First trip to Mumbai and the Dharavi Slums

My shoes are caked in shit, and my short lived modeling carrier has come to an end. At least I got to see Outlandish. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last week, on Friday morning, my work required all of us interns to get to work an hour early, and pose for a staged photo shoot. The two giant German interns were the photographers. Because our internship is a bit of a sausage party at the moment, we had to pretend that two of the shorter female Extentia employees were interns. When we got to the office, we were presented with a print out of various stock photos downloaded off the Internet. These were the poses we would be using for the photo shoot. At the end of the day, we had a couple hundred photos of nine awkward interns and two Indian chicks pretending to be interested in a laptop that wasn't even turned on.

On Saturday night, we went to see Outlandish. Outlandish is a band that's pretty popular in Europe, best known for it's cover of the song “Aisha”. It's not really my kind of music. Not at all. But we know someone who works at the Hard Rock Cafe in Pune. Yes, Pune has it's own HRC. It's very similar to every other HRC in the world, in that it's a pretty nice place that sells crazy over priced food to old white people, and this, in turn, makes it far different from any other place Pune.

To get to the Hard Rock, you have to travel about ten minutes from my apartment down the main road, and make a left down an unassuming road sandwiched between a shit field and a house made from scrap metal and a tarp. This goes on for about a quarter mile, and then there's a giant pyramid. Yes, the Hardrock here is a pyramid. I think they got their Indians wrong. It actually turns out that the building is owned by some resort that occupies the space next to the pyramid, and just happens to be leasing out the Pyramid to the Hardrock. For what ever reason, we decided to show up three hours early to the show, incase, you know, there was a run on Outlandish tickets in Pune, India. We got there, and had coffee with our friend at the cabana by the pool. I can't think of anything more out of place in Pune than a cabana with a pool.

With our tickets, we get a four hundred rupee (about 8 American dollar) voucher. This buys exactly one chicken burger and a beer at the hard rock. By comparison, you can order more food in than you can ever possibly eat at any other restaurant in Pune for about half the price. It wasn't even good bear. It was a “Tiger” beer, which is, I'm told, the shitty beer kids drink in Singapore. Unfortunately, this shitty beer and burger was enough to make my stomach stall out. Fortunately, the band showed up about an hour late, so I didn't miss anything, anyways.

Sunday was our trip to Mumbai. We caught the early morning train in to Mumbai. The Pune train station smells like shit, which makes sense, as there is, for whatever reason, a large amount of shit on the tracks. We got the cheapest tickets we could find, which actually weren't as bad as I expected them to be. The seats were made of two benches facing each other in the compartment, and was almost comfortable enough to sleep on. Unfortunately, every three minutes is interrupted by a chai monger shouting “chai chai chai! Chai chai chaiii!”, or if he's daring “Chai chai coffee! Chai chai coffeeee!”. We also got the occasional person selling sweets and other foods, but it was the chai vendors we came to dread. After a quick nap, I started to watch the scenery as it passed by. The doors are kept open, which is pretty merciful, as without it, the temperature would be stifling. This meant that people would hang out the doors to catch the fresh air and cool down, while over the steep drops of the hill stations between Pune and Mumbai. This also meant that I could get some nice photo ops while hanging out of the trains.

We got off at the Mumbai Central train station. The place is huge. If you've seen Slum Dog Millionaire, then you've seen the train station we were at. As soon as we started looking for tickets to Dadar station, a man came up to us, telling us the train doesn't run on Sundays. He offered to introduce us to his friend who would drive us there for a hundred rupees a person. This is a pretty common scam in India. What happens is, the person will either take you to where you want to go at some inflated price, or take you somewhere “better”, usually a store or hotel, for a commission from the company. Sometimes it's just to rob you, where the driver will load you in to the car, put your baggage in the trunk, and before you drive off, his friends will steal your stuff before you drive off, without you knowing.

Of course the trains were running on Sunday, so we just kindly passed on his offer, and bought train tickets for six rupees. The price of train tickets are heavily subsidized by the government, so everyone in Mumbai takes the trains, leading to severe over crowding. It took us two tries to get on to the train. The first one left before we could get shoved on. We then knew where to stand when the second one came, and rode the wave of people that shoved it's way on to the train. Dadar station is fairly close to central Mumbai, and is right next to the Dharavi slums.

Mumbai is a giant city, the largest I've ever been to, and Dharavi is it's largest slum. With about one to two million residents living inside, it was once considered the largest slum in the world. We met a guide at the train station, who offered to show us around for a small sum, part of which supposedly goes to a charity. The guide showed us the growing recycling industry in Dharavi. That's one thing the slum has lots of: garbage. They clean it up and sell it back to the west. This has lead to Dharavi being the slum with the largest domestic product in the world. While the government has officially recognized the slum, it still doesn't have any wide spread plumbing, so shit is everywhere here. You walk in it and see wild dogs eating it. The tour lasted about three hours, normally it's longer, but more stuff is closed on a Sunday.

After we finished up the tour, we bought tickets for later that night to get back to Pune, and explored Mumbai. We caught two cabs to Church Gate for the group, but only after the cab driver took a 'detour' to avoid construction. We had to pay four hundred rupees, and the other cab payed around a thousand. That's Mumbai for you. We got over priced Chinese food, and then went to the boardwalk of Mumbai, which was amazing both for the number of people there, and for the size of the boardwalk itself, which stretched as far as I could see, and everywhere on the wall sat someone. Despite the thousands of people, the beggar kids could still pick the white foreigners out pretty quickly. They were persistent, and we were in a good mood, so we gave them a couple rupees and walked to the Gateway of India and explored some of the markets. Walking to the gate, we walked by the Taj Mahal hotel, which has become a morbid tourist attraction, with many of the windows still boarded up.

For the train ride back, we really had no idea where we were supposed to sit. We ended up sitting in the AC compartment for as long as we could, until we got tossed out. Then we sat in the sleeper compartment until we got tossed out of that as well. Then we just kind of sat around by the doors of the train until a conductor made us pay the difference in fairs. By then we were all exhausted, and in desperate need of water and a shower. The heat of Mumbai is oppressive and overwhelmingly humid. After a rickshaw ride back to the apartment, we passed out for the night.

Update:

Yeah, I know, doing a slum tour is just about the most rich white guy thing to do, but that's kind of what I am. Besides, it was amazing. Also, just remembered, on the ride home, when we passed another train, we saw someone possibly fall to their death after falling out of the open door on the neighboring train.