet high or like 20 slow buildings.
[2:02]So that like mountains that are that I just made of trash packed in with mud.
[2:08]So literally feel like a mountain made up of everything that we used and threw away.
[2:14]And just as India was getting Mumbai also was getting wealthier,
[2:18]these mountains were getting higher.
[2:21]And like cities all over the world, Mumbai was struggling to manage its waste.
[2:26]And so the only people taking trash away from these mountains were waste pickles,
[2:31]who I happened to meet and I followed some of their lives for about eight or nine years.
[2:36]And this book is about these mountains, made of our cast away things.
[2:41]And these people who live there and make a life there,
[2:44]and the only people who take anything away from there.
[2:46]And what are their lives made of them?
[2:49]Oh my gosh, what an undertaking to do that for such a long term as a project.
[2:54]It's amazing.
[2:55]Can you explain how you originally met Farzana, who you followed through the back?
[2:59]Yeah, sure.
[3:00]I was a journalist and then I left and started a nonprofit.
[3:03]And we used to give small loans to micro entrepreneurs across the city.
[3:08]And we began getting waste because in 2013.
[3:11]And the approach to think, can you give us a loan?
[3:13]And I said, what business is this like, what do you do?
[3:16]a loan is going to go and like, because the only thing that you can pick is with your bare hands.
[3:22]So how are you going to grow this business?
[3:23]What business is this?
[3:24]How are you going to grow this?
[3:25]My loan is going to go bad.
[3:26]So the end of the week, they presented it was a total opposite.
[3:30]They were like, this is one business that's never going to be.
[3:33]It's trash.
[3:33]I'm going to reduce.
[3:35]No.
[3:36]So, you know, when they're going to run out of work, we can keep growing it.
[3:39]We can keep employing people.
[3:40]You have no idea how big this place is.
[3:43]So they began bringing me videos, photos, and then I began following them.
[3:48]And when I went there, it became clear to me that they were, they were being as perfectly.
[3:52]They were earning.
[3:53]But poverty was on their purse and it was in the cards.
[3:57]It was in their bruises that they got when they got,
[3:59]mocking these garbage mountains.
[4:01]The homes were made of the garbage mountains.
[4:04]Their life was on the mountains.
[4:05]They wore what they found.
[4:06]They ate what they found ready to eat foods.
[4:09]They were cut by glass.
[4:10]They were jabbed by syringes.
[4:13]They found there.
[4:14]So, you know, when we say poverty is not only for money, but it is on their purse.
[4:20]And it was in the inlaces that they got from working in this place.
[4:24]And so it became clear to me that their life was intertwined with this garbage mountain that we made.
[4:30]And then in 2016, they were huge fires there.
[4:33]So I thought, why don't they write a magazine story about this?
[4:37]And then I began researching how was this place made and how did it come to be?
[4:42]And slowly grew and grew and grew and became a book.
[4:45]Wow.
[4:45]That's amazing.
[4:46]Well, you write in such vivid detail about the trash mountains.
[4:51]And there's one image that I can't get out of my head, which was the image of the three conjoined,
[4:57]the conjoined triplets that were just thrown away and how there was this whole history of just throwing away babies.
[5:05]Like as trash just to be discovered with their whole bodies sort of intact.
[5:10]Anyway, yes, I couldn't get that image of the conjoined triplets out of my head.
[5:15]And I couldn't believe that people just left their kids in that way.
[5:19]Tell me a more about that.
[5:21]I was like harrowing detail.
[5:23]See what goes in garbage is something that we don't think anybody's going to discover, right?
[5:28]We put it into trash cans or into trash bags thinking this is just a pure advantage.
[5:34]So a lot of secrets come there, including babies.
[5:39]In a larger sense, in India, we do have this issue of missing girls, some of whom are about it, some of whom are not even about it may be born,
[5:49]but left in trash cans.
[5:52]And my hunch is that they are meant to disappear.
[5:55]They are nobody thinks what happens at the landfill.
[5:58]That's somebody finds them.
[6:00]But you just want them to disappear from your life.
[6:03]What goes there to space out of sight.
[6:05]And so waste because would often this is while I use this incident, even at first even I found it unbelievable.
[6:12]So I actually asked many waste because about it.
[6:15]And so many waste because told me that they found babies, they found dead babies.
[6:21]I mean, while it's not the norm that every day you would find one, but it's not.
