Qasim Ali's nut-brown skin, stretched over his lean and sinewy body, was as smooth and taut as a boxer's glove. His thick, silver-grey hair was short, and he sported a goatee beard one shade lighter than his hair. He most often wore a cotton kurtah and plain, white, western-style trousers. Although they were simple, inexpensive clothes, they were always freshly washed and ironed, and he changed them twice every day. Another man, a less revered man with similar habits of dress, would've been considered something of a dandy. But Qasim Ali raised smiles of love and admiration wherever he went in the slum. His immaculately clean, white clothes seemed to all of us a symbol of his spirituality and moral integrity-qualities we depended on, in that little world of struggle and hope, no less urgently than we depended on the water from the communal well.
His fifty-five years sat lightly on his taller-than-average frame. More than once, I watched him and his young son run from the water tanks to their hut with heavy containers of water hoisted onto their shoulders, and they were neck-and-neck all the way. When he sat down on the reed mats, in the main room of his hut, he did so without touching his hands to the ground. He crossed his feet over and then lowered himself to a sitting position by bending his knees. He was a handsome man, and a great part of his beauty derived from the healthy vitality and natural grace that supported his inspirational and commanding wisdom.
With his short, silver-grey hair, lean figure, and deeply resonant voice, Qasim reminded me often of Khaderbhai. I learned, some time later, that the two powerful men knew each other well, and were in fact close friends. But there were considerable differences between them, and perhaps none more significant than the authority of their leadership, and how they'd come by it. Qasim was given his power by a people who loved him. Khaderbhai had seized his power, and held it by strength of will and force of arms. And in the contrast of powers, it was the mafia lord's that dominated. The people of the slum chose Qasim Ali as their leader and head man, but it was Khaderbhai who'd approved the choice, and who'd allowed it to happen.
Qasim was called upon to exercise his power frequently because his was the only real day-to-day authority in the slum. He resolved those disputes that had escalated into conflicts. He mediated claims and counterclaims concerning property and rights of access. And many people simply sought his advice about everything from employment to marriages.
Qasim had three wives. His first wife, Fatimah, was two years younger than he was. His second wife, Shaila, was younger by ten years. His third wife, Najimah, was only twenty-eight years old.
His first marriage had been for love. The two subsequent marriages were to poor widows who might not otherwise have found new husbands. The wives bore him ten children between them-four sons and six daughters-and there were five other children who'd come to him with the widowed wives. To give the women financial independence, he bought four foot-treadle sewing machines for them. His first wife, Fatimah, set the machines up under a canvas canopy, outside the hut, and hired one, two, three, and eventually four male tailors to work at making shirts and trousers.
The modest enterprise provided living wages for the tailors and their families, and a measure of profit, which was divided equally among the three wives. Qasim took no part in the running of the business, and he paid all the household expenses, so the money made by his wives was their own to spend or save as they wished. In time, the tailors bought slum huts around Qasim's own, and their wives and children lived side by side with Qasim's, making up a huge, extended family of thirty-four persons who looked upon the head man as father and friend. It was a relaxed and contented household. There was no bickering or bad temper.
The children played happily and did their chores willingly. And several times a week, he opened his large main room to the public as a majlis, or forum, where the slum-dwellers could air their grievances or make requests.
Not all the disputes or problems in the slum were brought to Qasim Ali's house for a timely resolution, of course, and sometimes Qasim was forced to take on the roles of policeman and magistrate in that unofficial and self-regulating system. I was drinking tea in the foreground of his house one morning, some weeks after Abdullah took me to the lepers, when Jeetendra rushed up to us with the news that a man was beating his wife, and it was feared that he might kill her. Qasim Ali, Jeetendra, Anand, Prabaker, and I walked quickly through the narrow lanes to a strip of huts that formed the perimeter of the slum at the line of mangrove swamp. A large crowd had gathered outside one of the huts and, as we neared it, we could hear a pitiable screaming and the smack of blows from within.
