Imagine one square mile of tiny dark cavities, tumbled on top of each other inside a giant crumbling termite mound of brick, concrete and construction scraps. Imagine the entire assembly covered by a sun-baked crust of rusted sheet metal, blue plastic tarps and a deep insulating coat of filth and trash. Imagine that a million people live in the dark spaces beneath this crust, crammed more tightly together than at any other place on Earth. Do the math: that’s 1,200 people per acre. My home in North Carolina is on one acre, where I live with my wife and dog and cat. I try to imagine 1,200 people in my house. My imaginations fails.
I am inside the vast honeycomb, following a guide through a warren of narrow semi-underground passages, dark tunnels and crumbling alleys. The maze is lined with mysterious openings through which I glimpse homes, tiny factories, schools, shops, mosques, temples, shrines, churches, and many other mysteries I do not recognize. The air is thick with the smells of frying papadam and chipati, urine, gear oil and sweat.
Underfoot is a constant oily sludge of muddy water and God knows what else. It is early morning, and the inhabitants of the Dharavi slum are bathing. A young man uses a plastic bucket to take water from a large barrel, several of which are placed strategically in niches along the alley. He squats in the narrow pathway in front of the entrance to his home, strips to a thin cloth around his groin, and bathes. He ignores me and I try not to stare. People are everywhere, hustling along the narrow ways, children running and playing, men carrying large bales of something that looks like shredded plastic water bottles. Women are scrubbing laundry on flat stones or cooking over small open fires. An old toothless grandmother (is she 30 or 80?) is weaving a basket from strips of cane. All this activity in a covered alleyway only four feet wide.
The slum is divided into neighborhoods, each decorated according to the culture of the inhabitants. There are Christians here with tiny wall-shrines to Mary and Jesus and five-pointed stars hanging above the entrances to their homes. The Hindu sections are brightened by colorful streamers stretched across the alleyways. The worst is the poor Muslim section I just traversed, marked by green crescent-and-star flags. These, the poorest of the poor, many who are refugees, live in the nether spaces created between the other structures. They slide through dark snake tunnels so narrow that you have to turn sideways to enter. There is almost no light. Water trickles from pipes and bare electrical wires are strung along the walls so a stumble could easily result in electrocution. Every so often there is a dark opening, like a tiny square cave-mouth, sometimes covered by a ragged curtain, but often open. I peek inside a few to see tiny caves of dirt and rough brick, packed with women and children and a few old men, often huddled around a small pit fire. There are no chimneys, and the walls are black. It is hot and humid.
I’m trying hard not to project my Western values on these people and their living conditions, but it is impossible not to be both appalled and fascinated. These are the poorest of the poor, discriminated against, forced to live in conditions that a rat would find disgusting. Yet the children laugh and play, like kids everywhere, and the adults watch over them, like adults everywhere.
My guide, an earnest and intelligent young man who still lives in Dharavi, is quick to point out the positive aspects of slum life. “Yes we still have problems with water and sanitation, but in most other ways Dharavi is like any other community. The mafia doesn’t rule here any more. We treat each other like family. We have productive jobs. There is much industry. We own our own homes.” He points out that with the rising prices of real-estate in the booming metropolis of Mumbai, even the smallest homeowner here in the slums is worth a considerable amount of rupees. “The young people are going to university. The old people have free health care. It can be a good life here.”
I try to see it from his eyes, a complete self-contained world apart from my reality. Children smiling and waving from doorways, women washing clothes, men cooking, smelting aluminum, sewing textiles, making leather from raw goat hide; recycling plastics, electronics, metals, wood; repairing electronics and a million other micro-industries. Maybe he’s right, but I can’t help but compare the living and working conditions of these people to those in America. I wonder: what’s the average lifespan here? How do they avoid infection spreading like wildfire? Where do they all go to the bathroom? How is it the children don’t get hurt by the exposed wiring, the sharp edges of exposed metal, the jutting raw spikes of iron rebar that is everywhere. These people are tough, I realize, but their lifestyle is changing fast. Everyone under thirty has a smartphone, and satellite dishes sprout like a mushroom garden from the tops of the building blocks.
I wonder how long the slums will last. “Why doesn’t the government help these people?” I ask. My guide explains that the Indian government has been trying to eliminate Dharavi and the other slums for years, offering to relocate the inhabitants to high-rise apartment buildings built specifically for them. “There’s a lot of resistance,” he says. “Here inside the slum there are thousands of small businesses, shops and factories. If the government dismantles the slum and moves everyone to apartment buildings, what will happen to the businesses? How will the people make money? Everyone will be forced to live off government handouts.”
I can’t even imagine the complexities of relocating, retraining, and reemploying a million people from hundreds of tribal cultures who speak dozens of different languages. Where would you even start? I ask my guide. He scoffs and gives me a wry grin. “Dharavi will always be here,” he says. “It is the heart of Mumbai.”
To see all the posts in this series (Seven Weeks in India), click here and scroll through the post listings.
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