[6:26]It's not if you have worked there your whole life.
[6:29]Most people have found or many people have found them.
[6:33]Some of whom came maybe as biomedical to actually just, I don't know, but some of them wanted babies.
[6:39]So they find more girls than boys, but they do sometimes find boys as fun.
[6:43]How many waste figures did you follow?
[6:46]Like how many did you interview over the course of the project?
[6:49]So we used to lend them, which is how I first knew them.
[6:52]So we must have lent them more than 500 all of whom I interviewed at first for loan purposes.
[6:58]But so I knew their stories.
[7:00]And when I thought I would write a magazine story from that point onwards, they were at least half a dozen who I interviewed for.
[7:08]This book follows four families, but mainly of course for design and half family, but they're four families who have followed over these eight or nine years and continuing to follow them from different different reasons.
[7:23]But also there were many others.
[7:25]I would say that even for the book, I mean, there are you see all these different characters coming and going out and, you know, who live in that lane or who I, you know, asked, but did this really happen?
[7:35]Is this possible? And they would say yes, of course, I found it too or I knew this too or, you know, I had seen this too.
[7:43]So I would say hundreds of people were interviewed, like while one particular incident was used, even just to check it and verify I don't do this.
[7:51]You know, so many things you feel like, what is this feel?
[7:54]So certainly lots of people will be asked for those guys.
[7:58]So what were some takeaways after you went through this and followed this and collected all this data and observation and everything, like what was over some of your main takeaways and findings?
[8:12]I mean, my book, I would say it's not like a prescriptive kind of book, it was more introspective a little bit.
[8:19]So it's certainly encouraged readers to think that what is the one going to this place made me feel what gives meaning to our life.
[8:26]Because if we accumulate things, things thinking that, you know, they certainly I feel that by sometimes that, you know, accumulating things sometimes like whether it's gives us comfort.
[8:37]And during the lockdown I felt that food or things are closed, you know, pillows whatever they give us comfort and they do.
[8:45]But if that is what gave meaning to our life, then why do I see it there at the top of July, I'll just pile up squash together finding it there so quickly.
[8:56]Right.
[8:57]So soon after we acquired it a cell phone he'll show all the things that we feel give us shine give us comfort if they ended up there then how is it then how are they giving us so much meaning in life.
[9:10]So it just encouraged me to think and when I saw waste because also who didn't have so much, but they did have relationships.
[9:18]So in some ways you could say that their life was very difficult and it is, but in some ways it was filled with a lot and I don't mean to romanticize it by any means.
[9:28]But it was filled with a lot which is it didn't present itself to me as a dark place, but as also a place where children were growing up where they were having birthday parties, teenagers not having romances.
[9:40]They were finding things you know joy also a joyful child and even without having a lot they did have a lot which was a different kind of a thing and saying so I don't mean to romanticize it but just to let it encourage me certainly as a reader to to ping and to intro spec about what it is.
[10:00]that gives meaning to our lives.
[10:01]So that's one whole democracy perspective.
[10:03]I certainly felt that, I mean, waste and climate impact
[10:08]that it has is certainly something that, you know,
[10:11]that this brought out, that that landfill is our
[10:14]major cause of pollution and climate change.
[10:16]And that they do need to be remediated across the world.
[10:19]I did visit the landfill in New York City as well,
[10:22]fresh kills.
[10:23]Yeah.
[10:23]And I also think we have my kid's school,
[10:27]my rocket school does field trips there every year.
[10:30]Yeah.
[10:31]And we go and we pick up trash and then we, you know, explore
[10:34]and yeah, it's a whole thing.
[10:35]Yeah, it's going to turn into a path now.
[10:38]Ah, crazy.
[10:40]So that gives me a lot of hope.
[10:42]So what really is to be done with this waste?
[10:44]How does it struggle to deal with it?
[10:47]And then in this case, while the city was thinking
[10:49]from a very technical technocratic perspective,
[10:52]how do we turn it into ash and the ash into bricks, right?
[10:55]But there are people involved and there are lives involved
[10:58]and how do we aim to point these into any kind of solution
[11:01]as well?
[11:02]So that was certainly something that came out of my
[11:05]present.
[11:06]Amazing.
[11:07]What, so tell me about the nonprofit.
[11:09]Are you still running that as well?
[11:10]Or are you don't do that anymore?
[11:12]Unless so.
