Why do Indians deliberately move to slums and how can you feel happy living in dirt and cramped conditions?
The very concept of “slum” did not originate in India, but in Europe and America. With the onset of industrial progress, villagers began to move to cities in order to find work and food. This desire for a better life led them to move from cozy village houses with tomatoes in the garden to the poorest urban areas inhabited by hard workers just like them. Today, slums range from North and South America to the Far East and Oceania. There are even entire countries, such as the Central African Republic, where almost the entire population lives in slums.
Slums in India
Like all Western inventions, slums in India have acquired their own character and flavor. They are found in almost every major city, from Delhi and Mumbai to little-known Jalandhar, with a population of 1.5 million people in northern India.
It is generally accepted that cities are usually much richer and more beautiful than villages, especially large cities. This stereotype may apply to Russia, but not to India. In this wonderland, everything is exactly the opposite. The cities, overcrowded and polluted, are a refuge for the poor from all surrounding areas. Therefore, tourists flying to Delhi often arrive on the main street where travelers stop, get out of the taxi, look around, get back into the taxi, go to the airport and quickly fly away to their homeland. Succumbing to the first impression, they involuntarily compare India with other countries and think: “If the capital is like this, then what will happen next?” - thereby depriving yourself of wonderful impressions from other places in India, much more pleasant and amazing.
Of all the poor areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore, the king of slums can be called Dharavi, the largest slum in India, which is located in Mumbai. About 1 million people live compactly on an area of 217 hectares, who wake up every day, have breakfast with their wives and children, and go to the city center to work.
History of Dharavi
In the 18th century, on the site of Dharavi there was an island inhabited by Koli fishermen who hunted in the surrounding mangrove swamps. The fishermen's village was called Kolivadas and existed until the moment when slums began to form in its place.
For 200 years, Mumbai was a major industrial center to which peasants flocked in hopes of finding work. Already in the middle of the 19th century, during the British rule, the population of Mumbai (then Bombay) was about half a million people, which was a colossal figure for those times. And the population density of the city was ten times higher than the population density of London.
During this period, the city was divided into areas in which the local population and the British lived. The areas allocated for Indians to live in were built not like “European” ones - according to the plan, but without any planning or compliance with sanitary standards at all. In dirty neighborhoods, where there were often problems with water supply and sewerage, slums initially began to be located. When an epidemic of bubonic plague swept across India in the second half of the 19th century, it claimed the lives of almost half of the city's inhabitants, and the slums became real breeding grounds for the epidemic. It was then that, in order to combat the plague, the British began to move Indian quarters outside the city. This is how the Dharavi slum was formed.
Who lives in the slums
The composition of the residents is diverse. There are also young guys who came from villages to earn money, who exchanged the comfort of home, green rice fields and banana plantations for a small room for $3 a month and the opportunity to earn money. There are real large families in which grandparents, parents, sons with wives and children live under one roof - and sometimes they all huddle in one room. There is a red light district, where, again, for $2 you can spend time with either a girl or a guy, or with a hijra - a representative of the transvestite caste. What’s surprising is that, in our opinion, terrible living conditions do not make people unhappy. Children also run and play in the courtyards, women sit on porches and discuss their household chores, men drink masala tea and play chess.
What do slum dwellers do?
Like other areas of Indian cities, slums are divided into settlements. Here are tanners' workshops, here are waste sorters, and on this street are shops. Hindus and Muslims also traditionally live in different areas.
Slum dwellers can do whatever they want - beg and collect garbage, or even have their own small business. Indians are indeed extremely unpretentious in everyday life, and often even shop owners who work away from home do not bother renting or purchasing housing, but sleep right in the shop.
Slums are not exactly a place where absolute poverty lives. The average monthly income of local residents is $500. Although, salaries, of course, are very different. Servants, for example, earn about $50 a month (approximately 3,000 rupees).
Slum problems
Unsanitary conditions, poverty, lack of drinking water, one toilet per thousand families - such living conditions can hardly be called pleasant. The government is trying to solve the slum problem as best it can. For example, the famous slums near the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi, where about 1 million people lived, were almost demolished. Only the government never built new housing, and the fate of a million people slipped through the fingers of officials like sand. Many returned to their villages, many remained to live on the streets.
