Her silent cause: Sumaira Abdulali's fight for a less noisy Mumbai

Sumaira Abdulali might be known for fighting what is on top of the list of Mumbai's problems

I get as many lower income households complaining about the noise during festivals and rallies as I do from wealthier ones,” Sumaira Abdulali tells me. “They say the wealthy have double-glazed windows to shut out the noise. What do the lower income households have?” 

Abdulali, a slim 50-something, whose calm exterior belies the resolve underneath, goes on to add that homes in slums and lower-income zip codes are packed so tight that complaining about a neighbour can mean bad blood which is unaffordable.

She might be known for fighting what is on top of the list of Mumbai’s problems — sound pollution — but it is actually her protests against illegal sand mining that got Abdulali on the road to becoming an activist. 

We have sat down for lunch on a warm afternoon at Vista, at the Taj Lands End in Bandra, and Abdulali is telling me that she just got back from the USA and is jet-lagged. The Awaaz Foundation, an NGO that she says is community-funded, started in 2006 and has had considerable impact over the years. Abdulali, who spent part of her childhood growing up in Kobe, Japan, is the daughter of Sadiq Futehally, who was a cotton trader. Futehally’s mother Rabia, was the great grand-daughter of Badruddin Tyabji, president of the Indian National Congress and first Indian judge at the Bombay High Court. 

On her return to Mumbai, Abdulali went through the rites of passage that included attending high school at Avabai Petit, before getting married at 24 and having children and settling down to what many would call privileged with the right address in Pali Hill, a country home in Alibaug and so on.

Our waiter arrives. We order a Cobb salad each and I order a masala dosa alongside to balance out the healthy fare. Thanks to Abdulali, the 10 pm deadline for loud noise was enforced in the city; then the 100 phone number, which was a police number for emergencies such as robbery, fire and violent crimes, was tweaked to incorporate complaints around sound pollution; and over the years as many as 2,000 areas were designated silent zones in Mumbai even though they were overturned as a result of certain notifications in 2017 just before the Ganpati festival started. So how did her journey start? And, more importantly, why? 

In what evokes flashbacks from the 1974 Jack Nicholson-starrer Chinatown, Abdulali’s narrative goes back to when she was around 35 years and was in Kihim Beach in Alibaug where she had a family home and noticed sand being illegally excavated. The removal of sand from the beaches and the shores was being done to support real estate construction, and while everyone knew who was doing it, no one did anything about it. She sent feelers to some locals who warned her not to interfere. She went down to the local government office where she complained to the collector but not before spending the entire day waiting outside his office. “I showed him craters in the beach and his response was we had to catch the miscreants red-handed — the holes could have been made by anybody, even animals.”

Earlier, Abdulali had blocked a truck or two from loading up sand outside her home but it hadn’t made a difference because the vandals killed the lights, muddied the licence plates and went into stealth mode, driving slowly and coming later, she says. On the evening of the May 28, 2004, she was woken up by an uncle who told her some trucks were gathering in the beach and that it was a good time to summon the collector. 

Abdulali went out and called for the collector who never came and instead she blocked the narrow road with her Fiat Padmini Premier. What happened next caught her off guard. The driver got off and asked her to move. When she didn’t, he struck her with his fists multiple times, paralysing her hand and smashing a tooth in the process. He then jumped back into his truck and sped away. When she recovered, the Alibaug police arrived and took her to the station, a local hospital and finally home. 

How did her husband react, I ask. “You can’t be a successful activist, if your family doesn’t support you,” she replies, going on to add that when she recovered she realised why most activists don’t pursue what they set out to do: There is no framework to protect them.

The reaction from society, of course, was overwhelming and consequently scores of people reached out to her. Abdulali learned that fighting issues in the courts could be daunting when you are up against a politician. “When it is you versus the politician, the entire system backs the politician. In court, the opposite party questioned my character for being up so late at night,” she says. 

Our salads, fresh and healthful, arrive and we start eating. A minute later my dosa also arrives and before I can even offer my guest a bite she says, “Not for me”.

Pali Hill, where she stays, is quiet. Why bother about a cause that doesn’t impact you at all, I ask. “Real estate ads now sell green space and silence as luxury commodities,” which is ridiculous, she says. “Peace and quiet is not a luxury, and it is not okay if there is deafening noise that disrupts your life and your home even for just a short while.” 

“It is not,” she adds for emphasis. High levels of noise impact mental health, vision, hearing, the nervous system, and blood pressure.

Blast a speaker on a table and watch what it does to a glass of water, she tells me. It is intense vibration at an abnormal pace. The World Health Organization did a study sometime back which reported that hearing loss among children in India is 10 times more than in the West.

“Politicians, of any hue, will sidestep the rules, allow for violence even if it impacts their own officials, and generally turn ignorant when it comes to bending the rules or to flout rules on sound pollution,” says Abdulali emphasising that  funding for loudspeakers at various mass events comes from the organised political parties themselves.

My dosa isn’t as crispy as I would have liked it to be, and so I push it aside. We proceed to order post-lunch coffees.

With wealthy, influential and well-connected films stars living — literally — to her left, right and on top of her in Pali Hill, I ask why she can’t leverage their support and make sound pollution a cause celebre. First, Abdulali tells me, she’s not very social. Second, she agrees that if neighbours joined hands the problem could be fixed, but it is something that they have to feel from within. 

Does that mean if a large multi-billion dollar corporation offered to support her causes with financial muscle and marketing bandwidth, she would refuse? “If I had to accept funds I would have done that earlier, not now. The thing with donations is you become obligated to a special interest and in any case such offers have never come,” she clarifies.

I’m surprised with all the talk about CSR, no large company has stepped forward. She shrugs. To her mind, the first sand-mining attack (there were two) was a milestone that became a test of wits and simply challenged her ability to fight for a cause. It must have been frightening to be at the receiving end of retribution from thugs? “When attacked, adrenalin kicks in and you keep moving. So no, you don’t feel fear till much later,” she explains, adding her biggest achievement would be for the fight to continue even when she is not there. 

This Ganpati, she says, the spirit of Mumbai did come to the fore and residents noticed that things were much more tolerable than before. 

However, the political mandals with the political leaders standing right there, were blaring loudspeakers, with everyone pleading ignorance. “Just look at the posters and hoardings with photographs of local leaders. That is who is doing it,” she says. They of course even agree that decibel levels are damaging but have no answer when asked why their photographs are up on the walls. 

“That’s when you truly get silence”.