Slum Life

Dharavi should be fairly famous in the U.S. because it was in National Geographic in May. I was rather gripped by this article, but I figured I would be too scared to venture into there by myself. (Check out the Geographic photos too) Alvin found this tour group, Reality Tours, on the Internet that offered tours of Dharavi. He, I, Christine, and Jingyi went on the “Slum Tour” on Saturday. I told some lawyers at work I was planning to go, and they asked if I was crazy and said, “I hope you have life insurance.” Among their reasons for me to not go is that organized crime is based out of Dharavi. I think that organized crime is actually based all over the city (and in Dubai). At an Indian 25th wedding anniversary party last night, I told a group of Indian yuppies that I was going to Dharavi and jaws all around me dropped. One yuppie said, “Are you serious? It’s shit there, man.”

But I think this kind of purposeful avoidance is symptomatic of how one lives in India. The middle classes are middle class, and they don’t interact with the lower classes, even though you see them begging and living in the street. You just ignore them and go on with your life. Melissa, my CRY friend, told me that a problem CRY has is raising awareness among the Indian middle classes and getting them to show any compassion for the misery that is very visible in the streets of Mumbai.

My tour guide was named Davinder, but we called him Dave. He was born and raised in Dharavi. He was wearing a name-brand hat, corduroy pants and what looked to be designer-style sneakers. He had a backpack too. He was 20 and was a student at a university affiliated with the University of Mumbai. He was studying commerce and hoped to get an MBA one day (he said he probably can’t afford this and won’t get a loan because his address is Dharavi) and work at a company. Not bad for a kid from Asia’s largest slum (which it’s popularly known, although other Asian slums lay claim to the same title), but that’s the thing. Dharavi is such a well-established slum that it is surely one of Asia’s nicer slums. It is not 1 sq mi of human misery like naïve Westerners (myself included) might have thought it. And not a single person ever begged at me. (interesting: there are 1 million people packed into this sq mi)

Walking through at first, I was embarrassed because of course my skin makes me stand out, and every person who saw me stared. I also felt exploitative of the people, going on a tour to see their poverty. I’m always embarrassed to be on an organized tour no matter where in the world I am, but I did grow used to the stares. The color of my skin started to make me feel like a legend after awhile. People – mostly kids, but some adults too – would come up to me and shake my hand and ask me where I was from. At one point I had about 10 kids following me and laughing and joking and trying to talk to me. I was practically being worshipped. At the beginning of the tour I would ignore people trying to talk to me, but I have vowed to quit doing this. And by the end of the tour I was talking to almost everyone who talked to me. One boy asked if I had already had my lunch – a very typical Indian thing to do. Indians are always worried people are going hungry.

As I have repeated, Mumbai is on a narrow peninsula, and the oldest part is in the south. The suburbs sprawl north for tens and tens of miles. Dharavi is in the north of Mumbai proper, which puts it just south of Bandra. Dharavi is something like 130 years old. Originally there were leather tanneries here because this was an open area outside the city. Other gross industries set up here too, and the poor people who worked in these industries set their shacks up here. Tanning is a disgusting industry. It involves lots of chemicals and salts that are used to separate the flesh from the animal skin, and it requires open areas where these skins can dry in the sun.

Today Dharavi is filled with industry. There is a class of people who make clay pots. Davinder’s family are potters, and they own a pot store outside Dharavi (in a suburb I think he said). His grandparents came from Gujarat, and if you read the Geographic article, it talks about this potter class from Gujarat.

There is also plastic recycling. Mumbai is filled with people picking plastic from trashcans, from streets, and from rail tracks. This plastic is taken to Dharavi (or wherever else there is plastic recycling) where it’s crushed, cleaned, shredded, dried on rooftops, and then melted, dyed, pressed into thick strings of new plastic, cut into little pellets, and then sold as bulk plastic. I saw all the steps in the process and even went onto the roof of a three story building, where I could look out over all of the rooftops of Dharavi, and where I could see shredded plastic drying.

There is also metal drum and metal container refurbishing. This is where they take drums and containers, wash them, beat out the dents and fill the drums and containers with water at high-pressure to also push out the dents. Then these drums and containers are ready to be repainted and sold. I went inside two different drum and container recycling workshops.

I saw a bakery, baking rolls, putting these rolls into bags to be sold at stores. I saw women making flatbreads and drying them in the sun. These will also be bagged and sold at stores.

This all takes place in rooms down narrow, narrow alleys. The shops usually have stone floors laid. The lanes are usually muddy and made from caked dirt. Things probably get a lot messier once the rains start. There is also lots of trash piled on the sides of the street and large bags full of things like plastic refuse piled too. Kids are all running around barefoot no matter what the ground is like. (but kids being barefoot and trash in the street, this could describe anywhere in Mumbai) There weren’t many bad smells wafting around, but everything was dirty. Out on the main roads, cars driving through throw dirt into the air, and my shirt, pants, skin, and face got very dirty on my Dharavi adventure.

I went into the residential area where the “streets” are about 2.5 ft. wide. There was surprisingly good airflow through them, and they didn’t smell bad. These lanes were usually not open to the sky, as second stories had been built on the buildings and the overhangs capped the lanes. Dharavi residents (and industry) get 24 hours of electricity and 3 hours of water a day. I saw into someone’s house, and a boy was playing Playstation. We went into a general store selling name brand goods that looked, from the inside, like it could have been in Bandra. It was remarkably clean and shiny.

There were restaurants, jewelers (jewelry is very important to Indians), a brightly painted Hindu temple, a watch store, and lots and lots of machine shops and various other retail shops. These shops were on the main roads, not down back alleys, but even back alleys had small kiosks set up. (Hell, the slum next to my house is probably 60 people crammed into a floor area of less than my parents’ house, and there’s a kiosk there.) I also saw men welding together a plastic crushing machine that was to be exported.

