[ The following is a vivid description of the experience which I had staying in one of the slums in Mumbai as a part of my summer project. The intention was to get as close to the people in the slums as possible so as to assess their assets, capabilities and resources as well as their needs and aspirations. The final goal is to bring this community in contact with an MNC for co-creation of a business venture that will be mutually beneficial for all the parties involved.
It is always said that you need to step in the other person's shoes to know what that person feels. This was an attempt to do so. However, the thing that I have realised is that you can never step in other person's shoes! You can at the most stand beside him. Thats exactly what we did.
Disclaimer
This is a work of facts. The things, names and places mentioned in here are real and any resemblance with any thing, place or person, living or dead is not coincidental and may be considered as purely intended by the author. The author however will not be liable for any injury or mishap caused due to the use of the information stated in here.
[The setting is Santosh Nagar, Goregaon, Mumbai and it is the month of April]
And it begins…
“So…what should we do?”. It was 5 pm on 4th of April 2006 and we must have repeated this question atleast 10 times in the past 10 minutes while we were having a conference call. By ‘we’ I refer to Rahul, Deepak and myself and by a conference call I mean I speaking with Rahul on landline and Rahul and Deepak speaking on a cell phone and Rahul conveying to Deepak and myself what each of us had to say. I don’t think there can be a more ingenious and cheap way of conducting a conference call . Finally after 15 minutes of discussion and a lot of deliberations we finally agreed to go for it. We were ready to commence our ‘Home stays’. Deepmala and T(T = Tatiana from Cornell University,USA who had come to Mumbai to execute this project with us) were already there and we finally agreed to be on our way. I was already packed that afternoon in preparation of the home stay since I was strongly of the opinion that we should go through the home stay as soon as possible. “Just get over with it like ripping off a band aid and we wont feel a thing” was my philosophy (but let me assure you that at the end of it, as I now look back on the home stay experience I thoroughly enjoyed it and it actually turned out to be so much better than I ever imagined). Finally it turned out that even aunty (as we affectionately call Kanika, and I am sure she is going to kill me to write that in this here) was ready to start her mini adventure. She was in no mood to be left out alone when the rest of us were starting the stays. As we were traveling by an auto rickshaw towards Santosh Nagar I began wondering what I would have done had anyone told me at the time of resigning from my job that “In exactly 312 days you would be living in a slum” .
The first night…(No pun intended)
Kanika and myself were furiously trying to search for Rahul and Deepak on the market road while they were being welcomed by a group of about 15 people at ‘China
town’ inside Santosh Nagar. ‘China Town’ was slated to be our home for the next 3 days while the ladies would be put up in royal suites with families. (When you actually see the place in which we were supposed to stay, you would agree that the places where the ladies stayed were indeed royal suites.) This was the first time that we experienced the warmth of the community and then experienced it again and again throughout the 3 days that we spent with them. After having located Rahul and Deepal we were informed by Deepmala that we had to arrange dinner for us downstairs before climbing up the hill and visiting our community liaison’s (Kshama Majdekar) house. We had not even spent 5 minutes inside Santosh Nagar and our first meeting was already scheduled for 9 pm in the night. The meeting was to be held at Kshama’s house. The meeting however ultimately turned out to be more of a political gathering in which we were no more than silent spe
ctators in a crowd of about 100 people. If you have ever thought that fitting 100 people in a 15 ft x10 ft room is impossible, you should have come to attend that meeting. Since I was there personally, trust me, its possible. Although the meeting had its own political agenda in which we had no interest, we as well as our project however did get a little mention in that meeting. A brief introduction was given by Kshama’s daughter Shraddha and the crowd gathered thanked us for selecting Santosh Nagar as the first place in India for implementing a project based on the BOP protocol (Although I feel that it was more out of formality that they thanked us at that time, I am sure that their perception about us and about our project has changed now that we have completed the home stays and also conducted a couple of workshops with them). After the meeting concluded, we 3 guys started our descent towards our ‘home to be’ and the girls went back to their families. Before settling in our ‘new’ home we wanted to check out the facilities for our morning routines (well you know what I mean). Having enquired about the same we were directed towards a car parked at distance of about 75 meters. Having thought that the bathrooms will be somewhere near the parked car we made our way towards the vehicle only to find that