[11:14]Lassa.
[11:14]Lassa, it is running.
[11:15]The foundation is still running.
[11:17]But not at the skill that it once was,
[11:19]because I've been busy writing this for a couple of seconds.
[11:23]How long did it take for you to write the book?
[11:24]What was your process like?
[11:26]At first accidental, I had stopped typing, never written a book.
[11:31]So as you can see, it's not written in a very difficult,
[11:34]you know, journalistic way.
[11:35]It's like a non-fiction law as a law.
[11:38]So at first, I thought that it would be a magazine piece.
[11:41]But then, you know, just the research, like,
[11:43]what if this piece, like I remember a waste picker telling me,
[11:46]do you know, this is this colonial times
[11:49]as if it were a monument?
[11:50]But it's not a monument, it's trash.
[11:54]You know, just I have a look.
[11:56]What were you saying?
[11:57]How is that possible?
[11:58]So I began looking at colonial archives.
[12:01]Then they said, then I thought there was a court case
[12:03]that would, and when I went to court,
[12:05]it seemed like, oh my god, this place is just going to shut down.
[12:08]They seemed so purposeful.
[12:10]But when I saw the day at the case,
[12:11]I'd have been going on for 26 years.
[12:14]And I immediately thought, well, like,
[12:16]if it's been going on for 26 years, why is this place still going?
[12:20]So I wanted to find out.
[12:21]And it turned out that for 26 years,
[12:23]it seemed like it would just close it,
[12:24]which is close, which is close, but it had not.
[12:26]And it has still not closed.
[12:29]So there were many policy related questions,
[12:31]legal questions, like that, you know,
[12:34]slowly my research just grew and also was around the waste
[12:37]because there are like so many things
[12:39]were happening to them around this period,
[12:41]that I kept trying to clean it and writing.
[12:44]And I was fortunate to get a lot of writing.
[12:46]There's a tendency that gave me the time to write a new way.
[12:49]I feel that they had to be a certain grace to their life.
[12:53]Like it should not be written in a very raw way
[12:56]because that was so many of the characters
[12:58]there was so much grace and like,
[12:59]it doesn't have to be written in that way.
[13:02]Wow, that's amazing.
[13:04]I love just the whole determination,
[13:06]the way this whole project is evolved,
[13:08]just from a deep place of interest.
[13:10]It's like you have to write about something
[13:11]that will keep your interest for so long
[13:14]and look at how you stuck with this topic
[13:16]and right, even the way you talk about it,
[13:18]like wanting to write about it gracefully
[13:21]because you're right, it does read much more like a story
[13:24]than a reported article or something like that.
[13:27]And it's the story of someone's life,
[13:28]which is of course endlessly fascinating
[13:30]and especially growing up in this way.
[13:33]I mean, it raises like so many questions about
[13:36]how we use things and recycling
[13:39]and how we consume anything really.
[13:43]Like, you know, I always feel now when I'm like
[13:45]putting something in the trash.
[13:46]I'm like, this is so ridiculous.
[13:47]Like all the people who are involved in making this item,
[13:50]right, all the factories and had getting on the shelves
[13:54]and then I used it and like some sort of packaging, right,
[13:57]or like a toy, or I don't know what.
[13:59]And then two seconds after I get it,
[14:00]it's in the trash again, off to go where?
[14:03]I don't know.
[14:04]It's just like, is a reminder for us to all
[14:07]to sort of stop in our tracks and rethink.
[14:09]What was it like at all of your writing residency programs?
[14:12]Like I've never done a writing residency
[14:14]and I'm always so fascinated.
[14:16]Like, how do they help you?
[14:18]What did you learn?
[14:19]Did you get to just toil away in a cabin?
[14:22]Or, you know, what was it like?
[14:24]What did you get out of it?
[14:25]I loved it.
[14:26]Because as you know, Mumbai is one
[14:28]of the most hyper-kinetics cities in the world.
[14:31]And my first writing residency was in upstate New York
[14:34]in a cabin in a car potential.
[14:37]Snow all around, absolute silence, except for the wind.
[14:41]And it just wiped all around you.
[14:45]Like, as different as was possible from Mumbai.
[14:48]And it just slowed my mind down completely.
[14:51]So it was as if this world came to me in slow motion,
[14:55]allowing me to process it, allowing me to capture it.
[14:59]I was alone in my room.
