NO, the smell of garbage will not assault you. The homes have roofs and children play happily outside the pakka structures that have TV, fridge and even air conditioner. Men – mostly migrants – are hard at work at the various small scale industries in India’s largest urban slum – Dharavi. They stare at us glassy eyed, as I and two South African nationals, Thirona and Thesigan Moodley, stopped to look at them, as a part of our slum tour. Their face bore no expressions, their spirits shattered by the exhausting, bone bending and soul sucking repetitive work they are subjected to, so that they can earn Rs 200 – Rs 250 every day, thus ensuring that their families back home in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar have food in their bellies.
A busy, busy hive
”The slum tour is meant to show the positive side of Dharavi. People work very hard here. There are recycling industries, leather industry, pottery and even food producing units. We want outsiders to see all this”, says 22-year-old Kamlesh Parmar, our tour guide. His tour group called Slum Gods that was started a year-and a half ago, caters to a few of the 500 foreigners who visit Dharavi every day. They organise a slum tour every day, even private ones at a premium, and tourists are warned against taking pictures as the locals might not like it.
Thirona and Thesigan, who are on a four-day-visit to India, say the slum tour was one of the things an online travel portal informed them would be an interesting experience to have. The tour began with a visit to the industrial section of Dharavi where ‘companies’ functioned out of godowns with tin roofs. Here plastic from the garbage dump yards of Mumbai was being sorted to be recycled. Workers were unloading plastic sheets of different colours and sizes from the trucks that barely fit into the narrow alleys, working without any safety gear or even gloves. We are told that the company owners offer them lodging and food and they work as daily wage labourers, returning to their homes for a month in a year – mostly during the monsoons.
We then move to the inner parts of the industrial area where aluminium products and glass containers are made. The temperatures rise, and the air is a toxic mixture of different gases, yet the workers continue with the repetitive work, barely even registering our intrusive presence. When they finally notice us, they give us a blank stare, their faces without any hope for a better future. Kamlesh tells us, “The company owners have provided them with safety gear but they don’t wear it as it gets too hot inside and they find it uncomfortable to wear.” Do they not know about the health effects of their work environment, I ask? “Of course they understand. But, they are not very educated and they cannot find work elsewhere”, is the reply I get. A question Kamesh later tells me he gets asked often but if they could get better jobs, why would they be working here? Tourists don’t understand how difficult it is for the uneducated to get jobs, he adds.
Moving on, we are taken to the residential area of Dharavi. Almost all the homes are pukka ones and they have basics like a fridge, TV and internet connection we are told. Some residents even own a Rolls Royce, says Kamlesh. What I see however, are homes so cloistered together that there is barely any space for fresh air to enter. Drain lines run right below, making it a nightmare when the area will flood during the monsoons. We pass by a group of women, each standing at their doors, chatting away happily. We stop at a khari manufacturing unit and Kamlesh tells the South African nationals that this is the puff pastry that makes its way to markets across Mumbai. “You mean they could be possibly ending up in restaurants as well!” exclaims Thirona and her horror struck, open mouthed expression only gets
magnified further when both I and Kamlesh reply with a resounding, Yes! Kamlesh then takes us to the leather manufacturing units and we are told fakes of international brands like Gucci too are made here and all the malls and big retailers do is change the tag. He leads us to one of the shops of the manufacturers and the three of us indulge in some retail therapy, taking the opportunity to buy cheap leather wallets and bags.
Why take the slum tour?
Thirona and The sigan Moodley from Durban, South Africa say they were curious to know how the locals lived and it was on a travel portal that they read about the slum tour and thought that it would be an interesting experience to have. “The tour has showed me the strength of the human spirit and how hard people work to make a living here”, said Thirona. The two said that while slums were present in their home country as well, they were not so formally
organised. Thesigan added, “I thought that most of the people who lived in the slums were unemployed. I did not know about the fact that it also had recycling units and industries of these kinds.”
Next on the tour is the pottery area and on our way there we pass by a busy market street and a bustling school. Education is taken seriously by residents here who want a better life for their children. While there are ample government schools here, parents still prefer to send their children to the private ones as the quality of education is perceived to be better there. Rows of pots are kept to dry in the narrow space of the alleys between the homes. Children too young to go to school, play barefoot. Their faces are dusty and voices loud and excited as they show each other some trick they just thought of. The pots made on wheels are baked in an open kiln that gives off toxic smoke for hours. The residents know the effect it will have on their health, but this is their daily bread and butter.
A slum with dignity
The founders of Slum Gods wanted to show the world that Dharavi is not just about poverty as portrayed in the Hollywood movie Slumdog Millionaire. There is much more to the slum apart from its dingy surroundings. The competition is tough as there are several tour organisations that have sprouted up suddenly. While we were on our tour, we saw another tour guide leading five foreigners along the same path that we had been a few minutes ago. The organisations are small ventures with one or two tour guides each, and almost all are locals. Slum Gods charges Rs 650 for this tour that takes around two hours. The three founders of the company pump much of the profits back to the local community, giving recreational hip-hop lessons to dozens of children in the community. Kamlesh who has a B.Com degree from Mumbai University, hopes to be an entrepreneur himself one day.
Taking foreigners to each and every nook and corner of Dharavi affects them too. As Kamlesh tells us towards the end of the tour, “I want to give back to the field of education. When I see the poor people on the roads, day after day, while I take people on a tour, I feel bad for them. I want to do something for them. When I branch out on my own, I will spend money to send the street children to school”.