Delhiwale: Passing of a citizen
Shehzad mourns his wife Salma, the family breadwinner, who died on August 20. Despite hardships, he now sells digestives in Old Delhi, hoping to find a photo of her.
His wife of two decades died this week on August 20, and “I don’t have a single photo of Salma,” Shehzad says, three days after burying her in a graveyard in Madangir.
Shehzad sells chooran and similar digestives on a small trolley outside Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate gateway. His establishment is close to the area’s police post, beside a fruit seller’s stall. He has seven children but only Rukhsar and Aleem are with him this afternoon (see photo)—“others are with relatives.”
Salma was the family breadwinner, says Shehzad. The couple had arrived more than two decades ago from Agra. He started working as a labourer in the Walled City , and later as a rickshaw puller, but a persistent “kamar ka dard” worsened his back, he says, and soon a day arrived when he was no longer able to work.
Salma then took over the responsibilities, Shehzad recalls. “She told me to stay at home and rest, while she would earn by begging.”
The home was, and is, a footpath. The couple would have their meals in nearby eateries. Although in the later years, they acquired a stove to cook homemade meals whenever the opportunity permitted.
Years passed, the family expanded, and at some point, Shehzad says, Salma started to get—what appears from his description—epileptic fits. “10 months ago, she had a ‘daura’ while she was cooking… she fell on the stove,” says Shehzad. Salma’s face was badly burnt. Every evening, Shehzad would apply coconut oil on her cheeks and nose with “kabutar ka par (pigeon feather).”
Over the years, a diligent Salma would regularly save a part of her earnings, securing the cash in the hidden pouches of her clothes, Shehzad says. Five months ago, he says, she took him to the Cycle Market in Chandni Chowk and bought him a trolley and other hawking knickknacks from her lifetime’s savings, which amounted to ₹14,000. “She wanted to get me into a kind of work that I could do without much strain (on the back).”
Salma died following a severe “daura,” says Shehzad. Glancing at his two children standing by the cart, he says he never tried to get them into a “sarkari” school because “people there would ask for our photo IDs and we don’t have any.”
Shehzad hopes to again come across a street photographer who years ago had snapped a portrait of his wife with the children. “He might have at least one photo of Salma which I can keep as her nishani”.
Minutes later, his daughter Rukhsar is spotted expertly navigating the alley on a single roller skater that, Shehzad says, she had found lying on the street-side.