This is the story of an urban migrant’s struggle to survive at  the bottom of India’s mega city. 

Syeda X is  the pseudonym if a Muslim Woman who flees a deadly religious violence in the holy city of Banaras  in Varanasi for Delhi with her young family in the aftermath of riots triggered by the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992.  in Delhi, she settled into the life of a poor migrant, with the family pitching up  £ 30 (3000 Rupees), with nowhere to live, juggling multiple jobs a day – from trimming the loose threads of jeans to cooking namkeen, in squalid sweatshops removing the stems from resins, and from shelling almonds to making tea strainers. Syeda has done over fifty different types of work, earning paltry sums in the process, And if she ever took a day off, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant.

Some of the things the protagonist makes in the 50-odd jobs she does over three decades, Soft Toys Incense Stick, Wedding Card etc.

Neha Dixit also reveals some subtly dark dilemmas of the working poor children rescued by well-meaning activists from Sweatshops  – some with poor eyesight or crushed fingertips  from working  in dire conditions- play dumb about their identity so as to protect their parents and jobs. Syeda and other women keep silent about  sexually predatory bosses so as not to feed the popular narrative  that no female is safe outside the home.

Syeda’s husband Akmal turns to drink and struggles to find menaingful work. One of her son dies in a freak accident ( the collapse of the mosque’s dome), while second elopes with a Hindu women and severs communication with the family to avoid retaliation from Hindu Chauvinists who describe mixed-faith marriages as “Love Jihad”.

Researched for a decade in his book, we meet an unforgettable rickshaw driver in Chandni Chowk who ends up tragically dead in a terrorist blast, a doctor who gets arrested for pre-natal sex determination, a gau rakshak whose sister elopes with Syed’s son, and policemen who delight in beating young Muslim men.

Some of the events directly touch Syeda and her circle, like Modi’s 2016 “demonetisation” (withdrawal of large denomination banknotes, ostensibly designed to target political rivals and criminal fat cats, but which was ruinous for many of the unbanked poor.

Syeda joins a group of women sorting spices on a rooftop with a view of Delhi’s magnificent old city and flashes of dark humour as when her daughter Reshma gets a job cleaning the lavatories at a mall and observes in detail the food court and bathroom antics of the rich.

The Many Lives of Syeda X: Story of An Unknown Indian by Neha Dixit, Juggernaut Rs799 (£8.00), 320 Pages