Kids in Dharavi

Dharavi Children's Shelter and friend James

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon in Dharavi, India’s largest and most notorious slum (you may remember it from Slumdog Millionaire). For the record, many people in Dharavi didn’t like Slumdog because it depicts their neighborhoods as violent, filthy and basically unlivable. In fact, a million people do live there in a wide range of conditions (most houses have running water, many have air-conditioning). Even though the sanitation is bad, many people like Dharavi as it is and large-scale goverment redevelopment projects have met with resistance.

I went to Dharavi with my architect friend Dipti who works with an organization called URBZ which wants to involve the community in redeveloping the slum. URBZ aslo helps run the Dharavi Children’ s Shelter — really an activity space for the neighborhood kids. Dipti holds art classes for the kids each Sunday. This Sunday, the plan was to beautify the space by having the kids paint pots for hanging plants and decorate the rough wall in the shelter’s small courtyard. James (a new Brooklyn friend) and I went along to help. But as we didn’t speak much Hindi, our main contribution was photographing events and being leapt upon by small children.

The adorability quotient was high, as was the noise, mess, and work ethic. After the painting, a dozen kids spent two hours mopping the floor with apparent enthusiasm. Others showed their ingenuity when the key to the shelter’s lock fell into an unspeakable gutter: two boys scampered off to fetch a magnet on a string and as us adults looked on pessimistically, managed to lift the keys out of the deep black puddle.  When we left, several boys escorted us out of the slum and to a small cafe across the road. Dipti invited them to have a soda with us and while they agreed to sit at a table, the boys refused to have a drink. They couldn’t take our money, they said. They had already eaten at home.

What can I even say about that? All I know is that I’m going back next Sunday and am  committed to improving my Hindi, because I have a lot of questions for these kids.

I thought you’d like seeing some photos (click to enlarge):

Dharavi Children’s Shelter

Dharavi street

Across the tracks, the slum

Key-rescuers on left

kids!

Everything got painted

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The wall

Dipti grew up in Madrid, is in architecture school at Oxford, and loves Mumbai

The kids painted the pots in groups of 3 or 4 — results impressive!

I was told that there is a “bacca” or child on the bottom of this pot

These kids were teaching me Hindi

Collaboration

Me and Ruksar

Ruksar

Everyone wanted to be photographed

Boys in the centre

Dipti explains the activity

The courtyard