Pros of slums
While depicting the various problems and horrors of the slums, it is sometimes so nice to immerse yourself in the exposure of this way of life and feel how lucky you are to live in a tenth floor apartment. However, India, and especially its slums, teach us, representatives of Western civilization, another lesson. For example, even in overcrowded slums, residents smile at each other when they meet, and treat each other politely and carefully. Living conditions fade into the background, and human relationships come to the fore.
On the other hand, it is so strange and incomprehensible why living in a city, where the air is saturated with toxic fumes and there is so little space that you have to share a room with strangers, is preferable for people than on the ocean shore, surrounded by palm trees and a snow-white beach? We will probably never understand this.
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Hello! I am Gleb Kuznetsov, I am 26 years old, today I want to talk about one of my days spent in the Indian city of Mumbai, which is however known throughout the world under its former name Bombay, thanks to the wonderful book “Shantaram”. We visited the very Bombay slums where Shantaram takes place and around. Just this evening I arrived by train from the mountain resort of Pune, famous for the Osho Ashram, and did not have time to comprehend this phenomenon - Bombay. Therefore, the first look out the window upon waking up, and a shiver runs down your spine. Having seen this, a person cannot remain indifferent, and a photographer cannot sit idly by. It’s half past six, it’s quickly getting light, but I do the prescribed exercise, take a photo for memory and run into the city. 
People sleep everywhere, they sleep in families, side by side, in deep sleep, women, children, old people. It is obvious that they are not tramps or beggars, since there are bags with spare clothes and some belongings nearby. I understand that I am walking among those whom I read about in children’s books about India, among the untouchables, engaged in the dirtiest and lowest paid work and who have never had housing. I take hundreds of photographs, but photographing people sleeping on the streets of Bombay is like photographing clerks running through the streets of New York - there are countless of them. 
The night is very warm and people don’t even need blankets, and cardboard is enough for bedding. But I notice that among the homeless men sleep alone, usually near the doors of the shops. Later, my guesses would be confirmed - these were their employees or even owners who chose to spend the night at their workplace on the way home to the suburbs. But the room is stuffy - and the street is like a shared bedroom. 
By half past six the city wakes up. Servants and taxi drivers appear on the streets, and those sleeping on the sidewalks begin their morning toilet. I see that they are not tramps at all in our understanding, and after half an hour I would not distinguish them from most Indians. People from the sidewalks comb their hair and wash themselves and brush their teeth, drawing water from special barrels, and cook breakfast here over the fires. 
All of them have developed unquestioning obedience - they allow themselves to be photographed in this unsightly form, and do not interfere with the filming of sleeping members of their families. They just smile timidly and often thank you for the shot, but don’t even ask to see it. 
Meanwhile, the morning is in full swing, but I went too far towards the “Central Railway Terminal”, running from one group of sleeping people to another, like Mashenka ran from mushroom to mushroom until she ended up in a den. Thus, the idea of having breakfast at the table with a fork in hand fails, since there is not a single safe establishment in this area. But there is an opportunity to try street cuisine. Unlike most taverns for locals, street food in India is both tasty and safe (at least I, having traveled this country from Trivandrum in the south to Varanasi in the north and tried all the local pies and gingerbreads, have never had any problems). Well, a few red pepper puff pastry potato pies and a glass of sweet milk tea for $2 and I'm ready to hit the road. Oh, I completely forgot to tell you that any minute now a night bus from Goa is due to arrive in the Borivali area and on it are my friends - the Chistozvonov couple. Sasha and Ira were spending their vacation on the beach and, for the sake of the thrill, decided to sacrifice two nights on the bus, but wander with me through the Bombay slums. This is our mission for today, and to facilitate it, I agreed in the evening with the taxi driver Fazil on a tour of the slums and brothels and communities of transvestite hijdras. 
I get to Borivali by local train faster than expected, and while my friends are still approaching the city, I go into the entrance of a concrete high-rise building near the station that I like. The wealthy middle class lives in such houses in Bombay, and, as far as I could see, all the suburbs are built up with them, while the city center is occupied by slums and a patch of the World Trade Center with the local Latin Quarter. 