We saw numerous English language schools, and we went into one class. I got up to teach a lesson, and I regret that I wasn’t a more captivating teacher. The children couldn’t understand my accent, but I did get one girl to recite a list of English verbs. At first I didn’t know what she was saying because I couldn’t understand her accent. I think I could have done better with these kids, but when I got up there and started teaching and I saw a room full of blank faces, I felt embarrassed and nervous. Their teacher came back and resumed their lesson, and these kids were completely engaged in their lesson and were learning with huge enthusiasm. Good English, after all, can be a down payment on a ticket to a better life – not that life in Dharavi is really that bad.

I wished I had asked those kids what they knew about the U.S. I have a feeling that they’ve all seen Americans on television. White people don’t go into Dharavi, and Dharavi residents don’t necessarily have much reason to go out of Dharavi. I imagine one reason why I was so famous is because I was like a television person. About my East Asia friends, when we’d walk down the street, people would call them Nepali. But back to me, one guy riding shotgun in a dump truck gave me a huge smile as he drove by. This is emblematic of the kind of reception I got in Dharavi. People were happy to see me. I was such a curiosity. But seriously, I loved being followed and worshipped by all those kids. I kind of want to move to Dharavi.

And nobody begged. Probably this is because people in Dharavi don’t tend to be desperate. Probably also you don’t beg in your own neighborhood because everyone else is in your same financial boat. You go and beg where there are rich people.

A note on age demographics in Dharavi

From what I saw Dharavi is just swimming with young people, especially children. Demographics in poorer populations tend to be heavily young. People die younger, and families have lots of children because more children mean more workers; not all children will survive; plus there’s no birth control. Along the same demographic theory, but for opposite reasons, rich populations have fewer children. Through lack of births, Germany is losing Germans, Italy Italians, and Japan Japanese.

I saw some kids playing cricket on a mound of tanning refuse – mainly shreds from hides. Growing up playing cricket in Dharavi as a kid seems to me like a classic formula for an Indian cricket star – like how playing basketball in the U.S. projects is a classic formula for N.B.A. stars. Indians obsess over cricket.

The Biggest News in Dharavi

…is that the government is going to tear down Dharavi. The National Geographic article is largely about this, and this will probably continue to be in the U.S. news because India news is hot news anymore. Dharavi is between Bandra and Mumbai proper. The real estate it sits on is astronomically valuable. The government wants to build apartment blocks and give the slum dwellers housing that is free except for the monthly building-maintenance fee. Most slum dwellers are protesting they will not be able to afford this maintaince fee. The government also promises to give retail space to those with shops set up from their homes and to give space for industry. The residents’ other complaint is that many of them will be downgrading in size of abode. The new apartments will be smaller than their current apartments.

Hardly anybody believes the ideals of this idealistic plan will work out so idyllic. Corruption and special interests will make sure of this. There have been stillborn plans to do the same to Dharavi before, and none of these plans were ever finished (but real estate has never been this expensive before). From the rooftop in Dharavi I did see some tall tower blocks from these stillborn renaissance plans. I asked Davinder if these were the most desirable addresses in Dharavi, and he said no. The most desirable address is one where you can set up a shop or factory from your home.

Eric Linge’s Slum Hierarchy

There has been much talk from learned media sources in the past year about the huge numbers of slum dwellers in the world. This year the number of urban dwellers finally grew to a number surpassing the number of rural dwellers. They say that the majority of these urban dwellers live in slums, or informal housing as it is also known.

In Mumbai the lowest level of slum dweller is the “pavement dwellers,” or what I call “sidewalk sleepers.” These are people just sleeping on the pavement with no blankets or pillows. (a blanket or pillow would of course put you up a notch on the hierarchy) Usually men are sleeping alone, and women usually are sitting around with children. I see women cooking dinner on sidewalks. I see them joking and laughing with each other. The kids are crawling around and are often missing articles of clothing. I also see these women and children begging at me. Women and children (and cripples) tend to be the only ones who beg in Mumbai. Often times I see under-10-year-old girls holding babies while begging. I guess babies elicit more sympathy. A few times I’ve given money to girls. Children are always barefoot, no matter what the ground surface is like. Indians prefer to be barefoot anyway.

A step up would be to put a tarp over your pavement abode. The next step after that would be to set up a frame and put tarps around this frame to make a house. This Muslim ghetto near my office has many shacks like this. Amand told me that he and Vicky live in plastic walled slum like this.

Next up on the hierarchy would be to put boards and corrugated sheet metal on the frame. Next after this would be bricks, and these shacks can get up to three stories. The buildings in Dharavi were uniformly brick and cement with corrugated metal roofs. This is the same rung on the hierarchy as the slum next to my apartment – where by the way no one has ever begged at me.

Established slums, like Dharavi, get recognized by the government, which means a political party gives them this official recognition and the trash collection, water, and electricity that goes along with it, in exchange for their votes. Having water and electricity is a huge step up on the slum hierarchy.

Many slums are built on the banks of rivers or ponds, which in Mumbai and other poor places means open sewers. The creek that separates Bandra from Mumbai has these slums built right on the stinking bank. Dharavi had an open sewer but it was channeled into a concrete canal. Living next to an open sewer always knocks you down on the slum hierarchy.

And then slum dwellers do make enough money and move into apartments, out of the slum. I read a story of this in Bombay: Maximum City, definitely an epoch defining book for current Mumbai. A boy in this upwardly mobile family had studied computers and was making money.