[15:00]But you know that there are the most amazing writers
[15:03]working on their computers in some room next to you.
[15:07]And that itself was very inspiring
[15:09]to know that somebody else is also struggling with there.
[15:11]I think writing, rewriting, throwing away drafts.
[15:16]So that is a very inspiring and wonderful feeling.
[15:19]And when we meet for meals, then some of the best known writers
[15:23]who you idolize are looking just as troubled as you feel inside.
[15:29]And then sometimes, just when you go for a walk
[15:31]or you go for a boat ride or something,
[15:33]then you talk about it, hey, what are you going through?
[15:35]Or how are you sometimes writers are like yourself?
[15:38]Sometimes they're not like for instance.
[15:40]I had a good fortune even if I'm some fiction writers
[15:43]at writing residencies or having music composers, scientists,
[15:47]doctors, you know, when we go for a walk,
[15:49]then we'll just talk about different things.
[15:51]How are you dealing with what you are?
[15:53]How do they structure stories?
[15:55]How do they bring out characters and stories?
[15:58]How do they use dialogue and stories?
[16:01]And you get to learn so much from what they're doing.
[16:04]In a very intimate, informal or unexpected way.
[16:08]Sounds amazing.
[16:09]It's wonderful.
[16:10]Could you give me like the short version
[16:12]of how you even got to the nonprofit stage?
[16:15]Like your background up until then,
[16:17]like where you grew up and when you knew you were interested
[16:20]in this type of stuff, like what's your little life story?
[16:25]You know, something like that.
[16:25]So I wanted to be a journalist.
[16:28]I was, you know, since I was in high school,
[16:30]I grew up in India and I always wanted to be a journalist.
[16:32]And so I studied journalism in the US,
[16:34]worked your briefly, went back, worked in journalism.
[16:38]But and I wrote about all kinds of things
[16:40]you know, my average and about the stock market.
[16:42]I wrote about my volume or everything.
[16:45]But I found myself increasingly drawn
[16:47]to these sorts of stories.
[16:48]So once I had written about redlining,
[16:50]which is the practice of, you know,
[16:52]at that point India's economy was booming
[16:54]and there was a personal consumption boom.
[16:57]So I remember even as everybody would get phone calls,
[17:00]would you like a loan to for a holiday to your,
[17:02]would you like a holiday or a loan to, you know,
[17:05]a wedding to have a big Indian wedding?
[17:07]You can get a loan.
[17:08]But I had a story that if you did not live in the night,
[17:11]in a nice part of town, did not belong
[17:13]to the right religion that banks would not lend.
[17:16]They would just say, oh, sorry, we can't get you a loan
[17:18]because you can't open even a savings account.
[17:21]And so I had brought out documents to say that what,
[17:24]if you lived in this area and you,
[17:26]they would hang up on you basically on our financial services.
[17:30]So I had this in my mind that if I ever have money
[17:33]on by the photo survey savings,
[17:35]I would like to do something about this.
[17:37]And also about our pharmaceutical sites,
[17:40]which is another part of the foundation.
[17:42]And so in 2010, my father and I here retired from government
[17:45]service and we started this nonprofit
[17:47]and I had no experience of managing anyone
[17:50]or an organization.
[17:52]And so I just was stumbling and learning
[17:54]and it was small but people growing
[17:56]and it was endlessly fascinating
[17:58]because we were meeting people like this
[18:00]who had their own businesses.
[18:02]It was like seeing the city from the bottom up,
[18:04]people who made students, people who made snacks,
[18:07]women who made lunches, women who collected trash.
[18:10]So we were just seeing this amazing perspective
[18:13]of the city, how people run,
[18:15]many businesses to keep their families throwing.
[18:17]You see their gumption every day,
[18:19]their strength, their sense of humor,
[18:21]their sense of strong sense of self.
[18:23]All of those things that just kept me learning
[18:26]and going every day, so much so that I stopped writing.
[18:29]And then it was in 2016 when these fires happen
[18:33]and I thought maybe I should write the magazine piece.
[18:36]And this book, the journey on this book.
[18:39]And so what are you, you said you were teaching
[18:42]about writing about India to your students?
[18:45]What are some of the things that you're teaching them?
[18:47]Like what do people have to know about that
[18:49]as a specific genre?
[18:52]Yeah, the students are familiar
[18:54]but they're also from Italy, from Spain,
[18:57]from different places.
