Mumbai Greying: Observations on old women in common spaces and streets.
I have shown it here before and I have probably written about it too: the sudden rise in the number of older women who live on the streets and public spaces like railway stations.You can notice that they wear relatively cleaner clothes of the newly homeless, of people who have just dropped out of regular life.
They carry bags that seem to be in order and with things neatly packed.
They haven't accumulated enough from their streets like long0time tramps.
(Further reading: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, who lives on the streets and analyses the tramp life in great detail. It holds good for India too)
They can be seen reading.
They try to look like they are on their way to someplace, always. Purposeful and hair is combed and cared for.
Haven't seen them using phones, even a dumb one.
They seem to be from urban or semi-urban backgrounds and from Maharashtra.
They do not look like people from the nomadic communities. Members of the nomadic/mendicant communities have or seem to have well-evolved socail networks (they are never single =, for example, or have some company)
Now that the lockdown is here and they are of the age at which they are extremely vulnerable to the current coronavirus strains, wonder how they are coping in the empty streets and urban common spaces.
