TWILIGHT and the city’s lights come on. This is the hour he feels the pain the most. Meter down, he begins to drop people home. Sometimes they talk, among themselves or on cell phones, about dinner, the more tired office-goers about tucking into bed. In traffic, he understands only snatches of their conversation. But when they talk about home, he always knows.
That’s because for a little over four years now, home for taxidriver Moinuddin Sheikh and his son Nomaan has been their black-and-yellow cab. At 54, Sheikh has an idea of home. But, like millions of other Mumbaiites for whom even a tiny rented flat is an unattainable goal, his idea of home has stayed that—an idea.
“The only thing I want is a house on rent,” says Sheikh. Still, he doesn’t really consider himself a nomad—given the circumstances, the four-seater cab has been an unwavering friend, and a home.
Nomaan, 10, mostly does not like divulging details of his special lifestyle to strangers and keeps silent, watching everything with keen interest.
The dashboard resembles the mess of a lived-in home. It holds a pocket-sized Quran, a blue plastic bottle of hair oil, a pack of cigarettes, a plastic box of medicines, a twisted tube of ointment and a pack of incense sticks. At bedtime, Sheikh’s wallet and Nomaan’s skullcap also find space on the crowded dashboard. A small bundle is their bedding, also useful as a dining table for two.
This is the dining room, the living room and the bedroom. More important, it is also their only source of income.
Travelling through the city ferrying passengers, a shy and quiet Nomaan is normally at his Abba’s side. “Before agreeing to ferry any customer I make it clear that Nomaan goes with me. If the customer agrees, fine. Otherwise I’ll get other passengers,” says Sheikh bluntly.
This is the Mumbai life: No money for a roof over their heads, Sheikh’s job is his entire existence.
Reluctant initially to talk about his past, Moinuddin says he lived a fairly prosperous life in the late 1980s, employed as a driver in Saudi Arabia. “I earned well during my days in Saudi Arabia. I feel now that I lived like a king then,” he says. Today, he just about manages to earn Rs 250 to Rs 300 a day.
Born into a lower-middle class family, Sheikh is one of six siblings born to a post-Partition migrant from Karachi. Never one for academics, he finished his schooling in an Urdu-medium school near his home in Andheri’s Mahakali Caves locality in suburban Mumbai and he began driving the city’s iconic black-and-yellow in 1976. He didn’t ever imagine then that he would live in one for four years.
An “opportunity” came in 1982 and he flew to the Middle East. “Woh mera sabse haseen waqt tha (that was the best time of my life),” he recalls.
Fourteen years later, there was a lockout at the factory where he was employed and from then things went downhill. “I came to know that the company had shut down only after I returned after getting married,” he says. That was 1996. He rushed back to Mumbai and rented a taxi to drive, the only other job he had been comfortable with.

... contd.