‘Homes without Windows’: India’s caste history becomes a personal story in Chandu Maheria’s memoir

The reading of Chandu Maheria’s moving memoir, Homes Without Windows, translated into English by Hemang Ashwinkumar, must begin with the cover. It shows a photograph taken in a studio of two brothers, wearing uniforms but no shoes. The photographer had slipped ties around their necks, and Maheria, who still has the photo on his desk, marvels at their “dapper” selves. But the “unshod feet” tell the story of a life of extreme poverty, deprivation, disadvantage and exclusion that Maheria and his siblings struggled to leave behind.

It’s not an easy book to read, but Maheria fills it with wry humour that was perhaps, more than anything else, a coping mechanism. When friends asked why they hadn’t worn chappals, he quipped that the studio didn’t allow footwear. The irony is not lost on Maheria or his readers that he hails from the chamar community whose “hereditary occupation” is tanning and cobbling. There’s a poignant chapter, “Your Chappals, Our Skulls”, in which he recalls an incident when he was five or six years old, the year being 1964 or 1965. The occasion is his brother and sister’s wedding ceremonies (they were both children at the time) and he got new clothes and chappals. He strutted around...

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