By Chuck Todaro
The Scavengers
�You come here everyday?� I asked her.
�Of course, or mor de foame� (die of hunger); it�s a common saying amongst the Gypsies, spoken at almost all levels of the Gypsy social structure. To many it�s just a colorful expression, not to be taken so literally, though here it�s real life.
While the sun beats wearily down overhead our feet sag into the layers of debris like the sands at the beach. The air is still. There is no movement - an unnatural silence - an ungodly emptiness surrounds us. These are the wastelands - no life grows here � no trees or brush � it is the netherworld of all things dead and rotting.
A quarter mile into our walk and we came upon the man-made dunes of trash. I followed my guides up the deeply notched path into the layers of plastics, paper and broken glass till the plateau where we were suddenly now looking down over the main dumping grounds and this lifeless setting that I had unwillingly getting accustomed to suddenly cast itself into a shocking battlefield of activity like Waterloo. There were trucks rolling in, kicking up clouds of dust, a thunderous dumping of their loads, rumbling bulldozers tearing up the debris, pushing back the mounds, followed by hordes of persistent Gypsies hustling along the sides of the metal monster, frantically digging through the upturned waste, bagging their finds, then quickly jumping clear of the crushing runners; one must stay constantly alert on the battlefield.
Maria drew me from my stupor with a sharp punch to the shoulder. �What do you think of our place?�
�Apocalypse,� came out quite automatically.
She laughed � started up another coughing fit. She trotted down the mound onto the working field.
The Gypsy scavenger sits at the very bottom of the hierarchal family tree of Gypsy groups. They are not a group in the conventional sense of having an understanding of their own origins, traditions, dialect, or unifying name by which to identify themselves. However, if we could dig way back to their origins we would most certainly find a link to the low-level Dalit class of the ancient Indian caste system. The Dalit, were a segregated people locked into their caste by a hereditary system that allowed no escape. They lived separate from the rest, kept at a distance like a mangy, flea-bitten dog, chased out of every courtyard it passed � and that no one dares touch fearing a contamination, thus forming the term Untouchables that they are more commonly known. Their position permitted them to hold only the most disgusting occupations such as sewage cleaners, waste collectors, rag pickers and deplorable rat catchers.
The Indian caste system, so firmly held in place through religious, social and economical channels, become such an indomitable part of Indian psyche that even after the Gypsies were to break away from many of the old religious and cultural traditions, they would retain this conception of divisions amongst them.