Sylvia's Journal

Where to start, with my Mumbai impressions? After a magnificent breakfast I sorted out phone arrangements and organized a taxi to the meeting place, which the taxi driver found after a few phone calls with the tour operator. “Where you see a bunch of foreigners in front of the station, that’s us.” Indeed. I was early and had a coffee and pakora at the Café Coffee Day where, indeed, some foreigners were also waiting for the tour to start: a young Swiss couple, just out of high school, on their way home from a 3 months tour of Asia, a Chinese and Basque yoga trainee (“we have to sit cross legged all day and focus on our breathing, this is our first day free!”). I detected little enthusiasm for the course, which is still to continue for a bit.  A second group emerged from the train, a Dutch couple and a man from northern India. The tour operator split us in two groups, the young people went off with one guide and I was in the ‘more mature’ group, which was nice as it included the Dutch.

Our guide, Sabina, hailed from the slum herself. She had finished her ‘guide training’ just 3 months ago. She had lots of data about the slum at her fingertips (size, occupancy, surface as well as health, legal, political and economic data). We saw the places where more than a billion dollars yearly gets made from recycling plastic, textile scraps, and soaps (yes, from the hotels!) and where breads are baked, leather processed and clay is turned into stoneware in various sizes. All the work is done in tiny holes in the wall, on roofs and in between houses when there is any ‘in between’ to spare.

We walked through the narrow (2 feet wide) alleyways known from the movie ‘Slumdog millionaire’ through which the kids run as they outwit the police. Being taller than the kids and not as good on my feet, it was a challenge to duck the live electrical wires above us and the open sewers below us, not always well covered. We learned about the legality of homes built before 1995, and then again, before 2017. Whatever is being built now is illegal. We wondered where one could possibly build more houses? Dharavi is full I’d say: 869,565 people per square mile (compare to about 26,000 in New York City), crammed into a space about two-thirds that of New York City’s Central Park.

The government has built high rises to get people out of the slum but people prefer to stay where they are. One high rise on the edge of the slum was built only 15 years ago. I guessed it was multiple of that. Public housing has a bad name just about everywhere I have seen it. Cheap materials are used for the apartments that cannot be sold on the open market. It makes one a cynic. On Thursday I am a guest lecturer at the MIT Peace University in Pune, which trains future politicians – Maybe I’ll ask the cynical question there.