Da Ghetto

Untitled
Originally uploaded by Christiane B

It appears that my Bollywood career will be cut short. The good news is that it's not due to my stye problem which has resolved itself. I am suffering from "blue of the arm" brought on by excessive blue glittery bangles that don't seem pre-monsoon season safe (did I mention that I have lived at least a quarter of my life in sunny climates, but this is fucking hooootttttt?), but mainly we are unsure whether it's worth getting up at 6am to be bossed around by a Bollywood diva when we are not even important or anything. Then again, we'd make the equivalent of 5 bucks and generally it does sound awesome but so does taking a boat out to see some triple headed Shiva on ancient cave walls.

Today we went to the ghetto. I want to say it was impressive but in some weird way it was not, simply because it did not seem real. There are some million plus people living in what is the largest slum of Asia (Dharavi), crowding them in tight into 1.7 sq km. When I imagine a slum I imagine squalor and open sewers and kids running around naked and women squatting in dirt and mosquitoes and flies and mostly lots of shit. And that is about right. But that is not the whole story. Dharavi is also a huge business buzzing of entrepreneurship that would get you and I a scholarship to business school in two seconds flat. For one, all our wonderful recycling is done in Dharavi. Probably not all, but a good chunk. The people of Dharavi buy the shit and I am using the term loosely now when I was not before, i.e. plastic, cardboard, metal scraps from the US and Europe and without goggles and running around barefoot, they recycle those products to be exported again. I stood in front of the machine spinning around, chopping up metal strips covering me eyes - hello! safety! while everyone else seemed chill and somewhat in charge, meanwhile the flies buzzed and dudes next door pushed with bare hands nasty chunk of used plastic cups, plates and general garbage into a madly buzzing compactor that spit out see-through plastic pebbles that looked like marbles. So pretty.

I did almost fall into the sewage canal that is so clogged up that it looks like solid ground. The whole experience was like watching a documentary: it just did not seem real. I felt safer than I do walking around London at night and nobody asked us for money, nobody tried to take our stuff (never mind that the proceeds from the camera in my backpack which I was not allowed to use could have fed the entire compound for weeks) so it seems very incomprehensible that these people cannot just hop on the train with us but instead are stuck there for life and their children's lives are not likely much more promising. By the way a whole different amazing experience is this whole riding trains thing and yes, people really do overcrowd and overrun the trains and hang on by every nook they can and also make running starts and exits, which is a good exercise in acrobatics.

Back to the slums. When some disillusioned Brit (cash rich from an accounting career) came to Mumbai on a backpacking trip he figured that lets raise some awareness that these people are single handedly recycling all our western crap and in the worst conditions and no goggles and kids literally play in poop cause there is one loo for every 1500 people. So he met a guy from Mumbai and together they set up a business that takes tourists to the slums to raise awareness of what is going on there (the government is threatening to tear the whole things down) and the proceeds to go teaching the kids English and computer classes. Still sounds exploitative, does it not? I did have a hard time coming to grips with that but I met the guys, went on the tour and I feel reasonably good about it.

The afternoon was rounded off by a picture opp at the largest outdoor laundry facility which may I add is color coordinatd in it's drying locals thus presenting the viewer with an amazing range of pastels rolling down what looks a garbage mountain decorated with laundry lines. Following that some high noon beers were had with a gringo (Indian Californian = half gringo) and our poor tour guide who was overcome by his desire to nibble on beer and equally worried about how bad his family would think of him. I am hoping the theory that alcohol reduces the chance food poisoning will hold true. Thus theoretically it's medicine.