home, sweet home

The alleyway leading into Dharavi was pretty much like any other. 

I'm not sure what kind of signage I had been expecting. India's largest slum, straight ahead! perhaps? As if. In fact, I'm not even sure what I was expecting as walked in, cautiously. Puji had said something about how all of Bombay was a slum in some form or another anyhow. And I was already painfully aware of how Western my desire to visit this famous bustling bastion of picture-perfect poverty in India was; an area of nearly two square kilometres, home to more than a million. But then I couldn't help myself. It was a part of the city. It had to be seen. Besides, it's not as if I was being all dramatic about it. There would be no formal guided tour for me, sandwiched between ten other foreigners trying their best not to step on anything too gross as they snapped pics of smiling kids. As usual, the plan was to be as discreet and chill as possible. 

And Dharavi was far more easy going, friendly and beautiful than I had imagined. Bombay was no Nairobi. And Dharavi was no Kibera. The main road was paved in dull uni-stone and framed by colourful shops and dilapidated apartment buildings that towered in the distance. Every alley after that grew more narrow, more colourful and more intimate. The soft pink, blue and grey cement structures here clashed nicely with the royal blue water tanks and the multi-coloured clothes, towels and saris hanging from the lines. At times the alleys grew so cramped you felt like you might walk into someone's living room by accident. But nearly everyone of those faces peering out of their doors were pleasant ones. The smiles had no ulterior motives. Puji never had to pull out her press card to explain our being there. Gangs of kids would come around curiously, say hi and then sheepishly ask to have their pictures taken. And by the time you snapped, the crowd would have grown from three to ten without you even knowing how the word had gotten around so fast. One particular father was so proud of his makeshift purse shop that he asked me to photograph him in it. And when he was done posing he pointed proudly to his daughter, the cute little baby with the giant bindi and silver anklets who had been shifting around the tiled exterior in her bright pink walker. I'm not sure why the Lonely Planet had been so adamant about not photographing. This was picture paradise.

We plunged into cement corridors with open drains and into relatively larger clearings where crows, dogs and goats had their way amid the rotting garbage. We found a large group of boys playing cricket in some abandoned schoolyard. They urged me to try my hand as a batsman. It was a little unnerving with thirty of them now watching. But then I'm assuming they probably didn't have such high expectations for me, especially not against that one older boy, the reputed fastball bowler of the bunch. He threw a couple out of bounds and one that bounced off the dusty gravel and whipped my leg. I managed to connect on a couple as well, much to the appreciation of the crowd - minus the one poor boy who ended up getting it right in his eye. We left there with a little yellow ball as a gift. 

I had never felt so welcome in any other public place in the city. I could have walked those claustrophobic and sometimes putrid alleys all afternoon. But then it would be pretty much the same after a while, rationalized Puji. Fair enough. Besides, we had train tracks to walk.

So we did our best to retrace our steps and finally regained the main road, where men carrying fruit carts negotiated very limited time and space with motorcycles, bicycles and people. We found a Catholic temple, removed our shoes and lit the last two candles that were there. We recited one Hail Mary together. I was thinking of my Mom. I didn't ask who she was praying for. 

And so we walked out of Dharavi Slum the same way we had come in. Unannounced.