Slum Tour - Dec 19

We were planning on having another leisurely (ed note: really?) day walking around Mumbai, but when we were having our brunch in the morning, we met Angela Patel, one of the wedding guests from the groom's side, and she invited us to join her in the tour of the Mumbai slums. It was probably less about our charm and more that she did not want to be a tall blonde walking around the slums by herself; regardless we said yes. However, we should note that we were very apprehensive at first, as we weren't quite sure what we were going to see and how shocking it would be.

A driver and a guide picked us up from the Trident, and we headed out to Dharavi. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi), one of the largest slums in Mumbai.  It was about a 45 min car ride out there, in relatively heavy Mumbai early afternoon traffic. First rule: No pictures allowed. This will limit how much we can share visually of this trip, unfortunately, as we would like others' eyes to open as much as ours did.  Second rule: We would be touring specific areas of Dharavi that were deemed to be safe for tourists - the implication was that we should stay with the guide at all times.

Our first stop was a section of the slum that was devoted to pottery making where women and men work to make "arden" pots. During festivals, a single person can produce up to 200 clay pots a day; each of these pots is sold at ~20 rupees. This means the daily income for working all day to make 200 pots is $8 dollars! Their craft is amazing though.  Our guide brought us to the doorway of one of the men's shops - a small room where he sat on a low stool in front of a small spinning pottery wheel.  We were mesmerized by the way in which he shaped the clay jar with his hands, stamped it quickly, cut it off with a piece of string and set it beside him to dry. In this area of the slum it seemed that shops were on the first floor of the makeshift buildings pieced together with corrugated metal and the workers’ homes were on the second floor.  Behind the “buildings” the workers also have the ovens to bake the pots. These are large brick rectangles topped with piles of wood shavings.  Our guide explained that the ovens were used for baking pots day and night.  It was striking how these workers breathed the fumes from the ovens all day long.

Our second stop was to take a peek at one of the more social areas of Dharavi, where women where rolling dough to make papadum (the thin crispy Indian bread that is often served before meals). Our guide explained that a social service organization dropped off the papadum dough with women every morning.  These women rolled the dough into thin circles, which they then left out to dry in the sun laid out on wicker domes.  At the end of the day, the women pack the papadum into plastic bags, the social service organization picks up the bread to distribute throughout the city and pays the women for their work.  Although the people who live in Dharavi live in some of the worst conditions in the city, everyone has a job.

After watching the women roll papadum we walked through the narrow streets back to our car.  Along the way there were all kinds of storefront shops: candy, electronics, apothecary.  We saw kids playing an improvised game of cricket, and many smaller kids heading to school in little brown uniforms with bow ties! We shared some of the granola and nutrition bars we had brought from the US with the children.   They were shy to accept them at first but were encouraged to do so by their mothers who sat nearby.

The third stop on our tour was at the leather shops, unfortunately we were not allowed to go into the actual factories.  Leather is one of the main industries in Dharavi.  The factories take orders from throughout India and beyond.  Our guide told us that many international fashion companies get their leather goods from Dharavi – some are even stamped with the high end brands in the slums.  In the leather stores we saw all kinds of goods from wallets to jackets to shoes.  It’s amazing to think that the leather products which are so expensive in the US are made here.  We didn’t find out the daily wage for the people who worked in leather factories but it couldn’t have been much.

Our final stop was at the plastic recycling facilities, which was the most shocking part of the journey. Our guide explained that the people who lived in this part of the slum were “the poorest of the poor.”  Everything is recycled here: Old furniture parts are made into lacquered shrine boxes for homes, scrap metal is melted down and re-purposed into all kinds of good.  And then there’s the plastic recycling.  Recycled plastic is collected all over Mumbai and brought to Dharavi. Huge bags of plastic bottles lined the narrow alleys of this part of the slum.  We were lead into one plastic recycling shop.  Here the plastic is melted down, fed through a hopper into a very rudimentary extruder, cooled in cloudy water, and then cut into small pellets.  These pellets are then packed into bags and sold to manufacturers throughout Mumbai. 

The sanitary conditions in this part of Dharavi were appalling.  The “streets” were nothing more than packed mud, with puddles of filthy water everywhere. Fumes, heat and byproducts of the recycling process inundated the place. Seeing 2 and 3-year old toddlers walking barefoot around these conditions was very sad.  Felipe’s eyes started tearing up during the walk, which was the result of a combination of emotional and physical reaction. The smells were overwhelming and at times it was difficult not to gag.

Although striking, the visit overall was less shocking than expected. Yes, the sanitary conditions were horrendous, but almost everyone had a craft that allowed them an income opportunity. Most kids were at school (a stark contrast to places like Cambodia) and most everyone seemed to have access to some water (how clean?), sewage, and like everywhere in the world, TV.  As you drive past the slums in other parts of the city you can see that almost every roof has a small satellite dish attached.

On our way back to the hotel we were able to snap some pictures from the security of our car.

Satellite dishes

Example of one of the streets

After the emotionally draining journey, we headed back to the Trident, we were indulged our spoiled Western bodies with an afternoon of drinking at the bar. Our waiter, Collins, told us the story about his name - his family had converted to Christianity in hopes of obtaining British citizenship but were denied due to lack of proper paperwork.  Collins clearly begrudged still living in India – he was “stuck” – and shared his simplistic solution of implementing control similar to China's to get rid of the filth.

Collins, Angela and Ian

Overall, this was an emotionally draining but eye opening part of our trip.  It’s difficult to describe some of the conditions – there’s a mixture of not knowing what to think, judgment and guilt.  I guess that’s why we needed the gin and tonic and a nap afterward.