Meet the men who hunt for gold in the drains of Mumbai

Every morning around 6 am 23yearold Akram Khan makes his way to Zaveri Bazaar Armed with a brush he starts sweeping the streets with all his might He enters drains and scoops out the black slimy sludge He scours for every speck of dust and mud he can find But Akram is not a municipal sweeper with an ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder OCD he is a ghamelawala People come from as far as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to buy bulk quantities of this dust and take it back home to extract gold Pics Saurabh Datar This unique tribe of men is named after the Hindi word for the pan in which they collect the dirt mdash ghamela ldquoThey come here every morning every day to collect the dust grime sewage water mdash whatever they can find from near our shops and factoriesrdquo explains Gulraj Pahuja a 60yearold veteran who owns a jewellery manufacturing business inu00a0Zaveri Bazaar The market has several workshops and mini factories where craftsmen cut and carve away at gold and silver pieces to make rings pendants chains and other ornaments Inadvertently some gold particles get stuck to their hands to the soles of their shoes or even in their hair When these workers walk out of the unit or wash their hands the stray gold particles make their way out of the protected walls of the workshop onto the streets The ghamelawalas lay claim to this hidden treasure At Indiarsquos largest bullion market therersquos gold everywhere Literally From garbage to gold Akram lets me in on his daily routine Every day he collects several kilos of mud and sludge from the drains and gutters outside workshops He knows where they are This takes him about two to three hours after which he heads over to his lsquoworkstationrsquo mdash a small platform on which rests a miniature furnace bhatti as he calls it and a small pool of water beside it to clean the collected sludge The sludge is washed and cleaned with water to remove mud and granules ldquoYou see what Irsquom doing Irsquove submerged the pan completely in water All the granules clay and dirt will float out But gold is heavy It will sink to the bottomrdquo he explains His friend Shahid who is also panning for gold nearby watches me with amusement Akram tilts the pan and the stones and dirt fall out of it as they are lightweight Gold is always last in the race to leave the pan Sifting his fingers through the mud Shahid has hit upon something He shows me a speck a dull yellow sunshine in the pitch dark night of the dirt He adds mercury to the mixture ldquoSona paare pe chipakta hai Bahut useful hai gold sticks to mercury it is very usefulrdquo He then runs a small magnet over the residue to filter out the ferrous particles and magnetic dust All that remains in the pan is goldladen mercury ldquoAb isko acid mein pakaayenge now we will cook it in acidrdquo smiles Shahid The acid reacts with mercury to form salts Gold which is extremely inert is left behind After lsquocookingrsquo the gold for about 10 minutes over the furnace white smoke billows from the vessel This means the job is done The liquid salts are poured out into another vessel A small blob left behind in the vessel is the gold After the metal cools down it is cleaned with soda to make it shine After adding mercury it is boiled in acid aqua regia or nitric acid ldquoBhai chamak nahi toh kuch nahi Yeh dekh sona Brother if it doesnrsquot shine then itrsquos not gold See this is true goldrdquo he holds out his palm to show me the dayrsquos discovery This would be about 300400 milligrams the average amount one finds every day After accumulating one to two grams over a couple of days the metal is sold off to smalltime goldsmiths On an average one sweeper can get up to two grams in a week The experts manage to find more There is an entire lane in Zaveri Bazaar replete with such goldsmiths who occupy a small counter just outside bigger shops both jewellery and otherwise Think of a paan shop outside a restaurant It is almost the same arrangement Sitting with his weighing machine at one such shop is 23yearold Prakash Patil He buys about eight grams of gold every day from ghamelawalas and sells it off to other jewellers ldquoThe rates vary depending on the purity of the gold It is obviously less than the market pricerdquo explains Patil who himself moved to the city from Kolhapur in search of a job But his uncle got him into this business instead Generations lured by the shine ldquoMy father used to do this I learnt it from him and now I am doing the same thingrdquo Shahid recalls While Shahid and Akram are from Mumbai there are some who moved to the city much later One such man is Deepak Singh who came to Mumbai when he was 15 ldquoGold has always fascinated me My mother never had gold jewellery We could