The world’s a ren basera.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Ren implies night-time in Hindi, basera means shelter for transitory rest. Ren basera translates to shelter for the night. It is also a name for government-supported porta cabins and camps that come up across the city during winter months to protect the homeless citizens from extreme cold.

These roadside ren basera tents are usually identifiable by their conical tip. One such basera stands against the backdrop of a tower-in-progress. See right photo. Another basera stands a short walk away from its aforementioned counterpart, beside a pilkhan tree. (In summer months of May and June, the area’s homeless citizens often congregate under this same tree to shelter from the deadly heatwaves.) The assuring words printed on the side-panel of these cold weather tents promise toilet facilities and “ghar jaisa khana.” An accompanying photo shows a thali with yellow dal, sookhi sabzi, two rotis and a heap of chawal.

This mid-December night, all the dozen beds inside a city basera are claimed by citizens. Some men are asleep, some are awake. One man is scrolling on his mobile.

Nearby, a sprawling park harbours a relatively large shelter for homeless women. It now being four in the morning, the shelter is pin-drop silent. An attendant steps out to meet the visitor. She clarifies that the place is an ashrya grah, not a ren basera. An ashrya grah too is a shelter for the homeless, she says, but it serves throughout the year. Additionally, the citizen is permitted to stay on in the shelter during the daylight hours, a thing not encouraged in a ren basera. The attendant says that most women in this particular shelter work as street recyclers and beggars. Each of them is provided in the shelter with a bed, a mattress, a pillow, and a blanket. In a few hours, they will be woken up with a morning breakfast of chai and paape rusks.

Nearby, despite the vicinity having night shelters for both men and women, a fellow citizen is lying alone beside a deserted street, wrapped in a blanket, probably asleep—see right photo.

Some 70 years ago, writer Rajinder Krishan penned the following lyrics for a movie called Ilzaam:
Yeh jag ren basera, bande,
na tera na mera.
(This world is a ren basera, buddy,
neither yours, nor mine.)