Reckoning With History

Running full steam ahead into my final project for the trip! I was typing out details during breakfast this morning. We found a cafe with wifi and a super hipster atmosphere. So hipster, in fact, that the inside had modern furniture, worn iron walls meant to look like an old warehouse, and a fixed gear bicycle tied to the railing of the loft that we sat in and sipped black coffee. Ever day I edge closer to fair trade shade grown vegan hipster (but not really).

I decided to research and write about women entrepreneurs in Dharavi. The industries they tend to work in, how they started working in this particular field, how many people they support through their work etc. Think of it as a series of ethnographies about the informal economy in India, through a case study of Asia's most famous "slum." It's incredibly awesome how much this research contributes and takes from the other work I'm doing on the side right now.

Side note: a relevant TED talk!

And really, it kinda feeds into some of my ideas for fellowships for next year. Yes, I have returned a little bit to this possibility. I think I stumbled on a really great idea while I was here, and I'm trying to flush it out amid Colombia reading, Bombay explorations, and my class. Which is still super awesome, in case you were wondering.

This week we have started our discussions around violence. My professor and I have a really funny relationship. Whenever he talks about the slums, I bring up gangs. Which have a very different sort of relationship to the city than anything I have ever seen before. I find it utterly confusing... especially since I felt safest of all in Dharavi. In fact, I'm so excited to be working there because it was the only place outside in the city that I felt calm, collected and not flustered by honking cars and people essentially running into you or men loudly blowing kisses (gross. This needs to stop.). I digress. Our relationship is funny because he knows I'm going to bring up violence, and he even indulges me now by including comparisons to Latin America.

Today we discussed partition and the 1984, 1992, and 2002 riots. We talked about the history of religious tension between Muslims and Hindus in India, the first census and numerous other factors that made this tension all the more palpable. He lived in Bombay during the 1992 riots and showed us images of the violence from his 20s. He talked about working with the refugees and victims after the violence -- and gave an example from one of the camps where a member of the mob that ran through killing muslims using a textbook provided by a political group here (with the best methods to kill and rape without getting caught... yes it's as horrifying as it sounds) ended up working as a volunteer in some of the centers.

Talk about coming to terms with the past. Going through the waves of following the community blindly, then reckoning with your actions, and finally seeking redemption. Can one ever repay a community that it has taken so much from to begin with? Honestly, dont you surrender your membership to the larger community when you trespass on this level?

And then... you get to Dharavi... where, as far as I can tell, there isnt the same religious tension you might be able to feel in other areas. I'm really curious about its history during the riots, since all I have heard about is the harmony of these groups living together and providing each other space for religious centers in a city that really doesnt have any space to spare.

I'm working out the details for a translator and access to the city this evening, but maybe in my digging I'll be able to learn more and figure out how this magical place that is Dharavi can exist as it does. It's funny. As soon as we were leaving, my professor stopped me and said, you need to work in Dharavi for your final project.

He was right. I think it's in my blood now. It's constantly on my mind as this mystery I want to start unraveling.

The last thing I'll mention is the interesting gender dynamic that has changed the way most of the girls in my class are doing work. Our projects include mine and a look at "Beauty" based on skin tone and gender in advertisements for beauty products, and a few others. Many of us are talking about writing on gender. Probably because yesterday was the first episode in my life where I really wished that I was not female. I wished it more than anything so that I could feel safe going out in the dark to buy myself dinner. I knew that I could not. That barrier, that KNOWLEDGE that my GENDER prevented me from feeling safe in the city.. it was a lot to handle. Especially for a female college student who grew up with empowering parents and access to anything that I wanted to do. Here I was needing to fill a basic need that I could not fill.

I think we are all looking for positive examples of female empowerment in the city. Really looking, digging, seeking... ANYTHING. Because walking down that street everyday to people looking at me like I am a sandwich and really feeling scared to walk around alone as a result is not something I want my daughters to deal with. I am sure part of it is the foreign experience and my own tainted perspective, so I want to teach myself to see the positive.

And Damn it, that's what I'll do.

Sipping Chai in Dharavi

If you find yourself lost, you have only just begun your journey.


That's what it felt like when I looked at the sea of people crossing the bridge over the train tracks and pouring into Dharavi, famously known as "Asia's Largest Slum" and, supposedly, captured in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. 

Dont look down, they might say to you, as you dodge children and waves of people moving in every direction over the bridge. You hit the ground on the other side. Look up! See the woman leaning in the doorway of the second floor apartment, sewing and adjusting her sari? Children in uniforms scatter around you, running, pushing each other, and throwing a rock back and forth. The older ones are clinging together, staring at you wide eyed and giggling. "Hello," they'll say. And then they'll burst into laughter with pleasure when you respond.


Now the road forks and you have to decide where to go. To you it looks the same on both sides. Here no one stares at you because they want something. You feel safer walking around in the very crowded, busy and tangled streets there than you have anywhere else here. People dont look at you like they wanted something (this is the first time this has been true for the entire trip). They just look at you as though you are a new face in a very tight knit community, and when you smile they smile back. 


An invisible rope of shared foreign-ness keeps you tied to the other students you came with. You follow them through tiny, dark spaces, stepping over exposed pipes, drying clothes that have fallen from the wind, the lost cricket ball of children playing just ahead of you in an open square, and the occasional potato chip wrapper. 

We sat on the third floor of a loft with a small chat store on the ground floor. A man arrived selling Chai towards the end of our discussion about the community and the city (I, of course, was asking about local gangs, crime and violence... none of which played a huge role in this neighborhood). People live SUPER close together, but it isnt scary and claustrophobic which is what I was worried about. This community is one of the examples of this city where 60% of the population lives on just 5% of the land. And this is the 3rd largest city in the world. (Does this help with you picture of volume?)

It is really dirty: there is trash everywhere because the city doesnt provide sanitation options, and there is just 1 public toilet for every 1,440 people so people shit in areas where they can find space/some semblance of privacy. But there are little tienditas everywhere, there are potters, and tanneries and all of these highly skilled craftsmen who have been practicing the same trade for generations and supplying the entire city and export market with really incredible goods.

The children also came up to me and shook my hand, introducing themselves in English and asking me for my name with huge smiles. I felt much more welcomed here than I had anywhere else. And there werent cars etc mowing you down.

The Chai was a nice touch. It was boiling hot outside, the sun was out in full force for most of our trip but it made the city so much nicer to see and be part of then the sheets of rain from a monsoon would have been. The tea was sweet and dark...sort of like the conversations we were having in that room before we headed out to explore the city with a man who knew his way through all of the twists, turns, stores, homes and people we found across the city.

And really, it was like a city all its own. 

So if you find yourself lost in Dharavi, you have only begun your journey.