Dharavi's varied texture of life

When we first arrive in Dharavi, one of Asia's biggest slums and the set of much of "Slumdog Millionaire," we walk along a main drag, called 90 Feet Road, and see small kiosks lining the streets selling chips and betel nut, butcher shops with carcasses on display, a couple wandering goats and residential high rises. It is hot, dirty and overcrowded — not exactly unusual for Mumbai.

Then a group of boys find us, and everything changes. It is the people that make any city come alive. These boys become our window into this complicated maze of narrow alleyways, tiny apartments and shacks of corrugated metals that exists only a 20-minute train ride from downtown Mumbai but could not feel further away from the fancy hotels and Malabar Hill homes.

The boys spot us walking along the street and run over to greet us. I am with Indian photojournalist Rajen Nair and David Levin, an American Fulbright scholar living in Mumbai.

A small boy who looks about 10 but says he is 13 sticks his hand out to me and says, "Hello! What's your name?" I shake his hand and say, "Hanna. What's your name?"

Shateesh and his friends seem as interested in us as we are in them. Rajen points to the Kamaraj Memorial High School across the street from us and asks if they attend it. No, no, they laugh. That school is "bangar." Useless. Each school day they take a 35-minute bus ride to attend a trust-run private school called South Indian Education Society High School. The school, they say, costs about 200 rupees ($4) a month.

Shateesh says his father drives a rickshaw, and he lives close by. Can we visit your home? I ask. Sure!

And we are off. 

The group of about a half dozen boys of various sizes and shapes, all wearing Western clothes, lead us off the main road and into Dharavi's residential area. We wind around the alleyways, following the boys as we pass women in colorful saris chatting with friends. We enter an area called Chandrakant Niwas Newchawl and soon get to a cement home with a narrow metal ladder built inside the entrance. Shateesh points up the ladder. We have arrived.

Shateesh is ready to have us climb into his apartment. First, we suggest, let's ask his parents for permission. Shateesh runs down the alleyway and finds his mother who agrees to allow three strangers with large cameras into her home.

We climb up the ladder and find a 150-square-foot room that houses Shateesh, his parents and his two older brothers. Shateesh and his parents sleep on a single bed; his brothers share a small loft. Every inch of the apartment is used. The area under the loft has been turned into a small kitchen with a portable stove and pots and pans. The parents' bed serves as a couch during the day. Paintings of Hindu gods sit on a shelf jutting out of a wall. Men's shirts, t-shirts and jeans hang from the walls and in the window. Shoes are stuffed into every crevice. A fan and TV are perched on the wall above the bed. The apartment has a small bathing area, but the family uses a communal toilet outside.

Shateesh's mother, Sugandhi, wearing a sari, assorted jewelry and a red bindi on her forehead, joins us in the apartment and insists on making coffee for us. It feels wrong to take anything from a woman who does not have an income and whose husband earns about 3,000 rupees ($65) a month. It would be more rude, I suspect, to not accept the hospitality.

As we drink the sweet milky coffee out of metal cups, more and more children gather on the ladder to watch us.

The children and Sugandhi are Tamil Hindus. Sugandhi moved to Mumbai from Chennai and only speaks Tamil. The children, most of whom were born and raised in this area of Dharavi, speak fluent Hindi, some Tamil and better English than many educated adults here. They act as translators between us and Sugandhi, and they teach us how to say "thank you" in Tamil: Nandri.

I ask Shateesh and his friends if they like living in Dharavi, and they nod yes enthusiastically. "All our friends are here," says Vembu Das, 14. In their free time, they say, they roam around their community and play cricket at a nearby Hindu cemetery. It is the only open space they have.

We prepare to leave and say "nandri" to Sugandhi. She smiles widely, clasps her palms together and thanks us in return.

Outside the apartment, we meet the family's neighbor, Nivedhana Nadar. She wears a clean blue cotton dress and has perfectly combed long black hair and painted toenails. Had I seen her on the train, I would have never guess she lived in Mumbai's most famous slum. Nivedhana, who is 22 and speaks English perfectly, works in Mumbai for Bank of America. Her job is to respond to customers by mail who have questions about their mortgage accounts. Nivedhana, who earns about 16,000 rupees ($350) a month, was born and raised in this community.

Nivedhana says the area is a good place to live because the neighbors watch out for each other. There is no need to have a security guard, she says.

As we leave behind Nivedhana and make our way to the cemetery-turned-cricket-field, the boys take it upon themselves to point out what they consider the important landmarks.

The Biharis, the Biharis! They shout as they point at a group of men standing around in shorts and t-shirts on their day off. Take a photo of the Biharis, they tell me. The men apparently come from Bihar, one of India's poorest states and the source of many of Mumbai's migrant laborers.

I point at my camera, the men nod, and I take a photograph.

The boys point to the teashop across the street, the salon that is closed because the employees have gone to the temple and a small kiosk selling beer.

"This is a Pepsi shop," Vembu says as we pass a shop with crates and crates of empty Pepsi bottles. "Here you can take one photo." I oblige.

We arrive at the cemetery and find a group of older teens playing cricket. We inspect the cemetery, which consists of a few iron structures on which firewood is piled and a dead body is burned. At the end of one of the iron structures sits a large pile of ash. Other young men from the community tell us the body was burned the previous day, and the ashes are left for the family to take. We spot small shards of white bones in the pile.

We finish with the cemetery, and David ask the boys if they want to play cricket. The boys try to play, but the group of older teens is not interested in us. Their breath wreaks of alcohol, and they make it clear we are not welcome. It is time, we decide, to move on.

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