Revolution

Current Location: School
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Puddles

Mumbai, the city of dreams. Even New York City pales in comparison to the bustle of this sprawling urban metropolis, whose streets pulse with activity at all hours. But what characterizes Mumbai the most is its remarkably cultural and socio-economic diversity. Manhattan has its own character, as does Brooklyn and Staten Island, but changes in surroundings blend into one another fairly naturally. After all, Harlem is not located in the middle of 5^th Ave. The rapidity with which scenes and atmospheres change from one area to another in Mumbai, however, is alarming and almost surreal. Dongri, the Muslim residential ghetto and my home for two-and-a-half months this summer is in South Mumbai. Dongri isn’t completely residential, however, unlike the upscale suburbs or the ‘hi-fi’, or upper-class, Malabar Hill area. It’s a mix between commercial and residential, as are most poor areas in the city. The sweet shops, perfumeries exuding sandalwood, and tailors on the lower level are all topped by rat-infested apartments accessible only by narrow staircases covered in red paan[1] spit.

My mornings begin at 9:30 AM by walking down one of these staircases, being careful not to step on sleeping goats. I turn onto Sardar Vallabhai Patel Road, already filled with the ubiquitous black and yellow taxis full of burqa[2]-clad women and bearded men zipping past, horns blaring, swear words in Hindi flowing swiftly out of the drivers’ mouths at hand-cart drivers who block the road. I walk past the furniture bazaar, past parked horse-carriages and thin horses with wet black eyes, past the Shalimar Hotel, famous for its falooda, a pink milkshake full of tapioca and sev, a stringy clear substance that gives texture but no taste. I walk underneath the JJ overpass, an imposing grey convex ceiling protecting the heroin addicts and rabid dogs that take shelter underneath it from the monsoons, and into Null Bazaar. There is no sidewalk; what used to be a sidewalk is cluttered with stalls selling shoes, umbrellas, and kajal (eyeliner containing camphor to cool the eyes). Bicycle bells ring, brushing past me. “Oh, madam!” men in dhotis, lungis[3] and tank tops yell in warning, pushing wooden cards loaded with pounds of steel past me, sweat streaming down their faces and backs. On my left are a row of bangle stalls that have naked bulbs strung in front of them and light up blindingly as soon as the sun shows even a little sign of retiring for the night.

Some days, if I venture into the alleys on my right and enter Chor Bazaar or “Thieves’ Market”. Here, one can buy antiques all week round as well as Nikes, Reeboks and other new foreign sneakers for 80 rupees, or 2 dollars each, at 4 AM on Thursday mornings, and anything under the sun for second-hand on Fridays. On Fridays, the quaint little stores with old U.S. Navy medals and postcards and antique colorful glass lamps are closed in by a swaying mass of bodies, a congested scramble by Mumbai’s poor to grab what they can before someone else does. Haggling is mandatory.

But I usually continue straight on through Null Bazaar, past the pink temple in the middle that rings its bells at night and which always has devotees inside, no matter what time of day. On the left of the temple are hoards of lower-class men chatting, smoking charras (marijuana) or cigarettes, chewing paan and spitting out the red residue, or squatting on the road, waiting tiredly for a large truck that will come and pick them up and sweep them away to an unknown location to do some sort of construction work or heavy labor.

Null Bazaar abruptly ends and I enter Khetwadi, a residential area adjacent to Kamathipura, Asia’s largest red-light district. Past Khetwadi, into the shopping area of Girgaum; several music stores line both sides of the road, painted sitars and tablas adorning the old wooden buildings known as ‘mansions.’ The hijab and burqa-clad women of Dongri have gradually faded into jeans and tank-top wearing high school students and uniformed primary school students who attend the numerous schools in and around Khetwadi. Before and after school, which ends very early for many of them who are on a block schedule, they hang around the shopping area of Prarthana Samaj in Girgaum. Groups of boys order sandwiches from the sandwichwallas whose livelihood is a little cabinet on wheels. The cucumber, tomato, cheese and spicy green chutney sandwiches they sell for ten rupees each are not for the faint-stomached. The first and last time I tried one, intense throat burning, eye-watering, and loss of breath for a couple of seconds came with every bite.

A man selling coconuts sits near a small side lane where even the tiny taxis won’t fit. A left down this lane and I come out near my office, but a twenty-minute walk to my right is the infamous Kamathipura. Many Bollywood and independent movies have been set inside its walls, all of them dealing in some way with prostitution, because Kamathipura and prostitution go hand-in-hand. But Kamathipura during the day seems like an average poor area of Mumbai, except for the large yellow painted signs all over with a smiling, waving condom and “USAID- From the American People” painted in large letters next to it. The only other way one would be able to identify Kamathipura as what it is during the day is by the very few soliciting sex workers standing on street corners with brightly painted lips in either saris or jeans, or women with copious amounts of makeup haggling with fruit vendors. But even this isn’t enough to brand it as Asia’s largest red-light district. In order to discover that, one would have to go inside the brothels.

Inside the small 5 by 15 ft rectangular rooms lined with beds stuck to the wall at eye level and are home to two families per room. Underneath beds, or slabs of wood, young children sleep on cement floors next to a portable stove—the kitchen—where, during lunch hour, the cooking turns the room into a sauna. Two beds on the left and right as soon as one enters the narrow and low door may belong to a pair of sisters and their husbands. Venturing further into the room, about six to seven feet in, there is another pair of beds with the same set up underneath them, home to another family who may or may not be acquainted with the people whose feet are a few feet away from their heads every night when they sleep. Some sex workers come and leave without warning, no one knowing where they are coming from and under what circumstances. Beds in the brothels are high-demand real estate; a vacant one is snatched up a woman needing a place to live and work. All that is needed is a little space, and the identity of one’s roommates is little cause for concern or even the slightest bit of interest.

There is a vegetable market between 13^th lane drop-in-center, a small room that serves as a safe haven to more than five-thousand sex workers, to the 9^th lane drop-in-center, a small room that serves as a safe haven to an unknown number of heroin addicts. This market is like any other poor Mumbai vegetable market. So are the numerous shops that sell saris, petticoats, and costume jewelry; these can all be found in Dharavi, a huge slum towards the suburbs (Asia’s second largest). It’s very busy during the day, and the roads are choked with huge colorful lorries painted with flowers and Hindu symbols, the sign “Horn OK Please” adorning their backs. These trucks are conducting business towards the outskirts of Kamathipura, where there is a lot of lumber coming and going. There are dozens of empty taxis parked along the streets, the drivers drawn here like any other man of any other low-paying profession for the area’s specialty. It is hot and dry and dusty, except when it rains. Then, little naked children, some with strings tied around their waists, come running out into the street, splashing in the puddles, screeching with excitement and pleasure. They gather water in buckets and empty them at once on their heads, shivering and laughing, not yet knowing about where they are and what their future probably holds.