6/14 ~ First day in Mumbai and we took the “Long Slum Tour” with Reality Tours. Our tour guide, Ganesh, was first-rate. The long version of this tour takes participants to a number of sites via car before getting to the Dharavi Slums. Now let me jog my memory.
I saw the campus of University of Mumbai and a major cricket stadium, Wankhede, which hosted the 2011 Cricket World Cup, early in the car ride.
We drove through the Red Light District. The prostitutes are not here by will. Perhaps no misery is worse than that of those cannot live as they will. And some of these unfortunate souls are as young as age nine. Maybe these young ones sell for more.
They are taken from rural areas in northern India and Bangladesh. The newer prostitutes are caged up to prevent them from escaping - these ones dream of freedom. But the older ones are free to roam these streets because they'll never leave. If they did, they wouldn't be accepted by their respective villages. Mumbai won’t welcome them. Their souls are shackled to a dismal fate and it’s an awful reality.
As we left the district, thinking it couldn’t be much worse, we passed a police station. But the officers' eyes are shut, and their pants are down.
We also pass by Churchgate Station. It’s one of the biggest train stations in Mumbai. We’re told that around 4,000 people die each year on the railroads in Mumbai, from falling off trains, getting electrocuted by the electrical lines powering the trains from above, or various other reasons. That’s more than 10 people a day, on average.
Next we made a stop at Dhobi Ghat, the largest open air laundry in the world. You drop off your clothes at various deposits around the city; you get it 24 hours later, fresh and clean. If they lose your clothes, they pay for it, so they don’t lose anything. Additionally, it’s a neighborhood – employees live there. I’m starting to see that’s not uncommon.
Dhobi Ghat in operation
Reality Tours and Travels ~ Their mission is to educate people about the slums in Mumbai, they hope to erase the negative connotations associated with the concept of a slum, that are thus associated with the slums such as Dharavi, which are in fact relatively safe (less crime than in other seemingly safer areas in Mumbai). They set up K-12 schools in Dharavi, as well as small IT programs to teach the Dharavi inhabitants how to use the computer, thus opening up a world of opportunities in their futures.
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