The entrance to the entrance is blocked by a crazy man, Faisal. He forbids taking photographs of himself because he is afraid of death from the camera. But Faisal is not a coward - he protects his home from evil. He has an amulet on his bare chest, and the ghost will not be able to pass by him. I still made my way in and, not wanting to frighten or offend the crazy person, I focused on photographs of the situation in the entrance. 
But here comes San Sanych! And without delay I plunge him and Ira into the world of real Bombay! 
Guide Fazil meets us in Borivali. However, he is afraid of getting on the front pages of world publications as a person involved in exposing the Bombay “dark kingdom”, so he avoids a group photo. We manage to persuade him to capture it on film much later, when all the tests are already behind us. In the meantime, he takes us to the slum area in his forty-year-old Fiat, which is parked on the sidewalk in the photo below. 
The city center, called the World Trade Center, is virtually indistinguishable from the slums. There is neither a stone wall nor a wall of machine gunners - these two completely different worlds exist side by side and, unlike the large cities of Latin America, do not show hostility in any way. 
Bombay slums are closed areas surrounded by wide streets. Inside there is an unimaginable tangle of narrow alleys. Basically, slums are divided into Hindu and Muslim, and also into slums where there are houses, albeit made of sheet iron, and those with only plastic sheds. Fazil is a Muslim and a member of the middle class, so he takes us to those slums that are close to his spirit. We don’t mind at all, since the Muslim slums where the Bombay middle class lives are, as they say, classics of the genre. 
The outer perimeter of the slums is occupied by shops and workshops, in the barracks closest to them there are always warehouses, and further inland there are residential “neighbourhoods”. 
After walking around the outer perimeter, Fazil asks us: “Maybe to the India Gate?” But we stubbornly demand to the very depths, and with fear for my camera and our mental health, he leads us into the slums. 
By the way, the Bombay slums are universally recognized as the safest place in India. They are completely under the control of local communities; no outsider will penetrate here, and if they do, they will not leave if local laws are violated. For tourists, access to the slums is completely free, but... one of the basic rules in the slums: “Do not take photographs!” Muslims are categorically against cameras. However, how would I tell this story? All along the way, you first have to bow to the models, politely ask how they are, and then timidly ask if they can take one picture. Men and children are always happy about this, completely dispelling established ideas. Women, especially old ones, on the contrary, react incontinently: often not understanding that I am only asking permission, they begin to call their husbands - they run out angry and it takes a lot of time to explain. In short, step by step deeper into the slums. 
After a tangle of back streets with sewage flowing and rats and children running interspersed, we reach the heart of this part of Bombay - the courtyards. They are relatively clean and spacious and in spirit resemble a kitchen in a communal apartment. Here they wash and dry clothes, play, tinker with motorcycles, in a word, people’s entire lives are focused on these pieces of “land” in the middle of an ocean of nightmare. Here the air is like air! 
Fazil tells us that in Bombay they are outraged by the myth that poor people live in slums. According to the guide, men earn up to $500 a month here, and the housing itself in the slum can cost several tens of thousands of dollars, since it is close to the center and, so to speak, is located in a comfortable and safe area. As for general poverty, its main reason is the large number of children in families and unemployed women. And even if our Fazil doubled the earnings of the Bombay slum people, Sasha, Ira and I simultaneously came to the conclusion that these people were not so much hopelessly poor as they had become irrevocably accustomed to the surrounding nightmare situation and were unable to adequately assess it. 
But okay, the photo is a souvenir, and we gradually leave the slums, because after several hours of wandering here, the stench makes your throat feel nauseous and you want only one thing: to take a full lungful of air without fear! 
Here is the main sports arena of the Bombay slums! No comments are needed - we are skipping towards Fazil’s minibus! 
And we ask for fresh air. The slums united us! 
But the beach is also not exactly a beach, but a combination of a fishing dump and massive deposits of Indians. Sasha and Ira desperately ask Fazil to take them at least for half an hour “to a quiet place,” but he just laughs: “Where can I find a free place in Bombay?” 
But we walk through the city center and find it quite civilized and nice: the university and administrative buildings of English construction, wide streets, wonderful old Fiats... 
But after catching our breath, it would be nice to have lunch. We go to a vegetarian restaurant. For four dollars we order a classic dish of rice and vegetables, and we get a palm leaf like this, with a mountain of delicious food. One question: “How is it?” 
Like this! 