never afford it Unki tadap dekh ke mujhe sone ka pagalpan chadh gaya Seeing their craving for gold I became crazy for the metal Today I deal in gold every day Mujhe achha lagta hai I feel goodrdquo he says The leftover particle is cooled in water and cleaned with soda An old lady in her early 50s joins the conversation Everyone calls her sethani because she owns the furnace and the chemicals ldquoThey pay me Rs 30 per day to use the equipment Mere ladke hain yeh these are my boysrdquo she refers to them affectionately ldquoIrsquove been doing this for over 40 years But nowadays it is getting tougher to find gold Sone ka bhaav itna zyaada hai ki kachre mein se bhi milna mushkil ho gaya hai gold rates are so high that it is difficult to find them in wasterdquo laments the woman who sleeps on a cot under the stars in the same lane Others nod along adding ldquoItrsquos a dirty job bhai Everyone looks down upon us We have to scrape the bottom of gutters and nullahs to find this goldrdquo But Akram dismisses him ldquoAisa nahi hai thatrsquos not the case I am my own master here I come and go as I please Koi boss woss ka jhamela nahi Irsquom not answerable to any tyrant bosses This is what I do I canrsquot think of doing anything else nowrdquo Surprisingly Akram has studied till Std VII but strayed away from academics due to lack of guidance But itrsquos okay he says He has made his peace with it Shahid too chimes in ldquoWe are bindaas cool We arenrsquot afraid of anyone Sab khule mein karte hain we do everything openlyrdquo There are thousands of such scavengers all over the market Everyone is bound together by a common cause mdash a daily gold rush The jewellers claim that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC sweepers only caress the ground with their brooms cleaning the streets superficially The ghamelawalas do the rest of the job They share a strange symbiotic relationship with the gold traders They keep the streets and drains clean in exchange for a few thousand rupees worth of gold which would have otherwise flown away into the Arabian Sea anyway Strangely there are no marked territories or areas Everyone is welcome or at least there have been no major disputes or fights There are no rules If you manage to find gold itrsquos yours Otherwise yoursquore stuck with a pan full of sludge ldquoItrsquos all a game of luck We take what God gives us Mila toh allah ki meherbaani warna allah ke bharose We leave everything upto the Almightyrdquo Shahid says The El Dorado moment Gold is segregated I ask them about the recent gold hunt in Unnao Most have heard of it and are curious whether the gold was found I tell them it wasnrsquot ldquoI had thought of going there but it was just a publicity stunt Mumbai sone ki nagri hai Mumbai is the city of gold Jab yehin par sona hai toh udhar tak kyun jana When there is gold here why go there But there is also gold near Indorerdquo declares Akram who claims to have found more gold than the lsquoseerrsquo who dreamt of the treasure under Unnao ever did in his life The dress and wash code With gold hovering around the R 30 K mark everyone holds on to as much of the metal as they can A jeweller says on condition of anonymity ldquoGold will always sell in this country We Indians love gold Jahaan sona hai wahaan paisa hai Where there is gold there is moneyrdquo Pahuja who himself has been in the gold business for 40 years enlightens me on how he manages to retain as much of the gold as possible with himself ldquoWe donrsquot let anyone sweep our corridors and stairs We clean it ourselves and store the dirtrdquo Pahuja tells me that people from as far as Uttar Pradesh Bihar and Gujarat come to buy this dirt in bulk ldquoThey are our regular buyers we accumulate large amounts and sell it to them by the kilordquo he elaborates The rates of the dust vary mdash the seller estimates the amount of gold a certain sample may contain and quotes a price Bargaining ensues as always and an informal deal is struck These wholesalers buy dirt bags worth thousands and lakhs of rupees and take it back to their native states where they extract gold from them In his own workshop Pahujarsquos workers are given separate uniforms They have to wear them on the premises and take it off when they leave for home No outsiders are allowed All precautions are taken to ensure the gold stays with the owners ldquoWhen employees wash their hands we collect the water through suction pumps and store it in tanks mdash therersquos gold in the water too After a bulk quantity of the water accumulates we extract gold from itrdquo says Pahuja whose designs make their way to the shelves of big jewellers such as Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri As I walk out of Pahujarsquos office I check the soles of my shoes Sadly I am not as lucky Maybe next time