Contrary to Assumptions

Horizontal vs. Vertical slums. © Dante Montella

by Michael Montella

In Mumbai for ten days our best intentions were to blog and upload photos and video several times as the trip unfolded. We kept a non-stop schedule with little time for sleep. Getting around Mumbai is a task in itself, traveling two or three miles by car can easily take an hour. Horns honking, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles and scooters weaving in and out of traffic, human and vehicular. The traffic is staggering, yet the drivers are not aggressive, it all seems to flow-- an internal combustion powered river of machine and humans. A honk is intended to say “hey, I am here” and not “fuck you jack!” The trip is part of the journey and the destination just a stop along the way. As an American, I am so focused on the result-- “are we there yet?-- do the ends justify the means?”

The lesson I learned about Mumbai traffic seems to carry over to life in the slums. But I have to digress, as I experience the slums in Mumbai, I ask, “just what is a “slum?” I think of the shanty-towns in South Africa or Mexico City. The south Bronx of the 1970’s, inner-city Washington DC, Detroit, Newark. drugs, crime, violence, all conditioned by the media-- even the American slum is a more complex place than the widely accepted, middle-class narrative. Dharavi is few, if any of the above class-conditioned givens.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum
A slum, as defined by the United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security.
The characteristics associated with slums vary from place to place. Slums are usually characterized by urban decay, high rates of poverty, and unemployment. They are commonly seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, high rates of mental illness, and suicide. In many poor countries they exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care.

Dharavi has a good deal of substandard housing and infrastructure (whatever that really means) I experienced the “squalor” (again, what does that mean?) and there are issues of so-called tenure security (a fancy name for renters rights and land title). The aforementioned items are where the above definition ends in my experience of Dharavi.

The kindness, generosity and relaxed, peaceful nature of people living packed together-- Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Goan, Gujarat, Tamil-- people from all over India, distinct cultural and religious groups have no precedent in any of my other experiences.
Several doctors we interviewed confirmed that they see little serious illness and access to basic medical care is affordable and available. Medicines are a fraction of what they cost in the US. In contrast to the conditions on the street, the homes we were invited inside were neat and clean. The ‘squalor” outside can be attributed to an utter absence of municipal services, lack of responsibility by the government and the sheer numbers of people living in close proximity. The nagas of Dharavi thrive in spite of the government.

Contrary to assumptions and the picture painted by Slumdog Millionare, residents of Dharavi are mostly not poor and very few are destitute. Most work or have small businesses. We are told that if you have no food or place to sleep you are cared for by the community. No one goes hungry.

As Dante and I sat laughing and joking with some people on the sidewalk in the Muslim naga-- who offered us, guests in their neighboorhood, their chairs, I felt so at ease in the heat, humidity, sounds and life on the street.

The trip exceeded my wildest expectations, and while I feel the “story” we will tell has not formed we have amazing individual and collective stories. Where to start, nothing that I read or experienced prepared me for Dharavi, the most densely populated place on earth.