I don’t dare show you what we did with this food with our stubby fingers. And there is no time, since Fazil is already driving us to the Congress Hall area - Bombay's red light district. So the first charming lady shyly attracts visitors to her porch. 
Prostitutes in shabby outfits mill about along the street, but at the sight of a camera they scatter to the corners - they are afraid of fame. Fazil says that young ladies come to work from Nepal and Bangladesh, and for half an hour of work they ask for $3. 
But be careful! India is famous for its LGBT community called Hijdras. The danger is not so much in confusing such a representative of the sexual minority with a natural lady, but in not pleasing her! Hijdras are the oldest and most authoritative caste of Indian society. They have the privilege of cursing people, and paying off such a curse will cost a lot! My dear Sasha was seriously afraid of the hijdras and hid in the car, leaving me alone with them, but I, having talked enough, came to an opinion about them as sweet creatures (don’t get me wrong). 
The price for half an hour with a hijdra is the same as with a prostitute, and the money will go into the same pocket. At the back entrances to cheap brothels sit “cats” - local pimps. In addition to their strict protective function, they also supervise children while mothers are busy serving clients. 
Brothels merge with slums, and, in the end, you can never distinguish a respectable Muslim from a Bombay tycoon. 
But is it enough for one day? Unnoticed, 6 o’clock in the evening came, and it was time for Sasha and Ira to go to the bus station and back to a cozy hotel in Goa. They categorically reject all my offers to stay for a day and only ask to accompany them to the bus. We pay Fazil - a six-hour all-inclusive excursion cost us 30 US dollars. But in Bombay there is no need to look for miracles - at the station of the ultra-modern city train we find ourselves in the epicenter of a gypsy camp. Under no circumstances should you give money, because at the sight of banknotes these gypsies go berserk and start tearing you apart (I had this experience in the south of India, in Madurai). 
By the way, there are traces of Bollywood influence here. The whole city is plastered with such posters, and any European who wants can act as an extra and will receive 10 dollars for it. But Sasha and Ira don’t want to act as extras, they want to go to a hotel! 
First class on the train is cozy and cool. We have been driving for about 40 minutes, and Sasha and I are cheerfully drinking a bottle of Indian rum, so to speak, for disinfection. 
The usual welcoming crowd at the bus station! 
Wonderful gypsies sit by the bus, but all this, although it looks scary from the outside, does not carry any aggression - so you walk in the middle of such bedlam and, of course, you don’t feel comfortable, but it doesn’t cause much tension either. 
But the sleeping places in Indian buses are still not for Russian people. But okay, I escorted Ira and Sasha back to Bombay the same way. 
It’s sunset on the beach and crowds of Indians eat and drink after work, but they’re afraid to swim because they don’t know how to swim and they believe that an evil miracle Yudo lives in the ocean. I didn’t go swimming, because I didn’t want to return to the hotel naked later. 
Well, the end of this extraordinary day at the computer. Photos must be selected as soon as possible, because new ones will be added tomorrow. While doing this I fall asleep without even noticing it. 
Anna Parvati, at the invitation of the locals, spent a week in the largest slums in Asia, side by side with untouchables and other people from discriminated social and professional classes. Anna told 34travel about life in the slums, and whether everything is so bad for the most discriminated residents of India.
I like to explore places that have negative preconceptions about them. Even at the first approach, they turn out to be not what they seemed. So, in India, three cities are considered the most frightening: Delhi (the whole flavor of the country immediately falls on the poor head of an inexperienced traveler, and can even hit the wallet), Varanasi (where “corpses are burned in the streets,” well, you’ve probably heard) and Mumbai ( This is where the largest slums in Asia are located. After I had been to Delhi three times and lived in Varanasi for a month, my turn came to Bombay. There I went on a slum tour and was so impressed that I even came back.
The largest slums in Asia
Dharavi is the name of a slum area in Mumbai. About a million Indians, many of them Dalits, live in an area of two square kilometers. In recent decades, this word has been used to describe untouchables in India. In accordance with caste distribution, untouchables defile other people with their presence, therefore they are generally “thrown out” beyond the four castes. Today, the practice of untouchability is constitutionally prohibited, but in many parts of India, due to inert thinking, discrimination continues to exist.
“Many Dharavi residents do not leave the slum for weeks and months because there is simply no need to do so.”
