Impressions of India. (or just Mumbai)

Imran, (left, with a friend, right) A seventeen-year old
Muslim man who guided us through Dharavi on
Tuesday, 23 June. Photo by Michael Montella

By Michael Montella

Sensory overload with the strongest being smell. Smells, unfamiliar smells, some good many bad. I notice the absence of manufactured fragrances that are ubiquitous back home. Americans are addicted to smells from a bottle or a can.
Arrived Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. One of the busiest in south Asia, Sunday around 10:45 PM. As we walked off the jet, the humidity became apparent and the air conditioning was provisional. The smell was musty and mildewy. I guess I expected an up-to-date, gleaming terminal. It appeared to be last renovated sometime in the 1970’s.
On the drive from the airport to the hotel it becomes clear that slums are widespread in this city that holds the second largest urban population and fourth largest urban agglomeration after Tokyo, New York and Mexico City. The generously donated hotel rooms are as fine as anywhere, but again my thoughts return to smell. In the case of the hotel, a neutrality of fragrance. I realize how accustomed I am to certain fragrances with my american cultural conditioning. The average, everyday Indians I have encountered are not big on prefabricated fragrance and when I do encounter it, as in the still under construction shopping mall we visit, it is unmistakably Indian, as in the ayurvedic soap our family occasionally uses in our bathroom.
Monday morning, Mumbai, (which many locals still call Bombay). Sunny and hot. No worse that south Florida in the summer-- I can take this, no problem. Dante and I meet Manisha and her son Arjun for breakfast and we decide our first day we will visit Dharavi unescorted. Our driver picks us up at the hotel and we head to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, with a population of between 600 thousand and 1 million packed in an area of 0.67 square miles.
As we enter along one of the border roads, all four of us, western, two caucasian and two Indian, stick out as if we have a follow-spot trained on us. Visual overload, horns honking constantly and the dominant sense for me is smell. This time, the smell of rotting garbage, urine, animals, perspiration, sewerage. The smell combined with the heat is oppressive. I think, I am not intimidated, I am a New Yorker, used to crowds of people, have been to “slums” before in New York.

We get caught in the flow of people in the narrow streets, school is just getting out and the children are all over us, “hi, hi” “slumdog” “hi” -- my concept of social space disintegrates. I think my pocket will be picked in a heartbeat. The adults just glare, “why are YOU here in our neighborhood, clearly you are not visiting a friend.” We persist and walk past a school, “The English School” and go in. Manisha, who speaks Hindi, asks if we can have a look. The headmistress invites us in and we are allowed to photograph and video the classes. The children are enthusiastic to learn and the teachers demand their student’s attention. We are invited back to interview some of the administrators and teachers on another day.
Again, oppressive heat and smell. We take a turn down a narrow alley. Now the smells are overwhelming, Rotting garbage, I begin to wretch, we are besieged with suspicious and uneasy glances. Doorways to cramped workspaces where hazardous work is taking place with no safety protection. I smell burning plastic, metal being shaved, oil, urine. I really feel out of my element-- all of us do. Dante is snapping pictures. The driver picks us up and we enter the flow of Mumbai traffic. It again becomes clear that slums and substandard housing are everywhere in this section of the city-- far from the gleaming downtown we will get to tour on Sunday.
Back at the hotel, I shower for a long time. My intellectual assumptions and attitudes are being challenged by my subliminal cultural conditioning.

Day Two.
We visit the Dharavi clinic of Dr. Ashok Kembhavi. Essentially an open-air stall on the street with a waiting area and behind a door, two exam tables in a space no more than 10x10. He lets us interview him and video him examining a women patient. The most striking thing he shares is that he sees almost no stress related conditions or conditions related to poor diet. Heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer.
We are given a guided tour of some neighborhoods or nagas by a seventeen year old man. This time my impressions are easy, our experience with residents is mediated by our escort. The smell is down because the monsoon rains have started. Most of the people seem happy and busy. Fruit-sellers, merchants, people everywhere. Dante has a good rapport with the camera and his subjects. People talk to us freely, the kids, mostly the boys are really curious and want to shake our hands and have their pictures taken.

The people of Dharavi seem very well adjusted to their lives, good and bad.