When I left
Paris a few months back, I only had a vague idea of what Dharavi would look like.
I imagined a very dense area where thousands, millions of people lived in
precarious accommodation. I thought that the streets would all be dodgy alleyways
leading from one home to another. Even though I knew I was going to work in one
of the biggest slum in Asia, I had no idea how big it really was. And I didn’t
want to learn too much about it before going: I wanted my clichés to be
shattered by experience.
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| Francois and our Founder Krishna Pujari |
Discovering Dharavi
I was prepared
to face overwhelming poverty. But what I found there was much more complex and
fascinating. Just like the rest of Mumbai, Dharavi worked in a chaotic harmony:
hectic traffic, overly crowded streets…to the untrained eye, it all seemed very
dysfunctional. But if you stopped for a minute and looked carefully at how the
cars, the pedestrians, and even the animals were moving up the roads, it looked
like some sort of modern ballet, where everyone had a place and a role to play.
Much more than
just a slum, Dharavi was a city in the city. And everyone seemed to be busy
doing something: while some worked in plastic recycling factories, others ran
little shops and restaurants, or worked in one of the main industries (tannery,
pottery, bakery…). There were no beggars on the streets, but children on their
way to school. There were no muggers in the alleyways, but people showering
before heading to work. Where we all expect to see desperation and people
struggling, I saw smiles and people making the most out of what they had. And
even though a lot of them really wanted to find a way out of the slum, they all
embraced life in Dharavi and what it had to offer.
Why I left
my job
Some of my friends
and relatives had expressed concerns about my volunteering in India. They were
afraid that I would get depressed by what I would see, or that I would get sick
by spending too much time in a slum. But as I leave Dharavi, I’m bringing home
incredible memories, true friendships and a valuable experience working in a
completely different environment.
As much as I
loved my previous job and colleagues, I often felt very frustrated: writing for
a fashion magazine, I didn’t have any opportunity to meet our readers and felt
like I was stuck in an ivory tower, completely disconnected to reality. In
Dharavi, I sat only a few meters away from the beneficiaries of Reality Gives’
programs. I was able to see the impact the NGO had on them, I was able to talk
with them and I knew why I was doing all this for. With the help of the
incredibly nice and devoted team I was working with, I was able to use my
skills in a very different way. While I used to write about fashion designers
and up-and-coming talents, I was now helping on the annual report of the NGO,
designing application forms for the students and doing the layout of English
lessons developed by our education and curriculum director. Inspired by how passionate
my colleagues were and by the impact the NGO had on people’s lives, I worked as
hard as I could, because I knew I was there for a short period of time.
A Day in
Dharavi
Every morning, I
would commute to the slum from the small studio apartment I was renting in
Bandra – a neighborhood of Mumbai that looked like an Indian version of Brooklyn.
Walking through the muddy streets of Dharavi in the morning was my favorite
part of the day. I would go past old-fashioned barbershops, colorful temples, large
veg stalls, and shabby restaurants. I would look at the cats gathering around
the lady who sold fish, at the chicken in cages that were about to get cooked,
and at the goats wandering around the streets. But what I loved the most was observing
people as they were getting ready for their day. A lot of them were staring
back at me: some looked amused, most of them looked intrigued. Occasionally, a
man would come and ask me where I was from and what my name was. After a small
chat, I would go on walking through the streets, breathing in the smell of
incense and soap mixed with fresh meat, sewage and pollution.
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| The doorway of a house on Francois' commute to work |
To reach my
former office in Paris, I used to cross the Champs-Elysées walking along kiosks
and luxury boutiques. In Dharavi, I had to walk behind a Hindu temple and a
public washroom, and climb my way up the stairs to one of our community center.
From there, I would work on my laptop, while the students on our Youth
Empowerment program were studying in the next room. There were girls and boys,
Muslims and Hindus, teenagers and housewives…all in the same classroom with one
objective: learning as much as possible to get better life opportunities. And
as they walked out of their morning English class, they would always greet me
with a very sweet “Bye sir” that made me feel 10 years older.
While I used to
spend 10€ on a salad for lunch in Paris, in Dharavi I would spend less than 30
cents buying delicious dosas (rice pancakes) with chutney from an Indian guy
who spoke incredibly good English. I would share this with two of my adorable colleagues,
in charge of the community center, who would bring chapattis and spicy veg from
home. Then, after some chai, we would go back to work carefully seated under the
fans.
Royal City
School
Every other week
or so, I tried to make time to go the Royal City School, an institution based
in the northern part of Dharavi, that Reality Gives supported by training 16 teachers.
There, I would sit and talk with the school support program director. We would
discuss upcoming events at the school, teachers and children’s attendance, but
also her passion for Alexandre Dumas. Quite often, a small child would pop his/her
head in the office, smile at us, and run back in the corridor with a backpack twice
his/her size. All the students wore school uniforms and looked incredibly cute.
They were full of energy and actually needed to be as the school curriculum included
the study of no less than three languages (Hindi, English and Marathi). After a
last glance at the painted classrooms, I would leave the school and take a
rickshaw home. On my way back to Bandra, I couldn’t stop smiling at the view of
Mahim Bay and at the thought of what I had seen and experienced during the day.
The pollution, the traffic, the noise…nothing could ruin this moment. Dharavi
was a place of hope. And working there was truly incredible.