[18:59]And one of the things we look at is obviously India
[19:01]being a very old in the ancient society,
[19:04]but a democracy, the world's largest democracy.
[19:06]And so I understand to look at it a little bit,
[19:09]there's a mirror to the US as well.
[19:11]But what are the some like the cracks in society,
[19:15]like my book also shows.
[19:17]And those cracks are along so many lines,
[19:19]like gender like race, like caste in India,
[19:22]class both in the US and India.
[19:24]And what are the, we are looking at like even
[19:26]what are the democratic ways in which so many
[19:28]of these things can be talked about?
[19:31]Can we, if not address, then at least
[19:35]how do you have that conversation in countries
[19:39]like in the US and in India.
[19:40]And we see them to be a mirror of each other in so many ways.
[19:43]Like we read stories that appeared in the about,
[19:46]it will say about India or about the US.
[19:48]And like we have yesterday in gender this week,
[19:51]how to write on gender on how to report and write on gender?
[19:55]And then ask them, they're writing,
[19:57]about, they're reading a story about rural Indian.
[20:00]And then I said, this girl wrote back in her assignment
[20:03]saying, I see very similar struggles in the US also,
[20:06]where women are struggling to work to balance families,
[20:10]to balance the expectations of their families.
[20:12]And yet, have a sense of self, have a sense of their own dreams
[20:16]and balance those with what their families constantly
[20:20]targeting at them for.
[20:21]And I said, that's exactly it.
[20:23]They're not so different, which is also
[20:25]what I hope with for Sala that in so many ways
[20:27]that she seems so different.
[20:28]And yet, she also is somebody in such a different physical
[20:32]surrounding and yet somebody who wants dreams,
[20:35]somebody who wants to be loved and to love.
[20:40]And so not so very different.
[20:43]Amazing.
[20:44]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[20:46]Too long to enjoy it.
[20:49]It's like, I think it's like a muscle.
[20:53]And so sometimes I think just every day
[20:55]sitting there at the computer and just typing away
[20:58]and not thinking, what have you written?
[21:00]When you write, when you read write and suddenly,
[21:02]it's like the stories.
[21:04]It's once when you see it in non-fiction, it's actually happening.
[21:08]But as you write and you read it, it comes a live on page.
[21:12]And so I love that space for the story just to come alive.
[21:15]Don't give up.
[21:16]Sometimes you look at it and you've, oh, this is
[21:18]no good, I don't write any more.
[21:20]But you sometimes have to allow it to come alive.
[21:23]You just write and you read it.
[21:24]And sometimes it's not good, but it's your mind clearing.
[21:27]And you as you keep writing suddenly,
[21:28]yeah, this is exactly how she looked at that moment.
[21:31]Oh, this is, maybe this is what she was trying to say.
[21:33]So I remember calling for that, and sometimes I'm saying,
[21:36]is that what you were trying to say at that point?
[21:38]And she would be like, yeah, I think so.
[21:42]Another thought process to come out on the computer.
[21:45]Sometimes it's almost unconscious as you're typing
[21:48]and you're thinking that thinking is happening as you write.
[21:51]So another space for rewriting, keep rewriting
[21:55]and something will emerge that I love that.
[21:58]That is, it's not polish that is beautiful in its own way.
[22:02]Oh, that's great.
[22:03]Thank you so much.
[22:05]Some of you, this has been so interesting.
[22:06]I never would have learned about the waste bares.
[22:10]Like this is just a class of people's,
[22:12]like not a collection of lives and essentially jobs
[22:15]that I never, ever would have come across or thought about.
[22:19]And now it's changed the way I think about use and trash
[22:24]and everything.
[22:24]So it's always just so neat to take away
[22:27]something from every book that changes the way I see the world
[22:30]and your book really did that.
[22:32]So thank you for introducing me and all the other readers
[22:35]to your characters and their lives and for Zana and everybody.
[22:40]So it's really awesome.
[22:42]Thank you so much for having me, Zibi.
[22:43]It was a pleasure and an honor being with you.
[22:45]Good.
[22:46]All right, we'll take care and thanks again.
[22:48]Thank you so much, Zibi.
[22:49]Okay, bye.
[22:52]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[22:54]to Read Books.
[22:55]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[22:58]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:00]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[23:03]and sign up for my virtual book club
[23:05]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[23:07]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[23:09]Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:11]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:13]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.