Nathan’s Blog

For our final morning in Mumbai we decided to go on a tour of Dharavi slum. We figured that in a city where 55% of the 20 million people live in a slum, you haven’t really experienced Mumbai unless you’ve experienced a slum.

We arranged the tour with excellent Reality Tours (www.realitytoursandtravel.com) – an NGO who provide education services inside Dharavi. There was only the 2 of us, our guide and driver, which made for a low-key and unobtrusive tour. Reality also have a no camera policy to ensure the privacy of Dharavi’s citizens is somewhat protected. I guess this also helps prevent the development of a toutism fuelled begging culture. We didn’t see any beggars in the slum and weren’t once asked for money. Quite the opposite; we were given pastries and had golden patterns imprinted on our tee-shirts.

Pics will be available, but these are from a stock Reality have and email out afterwards. I’ll upload them once I get them.

We set out from just behind The Gateway of India and took in a few sights on the way.

We drove through the Red Light district and saw some of the ladies of the night, even though it was early morning. We heard stories of a recent raid in which girls as young as seven were freed. Girls are harvested from all over India by agents who promise good jobs to impoverished local girls and thief families and then promply sell them to gangs and pimps.

Next up was the Thieves Market, where almost anything can be bought. It put the markets around Crawford that we visited the day before to shame in terms of bustle. So called becuase of a trip Queen Victoria was proported to have made to Bombay, during which her violin was stolen and subsequently recovered at the market.

Our first actual stop was at Dhobi Ghat, a huge open air laundry that services much of Mumbai. Here 2000 men receive, sort, wash and dry 300,000 items each and every day. A complicated system of marking ensures that hospitals, hotels and individuals alike get back their cleaned items the very next day. Along with the dhaba-wallas, this is another one of those countless logistical miricales that keeps this city running.

We peered down on the area from a road bridge that forms one of the boundries to see an all male outfit dunking and pummelling everything from underwear to hospital sheets. No woman work here as it is run by the North Indians who believe having a working wife is shameful, as it means they cannot provide for their familiy. Most work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week to make ends meet.

After Dhobi Ghat we headed to Dharavi for the main 3 hour walking tour. Dharavi is a slum recognised by the Government, which means that it is served with limited utilties and, more importantly, is subject to slum clearings. This wasn’t the case until the mid-nineties where upto 300,000 people could lose their homes in a matter of days.

The tour took in the industrial quarter first. During visits into individual workshops we saw:

- End-to-end plastic re-cylcing, including the manufacturing of the machines they use to re-cycle! These machines are also exported. Waste plastic is bought from collection agents around the city, but is also bought from overseas. After grading, cleaning, shredding and melting it is cooled into strings of plastic before being cut into pellets for sale.

- The refurbishing of vegetable oil and paint cans. Waste cans are cleaned (the paint is burned off in a small workshop where the air was literally toxic) and beaten back into shape before being sold, often back to the origional manufacturers.

- Fabric dying and patterning. We both had gold leaves stamped onto our tee-shirts. My French Connection tee-shirt now has a permanent insignia on it’s pocket!

- A puff pastry bakery where we both hesitatingly sampled the delicious pastries.

- The re-cycling of waste aluminium into bars. Like paint, aluminium is highly toxic, not that it concerned the bate-footed guy who was smelting.

- Pot making with guys stomping around in clay to mix it.

- Clothes making. The creation and packing of childrens outfits for sale in shops across the city.

As you can see, there is a lot of re-cycling done! This grit and tenacity is characteristic of the slum people as they are willing through neccessity to do things others are not to turn a profit. That profit is not inconsequential either; it’s estimated that the GDP of Dharavi is around $650 million.

At one point we went through a workshop and climbed a few flights of metal stairs onto the roof. The sight awaiting us was incredible. You could see the full extent of the slum, the tiny walkways and small roads all but concealed by the dense sea of rag-tag buildings.

I tried to get a cheeky GPS fix so we could Google Earth the roof later, but my phone was being all diva and refusing to get a signal.

As we walked through the slum people were friendly, especially the kids who would often run up to us and shake their mucky little hands with ours. We got stared at a fair amount, especially Lau. It wasn’t intimidating though (I remember Egypt being bad for that), it’s just the Indian way. Plus, if a pack of slum kids walked down Twickenham high street I’m sure I’d take a second glance.

Most of the paths were fairly clear of sewage, but as we made our way over to the residential quarter we stopped by one of the rubbish dumps (Lau bravely went to one of the 6 toilets that serve about 3000 people) and saw some of the darker aspects of slum life. The toilets are reserved for the women, while the men and children simply use the dump to well, err … dump! As we walked out a saw a naked kid trample his way barefoot to the top of the dump, squat and uncerimoniously curl an impressivley sized one out. Good work son!

The highlight of the tour was to come when we got to the residential quarter. Next to a school there were a bunch of slum kids playing cricket on a patchwork of concrete, weeds and slabs. In true jumpers-as-goal-posts stylee they had a wobbly pile of bricks as stumps.. The kids were only about 9 or so, but were playing full-on cricket using batters at both ends and a full field of fielders. As we walked past they all ran over laughing and smilling to say hello. We spoke to them briefly and they proudly told us which of India’s God-like players they were on that particular day. One of them was apparently naming his friend unfavourably judging by the reactions of the group!

Before I knew it I was being dragged up onto the elevated pitch from the road and had a bat in my hand! All the kids were scrambling around and vying for position to bowl at the gorra. On the second ball I was bowled out by a screaming fast ball to shouts of “Owsat!” and much pointing at the teatering wicket. After a few wides, I regained a modicum of national pride by running a 2 after a low drive. It was time to bow out on a high and as I did all the kids swarmed around me cheering, shouting and slapping me. Memories like these are absolutely priceless.