Day 3: Slums, revisited. 12/26/13 Mumbai

Day 3: Slums, revisited

Thursday

We woke up to the sound of a human being entering our house. It was 2am and my mom had just arrived from the United States. It was good to see her after not seeing her for the past four and a half days.

But for now, let’s go to sleep for 4 hours and wake up when it really matters.

                We woke up and visited the breakfast table first. We enjoyed an awesome breakfast of smoked salmon, salami, croissants, fruit, and yogurt. Before too long, the family that arrived yesterday and would be traveling with us for the next two weeks joined us for breakfast.

                After breakfast, like yesterday, Dad, Jack, and I took part in an Insanity Workout. Up in the workout room we were greeted by Heather (the mother) and her son Owen (10). We welcomed them into our routine.

                We left the hotel at 9:30 in two private cars. Each car had a driver and a guide. Dad, Jack, and I had already seen a lot of Mumbai already. The world’s largest laundry matte was a familiar site to us. But here are some interesting facts about Dhobi Gaht (because we had a guide we were able to receive some more facts):

the clothes (which are washed in concrete troughs) are owned by minor hotels, hospitals, airlines, etc.

if clothes are lost, the whoever was in charge of washing the clothes has to pay compensation for the loss

the clothes undergo a process of washing, rinsing, spinning, washing with soap, then drying in the sun

two our three families lease a trough together

each troughs rent is three hundred Rupees per month

there are 730 troughs in all of Dhobi Gaht, making it the largest in the world

a washer makes about 150 Rupees a day, about 2 and a half USDs.

                Each time we have visited Dhobi Gaht, we have been stopped by several people who were cheap purse and peacock feathers and other cheap goods for little. Now being pestered to buy something is one thing. But being pestered into buying something by kids is another thing. You feel like deep down you really want to buy something from them, but you know you can’t because if you give one person something then you have to give everyone something. This is the kind of battle that I had whenever many people were trying to sell me something at once.

                The main part of today’s travels was based around the Darvila slum. One of the largest slums in Mumbai, this network of home changed how I now view the word “slum”. In the United States and all over the world “slum” is said disparagingly. But I would soon find that this should not be the case.

                The definition of a slum is a/group of building(s) that is on government owned land but they pay rent. The people in the slums own their home, but not the land underneath it. That is the government’s land.

                So you are probably thinking that because the home owners don’t own the land they are at the whim of the government. Exactly right. That is, unless you owned the slum after the year 1995

                In the year 1995, the politicians in India relied how unfair it is for the people who live slums because if the land that is under them get changed (i.e. slum to hotel, slum to hospital, slum to business center) then the people in the slum are SOL. This is because those living in the slums will have to start completely from scratch (this is the way it currently works in China).

                So, the politicians of India decided to make it so that if you lived in a slum built before the year 1995 garnered the rights to:

housing

electricity

water

‘mobile phone/TV’

MOST IMPORTANTLY: If the government wishes to bulldoze the land (i.e. hotel, hospital, business center) then 75% of the people in the planned area must agree to it

PRETTY IMPORTANTLY: If 75% of people agree to bulldoze the land, then they automatically receive the right to different place to live.

                So, as you can see, this displays the fact that people in the slums are not homeless. They have homes and they also have rights of living.

                When we entered the slum, at first our nostrils had to become accostemd to the smell of a slum. Although it did not come close to the scent of the fish market, it was still less sweat then the air that one like myself is used to.

                Something that you need to know about the slums is that they truly are a community. Like all communities they are both extremely independent but also very dependent on outside resources at the same time.

For examples in which the slums are very self-serving: within the slum communities are many businesses such as plastic schools, libraries, medical facilities, etc. There are even many factories. The most common factory is a plastic disposing/recycling facilities where the people take used plastic parts (old electronic parts, bottles, buckets, etc.) and turn them into other usable parts and sell them to businesses/other factories that then turn the usable part into phones, bottle, buckets, etc. Other common factories inside the slums are leather factories, sewing factories, patik factories, pottery factories among others.

For examples in which the slums are very self-serving: within the slums there is still much need for outside recourses. The slums grow no food. For food, the people must visit the local slummy market and buy the food there. The food in the market is bought from the outside gardens. This causes much inefficiency because not only does it increase the price of the food but also if the market owners are loosing money if they don’t turn over all of their food because they bought that food from someone else. This means that an unsold carrot costs the market owner 100 Rupees instead of just costing him a wasted veggie that he grew and harvested himself. Another example of  inefficiency within the slum is the fact that the people have to buy the cloth that they sew, they have to somehow get all of the trash they recycle, they must get all the materials to make the factory work the way it works.

Factoid: 55%of Mumbai lives in a slum

The slum was extremely interesting the way that many things were being created by very little recourses. But above and beyond the economy of the slum, the people in the slum were people of great kindness. Every child that we saw offered us a wave and a very merry Christmas. Towards the end of the journey we visited a school that was having a Christmas dance party. There, a young boy and I exchanged names, interests, ages, and even a little dancing. If the people in the slums were doing poorly, well didn’t know it because the smiles that were on the people’s faces showed otherwise. The troubles were masked in overwhelming warmness and happiness.

It was in the eyes of the people that my take on the word slum went from derogatory to an unusually human and sophisticated life style.

After the slums and lunch we visited “the tank.” This refers to a body of water (the size of a small manmade lake). This water is supposedly holy water. Flowing (supposedly) from the Genghis, people visit “the tank” to receive the blessings that come from the water.

Owen and Gracie (Owen’s sister who is 13) are in love with Nike. So we had to take them to a cheap Nike store. However, it turned out that the prices that were at the other store that we were at was a fake Nike store. These items were not cheap at all!! Those dirty little misleading dummies.

Tonight we visited a Bollywood theater. We saw the new movie that is all the rave in Inida. It is the third of three movies and is called “DHOOM3”. We stayed for about half an hour of the movie. THE plot went like this:
Dhoom is a heist man. As a boy his dreams where shot down when the leader of the circus did not accept his act and killed his father. So, to get back at the man he robbed the bank (the owner of the bank is the man who had turned him down as a boy.) Then some other complicated stuff happened and then we left.
A breakdown of Dhoom 3

The best part of the whole movie was the way the people in the movie interacted to what was happening on the screen. The micharetor was quit ripped. So, when he took off his shirt resounding oos and ahhhs could be heard.

The theater was packed. Obviously Netflix isn’t doin to well in India.

Tonight the man from the tailors came to our hotel to drop off Jack’s suite and my shirt.