When we Westerners hear about slums, we think: ugh, dirt, poverty, squalor! But Dharavi exists for several reasons. Firstly, the caste tradition, which has no legal force, but has grown into the consciousness of people over the centuries. Secondly, economic. There are tens of thousands of small industries operating here: pottery, bakeries, leather and sewing workshops, workshops for processing various waste, metals, plastics... Most people are employed informally, the working conditions are frankly harsh, dangerous to life and health. This allows Dharavi to have some of the lowest production prices in the world (many Asian companies are happy to place their orders here), and also explains why there are practically no men over 60-65 years old in the area.
Dalits
In Dharavi, people recycling waste manually is cheaper than machines. And those machines that the state provides seem to be the same age as India’s independence. Here families remain living in dark slum housing, but buy a nice car or simply save money in an account.
In this “city within a city”, thin hard workers melt lead in a cauldron, standing in front of it in thin trousers, a T-shirt and flip-flops. From workwear - old mittens up to the middle of the forearm.
Children here attend overcrowded public school classrooms, and teachers may or may not show up for work. In Dharavi, people bear such a burden of manual labor, family responsibilities and household chores that they look elderly even at 45-50 years old, while still not having time to lose their childish naivety and kindness.
Despite all this, much can be found here: hope, inner strength, wisdom.
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Scary?
I lived with a local family (although I spent the night in a separate room in another house), walked around the slums most often in the company of one of the locals (to be honest, there’s nowhere to go for a walk, I mostly have to watch my step), dressed very simply and carried valuable things with her. In general, I followed the safety rules that I formulated for myself during previous trips to India.
Police statistics for slums are much lower than the rest of Mumbai and the Indian average. This is very similar to the truth, because everyone around us is relatives, childhood friends, or have lived in the neighborhood for so many years that they are already indistinguishable from the first two categories. Everyone looks out for each other. You get the feeling that you are living in a giant communal apartment, only here there are small production facilities, workshops, and sales points. Everything is collected in one place, including temples, mosques, temples. Many Dharavi residents do not leave the slum for weeks and months because there is simply no need to do so.
How everything works
Renting a living space of 12-15 square meters costs $100-150 per month - depending on the location and condition of the housing. This space can accommodate up to eight people. For example, I lived in a family with luxurious living conditions: only 5 people per 30 meters. On the first floor there is an entrance hall and a shower room, on the second there is a kitchen, which is also a living room and a bedroom for men, on the third there is a washroom, a women’s bedroom and at the same time a “home cinema”. There are no Indian families without televisions.
I ate with the whole family, consisting of parents, two sons, a daughter, and often one of the closest relatives or neighbors would come to the light. Very simple Indian food: boiled rice, fried rice, several types of spicy gravy with vegetables, flatbreads with butter. Almost always there were local “delicacies” on the table - chips and other crispy Asian snacks. Despite the unhealthy fats and abundance of salt, Asians love food from bags.
Water is provided here for two to three hours a day. During this time, a barrel is collected, which is used until the next serving. To wash, you just need to scoop up water with a ladle from your folded hands. Residents of small rooms go out into their street in the morning (strictly speaking, these 70-80 cm are just a long passage between houses), turn on the tap, put a hose on it and wash themselves, standing right in front of their neighbors’ doors. Or the neighbors themselves. Do you think this might look indecent? No, at this time everyone also waters themselves, washes the dishes, and washes their clothes.
“Police statistics for slums are much lower than the rest of Mumbai and the Indian average.”
To be honest, you can wash yourself at least five times a day, but the joy is short-lived: everything outside is covered with dust and soot. And starting from lunch, the potters are especially active in their work: until late in the evening, the part of Dharavi in which I lived was covered in thick, fetid smoke. Your eyes water, even when you are indoors, and your nostrils become so black that you have to wash them a couple of times an evening, otherwise the upper lip also becomes black.
Bathrooms in Dharavi are shared: one toilet for several dozen families (usually built by pooling and on someone’s initiative, otherwise there are ordinary ditches), for those who are richer - one toilet for 3-4 families.
The worst time here begins during the rainy season: there is plenty of sewage even in the dry season, and during the rainy season, slops often flood the floors of dwellings located on the first floors.
