Bahot dino ke baad aaj Dharavi ka rasta liya!! The 60 meter Dharavi road is a path less trodden in my regular commute to work and back. The simple reason being that just like the nallah running parallel to this road the traffic there is always choked. However today because I chose to travel by a taxi my taxiwallah chose to travel by Dharavi J! Usually in the comforts of my own car I don’t even realize the passage of life I am crossing through. Today was different!!
Going from the same place, I managed to get a closer look at those ugly, tattered, stacked one on top of the other jhuggis!!. There were sights that I observed that were stark contrasts from our being in the usual rosy life. For instance, I noticed a man who was dressed in a clean white shirt and pajamas struggling to comb his just washed hair. The shanty that he was staying in could not be high enough for a man of average height like him. With a broken window glass for a mirror, and jute sacks as curtains, on a closer look I figured he wasn’t really unhappy or ‘struggling’ as I said before.
Then there was a young girl playing with a little baby who was lying on the wall that separates the nallah from the chawls. I was scared for his life thinking what if he topples? But the girl seemed carefree, happy to play with the little one busy tying his/her scarf. To think that we have always learnt that babies need to have an infection free environment, this was quite a contrast. However again the girl looked happy and the little baby was not crying (so I am assuming he was happy too!)
A board in Marathi stated that dropping scrap in the nallah is a punishable act but just a foot away there was a tailor who was throwing purple colored fabric pieces in the nallah right there. One elderly man was borrowing shaving blades from his upstairs neighbor.
Overall the construct of these chawls screamed convenience. There were bunches and bunches of electric wires put together hugging the tallest chawl and there were big small water pipes coming out of each one of these rooms directed towards the nallah. The site of the nallah itself was so repulsive that I seriously wondered how these people manage to bring themselves to live there.
Then it occurred to me… the biggest and the strongest instinct of mankind- Survival!! Our evolution is based on it (as per Charles Darwin). While we dabble with designer dreams in our designer homes, these people have no time to dream. Everything, everyone is a step, a resource utilized to survive. Emotions, feelings, candy clouds, picture perfect holidays gayee tel lene!! To think there are many amongst us who cannot manage emotions and need psychological help seems like a completely alien concept to them. For a moment we may feel for them but with them being incredibly busy in putting one breath and the other together I wonder if they have anytime to even feel these ‘designer emotions’. The means to get anywhere are probably not even classified. Like a struggling director crudely put it ‘Jab bhook lagti hai to ghanta sach jhooth mein farak samajh aata hai’ !! Really! It is then when a rucksack serves well as a curtain and a dirty corner in the wall works well as a baby crib. I don’t know what we do or don’t do to deserve our lives but for sure whichever and whatever life a man gets, somehow he manages ‘live’ it!!
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