India Day 3: Dharavi (Slums)

Today was a bit alarming for most of us.  We started the morning with two lectures (we are here for class, after all).  We then had lunch, and boarded the bus for a 30 minute drive.  Thirty minutes turned into an hour (Mumbai traffic is 2 times worse than Atlanta!), and we arrived at Dharavi (“The Slums”) for a tour.  I, as many Americans would, expected dirty chaos in a residence called a slum:  Well, it was dirty.  In fact, I consider the living conditions atrocious and entirely appalling.  What we found, though, in addition to terribly unappealing conditions, were people who work very hard, who are unashamed of what they do and where they live, and who, according to our professors here, are entrepreneurs.  I guess by the definition of the word that it’s true.  There are businesses run and money made by way of recycling the abundant garbage and aluminum here, making leather, soap, clay pots, and numerous other jobs.  I wish I could have taken pictures as attempting to describe this place simply won’t give you a realistic impression.  I’ll try to describe it, though, as best I can:

We walked over the train tracks on a bridge, where we stopped and our guide asked us questions about our thoughts and impressions of the word “slum.”  We each gave our thoughts, typical responses were voiced:  Dirty, messy, disorganized…And then we walked down the stairs into another world.  There were flies in the air about halfway down the stairs.  Immediately we saw stray animals, mud, and garbage in a heap on the street, and people going about their business in dirty, dusty clothes.  There were many people and little sanitation.  At first it looked much like the streets we’d come off of.  Quickly though, we turned onto a side street, and saw what we were there to see.  Two story shacks with steep ladders from the first floor to the second, siding made of corrugated aluminum sheets:  The first floor was a work space.  They were little factories amongst a million people, and they were only as big as about a large room in one of our houses in The US.  Above the work spaces are what I can only assume to be living spaces.  We didn’t see inside, but the footprint is only as big as the shop below; and families with children living there in these cramped quarters.  There was garbage everywhere:  In piles and in pieces, around small dumpsters or trash cans, and in the middle of nowhere.  Children played in it or looked for items among the trash; for what I can’t imagine.

I was careful not to let my long, conservative skirt touch the ground most of the day as the ground was covered in dust, dirt, and liquids of unknown origin.  There were holes in walks, piles two stories high of items from plastic to trash.  People made their way through the already narrow sidewalks, made narrower still by the piles of debris.  Among all of this were goats, usually tied to something, which would be used for food.  I just wanted to pet them all and milk some which were badly in need.  It seems that while there is a verbal respect for life here, the animals we’ve seen are extremely ill-kept.

We eventually walked through the residential area of the slum.  A man sat outside his home on the dirty, broken sidewalk washing himself.  We turned a corner to a dark and dank narrow ally-like walk with low overhead and hanging wires.  Cracked paths led us by curtain doors, all closed, which led to tiny living spaces.  Above, by way of narrow ladders, were more living quarters.  Again, trash floated about, children played, and people went about their business.  Though, interestingly enough, the locals here love foreigners.  They are fascinated by us and often stop what they’re doing to watch us walk by.  This happened often in The Slum. 

We are told that the residents, who also work in Dharavi, are there of their own free will.  That they choose this work.  One reason is that many of them have families in the rural areas and the members in the slum make more money there than they can where they come from.  For this reason, they work here and send money home to their families.  Another reason is that they often don’t have the skills to work in some other areas of the city.  Some people would have us believe that despite these reasons, that it’s still a choice.  Apparently some of the people who live here are very wealthy, and it costs very much to stay in a space.  I believe it as I have no reason to doubt it, and the people giving us the information live here…what do I know?  However, as an American with so many people living in poor conditions, and knowing that there are so many social programs available to them (admittedly nearly all of them are sorely flawed—but they do exist), many of us had a very hard time understanding why anyone would choose to live in those conditions.  The response when any of us asked about this is that they are entrepreneurs, that this life is a choice, and that if you have no other options, it works just fine.  A bit ironic, I agree.  We were also told to look at the people and to see if we saw anyone unhappy.  While I didn’t see anyone particularly unhappy, I also didn’t see anyone who looked thrilled or excited about their situation either.  They work hard, long days, in extraordinarily horrid conditions, for little pay.

Despite all that we saw, I do have to say that not once, even for a second, did anyone ask for even one handout.  This is quite impressive as the begging in Mumbai has been absolutely overwhelming.  Never have most, if not any, of us seen anything quite like the beggars here.  There was a woman just tonight holding an infant who simply followed me around for 5+ minutes.  I couldn’t believe it.  She just assumed because I/we are foreigners we will give her handouts.

I concluded this overwhelming day with dinner at the hotel followed by a walk around the block with two group-mates (Ria and Zaheer).  We visited a dress shop around the block from our hotel.  Let me tell you, Indian wedding attire is BEAUTIFUL!!  It was so worth going.  Z is trying to surprise his sister with a gift for her wedding.  Ria modeled the styles he liked for him to see what the might look like.  Oh my goodness are they just exquisite!  

My feet are still very bad at the end of the day.  Elevation tends to help, though.  I just have to do the best I can.

‘Til tomorrow….