Community's support
It is customary to keep doors wide open in slums. There are always very emotional conversations here, loud jokes vying with each other, hugs. Many people invite you to visit them, and since this is usually next door or the next alley, it is indecent to refer to being busy. In general, they try to entertain each other and not leave each other alone, because, by Indian standards, this is a reason for great sadness. A group of young guys told me this: a sense of community, family, mutual assistance - this is the most important thing! In other countries, people are so unfriendly, they don’t just want to chat on the street, it’s not customary to visit without an invitation! Everyone is surrounded by walls from each other, what kind of life is this!
Residents of the slums try to be together all the time - no one is used to loneliness here, it is uncomfortable. It is generally strange for Indians that a Western person sits alone all the time like an owl. From this they conclude: Western people are abandoned and divided by each other. Is it true? Partly - yes. In Dharavi, I realized that I couldn’t even entertain my parents or husband as much and be in such close contact as my slum friends entertained me (they tried to entertain me, because - see above: owl).
“Indian families do not exist without televisions”
This eastern way of life is, of course, convenient in many ways - there are many examples of everyday mutual assistance, collective survival both physically and emotionally. After all, if you look at the plywood roof of your house alone, you can go crazy. And if you invite a neighbor, pour some tea, and persuade the two of you to share a plate of Indian sweets...
One evening I was upset to tears about a personal issue. It’s impossible to hide it in such a small space, so I explained in general terms to my friends the reasons for my upset and got ready to go to bed (that is, cry a little more alone... a girl with a backpack in the slums is still a girl!). To which I was categorically informed: “No, Anna, no sleep until you start smiling again! And to make this happen faster, we are immediately going to eat ice cream!” I had to agree. 10 minutes later, riding my bike through the city at night, I was already smiling and thinking that I could tell my grandchildren about such funny situations.
January 5th, 2017 , 12:57 am
Mumbai is the largest city in India, with almost 20 million people living here. It is the capital of the state of Maharashtra, until 1995 the city was called Bombay. It is also the most active and wealthy city, the financial capital of the country. More wealthy people live here than in any other city in India. It looks like an Indian New York, but from what I've seen, incredible social inequalities persist. There are many slums in the city; I walked through the most famous ones with a guide, but more on that towards the end, but for now let’s look at more decent places.
Judging by the landscapes along the way from the airport, the city is actively developing. They are building a lot, the economy is growing. It’s a huge city, we drove from the airport to the hotel for almost an hour, life is in full swing all around.
View from the hotel window towards the bay.
In the area in the south of the city where we lived, there are many old interesting buildings, probably left over from the British.
In the evening we went out for dinner, walked a little from the protected area of the hotel, and here was a small branch of the slums. They are scattered in different places around the city in small areas; sometimes you can find a small settlement literally in a vacant lot of one hundred by one hundred meters.
The kids are playing football near the business center where we went to the Oman Air office. Of course, at the entrance to the center I had to go through security control, and even get a temporary pass with a photo! Notice the barbed wire on the fence. Soon a security guard came out and started chasing the children away from the sidewalk with sticks.
The infrastructure in the city is much better than in Chennai and Jaipur; almost everywhere there are normal sidewalks on which you can walk without fear for your life. But real improvement is still a long way off.
Some cattle are roaming here and there.
Great, the whole family got on one motorcycle. As often happens, a man in a helmet, a woman in a headscarf. I was told that because of the heat, people begin to have real problems with their hair, they simply fall out if they ride a lot with a helmet. Maybe women are more afraid of this and sacrifice safety for the sake of beauty.
If you remove the garbage, it will turn out to be a very pleasant street. In the area where we lived there is a lot of greenery, this, of course, ennobles the surrounding area.
Another good street. Neat parking, garbage removed, sidewalks in place, trees. Beautiful!
"Starbucks" in Indian. There are, of course, only tourists inside. There is a security check at the entrance. The building on the right is the large expensive Taj Mahal Palace hotel, a legacy of the colonial era. In 2008, Pakistani terrorists attacked the hotel, killing 31 people.
Nice sidewalk. If only they could lay the tiles more evenly and expand them a little, any prosperous Europe would be envious.
