Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings
Saumya Roy
A city struggling with the cost of its appetites. A rubbish mountain eighteen stories high. And the people who call it home.
'Roy has a journalist's unflinching eye, a poet's talent for detail, and a radical sense of empathy ... a stunning achievement.'
- Kiran Desai, Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
'If you read one book about India, read this one.'
- Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure
All of Mumbai's memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things - medical waste, rotten food, old clothes, broken glass and twisted metal - a small, forgotten community lives and works.
Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside.
But now, as Deonar's toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever.
Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings
Saumya Roy
A city struggling with the cost of its appetites. A rubbish mountain eighteen stories high. And the people who call it home.
'If you read one book about India, read this one.' Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure
'Mountain Tales is a remarkable feat of immersive reporting and story-telling, a deeply-felt exploration of ideas, and a gripping chronicle of the fates of the garbage-pickers of Mumbai ... I loved this book.' Suzy Hansen, author of Notes on a Foreign Country
All of Mumbai's memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things - medical waste, rotten food, old clothes, broken glass and twisted metal - a small, forgotten community lives and works. Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside.
But now, as Deonar's toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever.
Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings
Saumya Roy
A city struggling with the cost of its appetites. A rubbish mountain eighteen stories high. And the people who call it home.
'If you read one book about India, read this one.' Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure
'Mountain Tales is a remarkable feat of immersive reporting and story-telling, a deeply-felt exploration of ideas, and a gripping chronicle of the fates of the garbage-pickers of Mumbai ... I loved this book.' Suzy Hansen, author of Notes on a Foreign Country
All of Mumbai's memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things - medical waste, rotten food, old clothes, broken glass and twisted metal - a small, forgotten community lives and works. Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside.
But now, as Deonar's toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever.
Manu Joseph, author of Serious Men
Kiran Desai, Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
Times of India
Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure
Suzy Hansen, author of Notes on a Foreign Country
Roy unravels the truth about overconsumption, pollution, climate change and how the most
vulnerable people bear the brunt of it all
'
Vogue India
A gut-wrenching story ... her lucid writing not only draws the reader but also helps to reflect
upon how one person's trash impacts another's life
'
Soma Basu The Hindu
Publishers Weekly
A story of selflessness and sacrifice, of acceptance and renewal. The goodness in people,
both in the streets where the Shaikh family lives and beyond comes to the fore ... A sense of mystery and wonderment gives Roy's tale a special edge
'
Mustansir Delvi Wire India
GQ
Telegraph India
Washington Independent Review of Books
Saumya Roy is a journalist and activist based in Mumbai. In 2010, she co-founded Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of Mumbai's poorest micro-entrepreneurs; through this she met the community who depend on Deonar. Her writing has appeared in Forbes India Magazine, wsj.com and Bloomberg News among others, and she has contributed a chapter to Dharavi: The Cities Within (HarperCollins, 2013), an anthology of essays on Asia's largest slum.