What do you do when you are on your maiden visit to Mumbai? Go and visit the famous places in Mumbai — Gateway of India, Marine Drive,Crawford Market, Chowpatty beach; a whole day trip to Essel World or Elephanta caves. Go shopping at Colaba, famous Linking Road or the countless swanky hi-tech malls in Mumbai? For an average Domestic tourist, that's what Mumbai trip is all about, ain't it? That's what I had also been doing in my other trips to other places. But this time it was different, unexpected and of course unplanned.
My cousin in Kolkata invited me to join her family for a trip to Bhubaneswar and Puri during my annual leave. Done and decided. Accordingly I reached Kolkata. But the derailment of Coromandal Express in Orissa caused the cancellation of our train to Bhubaneshwar from Kolkata on 14th Feb. Sad. My hard earned leave of 3 days will go in vain it seemed! Some frantic calls looking for another option here and there, I found myself on the Kolkata-Mumbai IndiGo flight at 6 am next day. It landed in Mumbai at 8.30am right on time. So I was there in the City of Dreams, the city of glitter, glamour and fashion; the Manhattan of India without a clue about the city.
My friend had came to receive me. After attending a late night marriage party it was actually difficult for him to come and receive me early morning . I felt guilty but then consoled myself saying " That's what friend's are for". Sitting in the cab, I blurted out the list of places I had to visit starting from Gateway of India to shopping at Linkin Road. He just said " Will show you a different Mumbai". Later in the afternoon, he announced that it's time to start my "Mumbai darshan" and started our journey by a local train from Kandivilli . Trust me, the Mumbai local trains are the scariest things on Earth for a nonMumbaikar like me. We got down at Mahim station. There were some people already waiting for him. When I asked him what is it all about, he announced "we are going to Dharavi." I almost freaked out, what Dharavi, of all places! My friend said " Told you, this will be different." And different it sure was!
The previous day there was a screening of "Waste", a documentary made by my friend Parasher Baruah at the Mumbai Press Club. Some children had also came for that. They wanted to go and have a look at the recycling process that goes in Dharavi , meet the ragpickers , talk to them and the newspaper DNA wanted to carry a story of the experiences of the children about Dharavi and Ragpickers. So there were 20 children from various schools of Mumbai, some journalists, photographers, Mr. Vinod Shetty who heads the ACORN Foundation India chapter, 2 German Radio journalists who had seen "Waste" and wanted to interview the film-maker. Among all was yours truly who did not know how to react to all this. Thus began my tour of the place from where Jamal Malik ( from Slumdog Millionaire) started his journey to the Oscars!
Dharavi which is termed as Asia's largest slum houses thousands of people from different states of our country. All the major religions in India live here side by side. Migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh , Tamils, Maharastrians, everyone has found a place in Dharavi. This slum is also throbbing in major economic activities like recycling industry, leather, woodwork, block printing on clothes etc. I was amazed to see the small units where the recycling work goes on. The condition the workers were in, such unhealthy conditions they were working in and such an important work of recycling the waste, our waste. I spoke to some of the workers, they seemed pretty skeptical about people coming in and talking about bringing in some changes in their condition. A small boy, Salimuddin whose father owns one of the Recycling units showed me around. There were people who were busy going to and fro the narrow shabby lanes of Dharavi carrying huge bags full of waste collected by the ragpickers. One of them stopped in front of me and said something in Marathi. He appeared so agitated. I looked back for someone to help me. One of the photographers replied to him something and we moved on. Later he told me that the man was saying that we had come there to click their photographs and see them, after that what! Yeah, after that what! I wonder what would he say if he comes to know that the most talked about movie these days was shot there, amongst them! While criss crossing the narrow lanes, we came across one unit where block printing on clothes was going on. Salimuddin said that these clothes will be sent to "Outside India". Infact Dharavi leather bags, shoes, Jari works etc find place in Big show rooms in Europe and other countries. Crossing the residential and business units of Dharavi, we went to a bridge where the hero of Parasher's film Santosh lives. Parasher seemed very popular with the ragpickers. They even have a name for him " Salim Bhai". Salim bhai called Santosh and other ragpickers for an interaction with the school children. The Children then handed over the I-cards to the ragpickers which were issued by ACORN Foundation India. They all were very happy with the I-Cards. Atleast somebody is trying hard to organize this highly unorganized and unnoticed works of the Ragpickers! As ACORN Foundation (India) wants to reach out to as many as possible with their message of 4 Rs : Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Respect"
I was slightly apprehensive of going to " a slum" at first. But meeting Santosh and others was an amazing experience. Especially Santosh, fiercely proud of his work he is sure a Millionaire in his own way; but a slumdog; nah never. It's not his responsibility to collect our waste but he and hundreds like him does and thus are doing us a favour and we should thank and respect them.
I wish ACORN Foundation (India) all the very best in their Endeavour. And thanks to Parasher my Mumbai trip was unplanned but sure was memorable.