The big attraction is the India Gate. They were founded at the beginning of the 20th century in honor of the visit of King George V. There was also a terrorist attack here in 2003, now you can only get to them through security, and it seemed that women were checked more thoroughly. There are a huge number of Indian tourists here, I even took one selfie. In fact, we were asked to take pictures together several times; in Jaipur we posed with the whole family. Then they always ask what your name is, where you are from, and shake hands. Strange fun.
Slums are one of the main tourist symbols of Bombay. Largely thanks to the film “Slumdog Millionaire,” which was filmed here. Remember the huge pipe that the residents used instead of a road, all those houses, etc.? This is all Bombay.
Soon, by the way, this symbol may not exist. Slums are now being reconstructed, high-rise buildings are appearing in place of an anthill of dilapidated houses, and instead of narrow labyrinths of streets, overpasses and wide roads
The most famous and largest slum in Bombay is Dharavi. At one time it was the largest slum in the world, then in Asia, but times change and now it is just a very large slum. No one knows how many people live here. Some say a million, others three. The area of the district is only 215 hectares. There are factories, schools, hospitals, warehouses and, of course, thousands of shacks here. The average area of a house here is 10 square meters. This square often accommodates a large Indian family, sometimes up to 15 people
01. Let's start from the very bottom. The poorest residents of Bombay live in tents. Tents are built near the sea or very close to the railways, where normal houses cannot be built. This is also where they cook, where they throw away garbage and wash dishes.
02. The life of such tents is short, they are blown away by the wind, they burn when residents try to keep warm on a cold night.
03. In some places you can find entire blocks of rags, tarpaulins, and plywood.
04. A courtyard in one of the blocks of such slums
05. Locals
06. Despite the dirt around, the residents themselves try to take care of themselves, their clothes are clean, everyone washes regularly, the girls dress up. If you meet them in another place, you wouldn’t even think that they could live in tents in the middle of a garbage dump.
07. They also try to maintain cleanliness in the dwellings themselves and the passages between them
08. Washing
10. The main type of Bombay slums are these multi-storey houses made of metal sheets and plywood. It all starts with one-story houses, and then grows upward. and there are also 10-story slums!
11. On the left is one of the blocks
13. It is impossible to understand these houses. Nobody knows where one ends and the other begins. Of course, there are no addresses here and these houses are not on any map of the world.
14. Such slums are terribly picturesque!
16. Residents
17. Let's go inside. Narrow passages where it is sometimes difficult for two people to pass each other. Almost no sunlight gets here. Numerous stairs that lead to the upper floors.
18. Entrance to one of the dwellings. The home here is actually a bedroom-living room. They eat, cook, relieve themselves on the street.
19 Inside the slums themselves there are grooves with water, where waste is usually dumped. Children shit right in these grooves.
20. Relieve minor need wherever necessary
21. Another type of slum is along the railways.
22. They are built in close proximity to the railway.
23. Indian train is coming
24. Slum dwellers run off the tracks. I wonder if anyone keeps statistics on how many people die here under the wheels of a train?
25. Rails are often used as the only road to get out of the anthill of the slums.
26. Children play on the rails
28. The outskirts of the slums and the famous big pipe
29. Look how cozy it is!
30. One of the courtyards
31. White House.
32. Some slums are located on the banks of rivers and canals. In ordinary cities, the proximity of a river or seashore is rather a plus. In India it's the other way around. Garbage is dumped into rivers, beaches are used as large toilets, so the poorest sections of society live on the banks.
33. Sometimes the river is not visible, because everything is littered with garbage.
34. Please note that garbage here is thrown directly from the back door of one of the houses. That is, people could live on the banks of the canal, but they decided to live near a stinking garbage dump
35. This is also a canal completely filled with garbage. Somewhere down there there is water flowing... The garbage is decomposing and rotting, the stench is terrible.
36. That's it!
37. But people like it
39. This is such a resident. The monkey turned out to be evil and almost ate me!
40. Let's take a look inside the home. As you can see, it is very clean there.
42. Living room
44. Some houses house sewing or cooking businesses. Maybe your favorite jeans are made here somewhere!
45. Now slums are being actively built up. Multi-storey buildings are being built in place of dilapidated houses, and overpasses are being made instead of narrow passages. So, soon you will only be able to see the famous slums of Bombay in old photographs.
47. Be sure to take a walk here
48. You won't regret it.
49. I won’t give bad advice.
51. Tomorrow Bombay will be like this!