the buildings near and far from the vehicle didn’t house any bathrooms. While we were on the way back to seek some clarifications from the person who had directed us towards the car we spotted a man in a towel carrying a … (well take a wild guess!!). We were sure that we would be able to locate what we were out there to seek if we followed that person. Having followed the man for about 10 mins and seeing him disappear in front of our eyes, we realized that the place we were seeking was always in front of our eyes. Our elusive ‘loo’ was the road and the vast expanse stretching westward from the road. That was it for us. We were not willing to spend the next three mornings with our butts hanging out on the road. We took leave from our hosts, grabbed our luggage and started climbing the hill again in search of a shelter in the form of the community center located at the top. We were relieved to find that we could be accommodated in the community center with a properly constructed ‘loo’ only 2 minutes away. We had to sleep on the floor in the community center which can be quite discomforting if you are not used to it. Thank god that I am used to sleeping in the floor, I was snoring away (that’s wha
t the other guys say and I still insist that I was not snoring that night) to glory. Rahul and Deepak didn’t seem too accustomed to sleeping on the floor and were finding it difficult to sleep (My snores were apparently not helping their cause either). Anyway, with mattresses beneath us and a roof above us, we had begun well. As it’s said, beginning well wins you half the battle but then it was just half of the battle. The rest half was yet to be conquered. It was this rest half that was staring in our faces at 7 am the next day when we had our toothbrushes in hand but neither a basin nor water.
5th April 2006
Having approached Kshama’s house for some help we were handed a tumbler full of water and asked to brush up on an open gutter. Although it was quite disconcerting at the be
ginning to brush in open air on a gutter, we seemed to have gotten used to that place to the extent that we even use that place to wash our faces when we visit the community now-a-days. As we were brushing our teeth, we discovered that fresh tea was waiting for us inside Kshama’s house and we later found out that it wasn’t just tea, we even had our breakfast in the form of ‘Poha’ ready for us. Having feasted on the poha which were so delicious that it would have my mom proud of them, we were ready for our baths. Where? was the question that remained to be answered. We were quite sure that it wont be possible for them to make arrangements for our baths in a house having 4 people waiting to get ready early in the morning. We later found out much to our relief that arrangements were made for our baths in a neighbouring apartment which had self-contained bathrooms. This made us realize that the people in the community were as worried about us as we were about ourselves. Through with the morning chores, we were ready for some work now. The girls who were till now occupied in their ‘own’ houses with Deepmala helping in making chapattis and vegetables and Kanika getting a glimpse of the ‘balwadi’ run by her ‘house-mother’ were also ready for work. We went around roaming and meeting people trying to tell them about the project. We found out that the people in the community were as interested in learning about us and out project as were eager to tell them the purpose of our stay and the objective of our project. Having done some conversations with the people there and finished our lunch we came back to the community center. We didn’t have many people to speak to during the afternoon since most men had gone out for work and the women who were at
home were enjoying a nice siesta after their lunches. So even we decided to take some rest. Although we had all intentions of resting that afternoon, ‘SUN GOD’ had other things planned for us. It was so damn hot in the community center with the asbestos roof that we could hardly manage a nap. I bet someone could have cooked a ‘half fry’ on the floor that afternoon. We somehow managed to kill time that afternoon and finally when the sun began taking a dip towards the Arabian sea we got down to the community for a second round of conversations-cum-interviews. The entire purpose of these small conversations was to increase our visibility and to make as many people aware of our project as possible. We also made an attempt to inform the people about the upcoming workshops and tried to gauge the availability of the different groups of people for the workshops. Based on this information, we were able to finalize the dates and the times for the PED(Participatory Entrepreneurship Development) workshops. The girls were now ready to get back to their homes for their dinner and the 3 of us, like homeless kids began wondering from where we could manage our next meal. Just then we got an invite by Kshama herself to have dinner at their home. Not wanting to cause excessive trouble, hesitantly we agreed. She had done enough already by taking care of our home stays and more importantly taking care of the stay of T (which we were most worried about, especially after we learnt that she wasn’t feeling all that great in her stomach.) When dinner was finally served we were quite surprised to see mangoes being served. It was just the beginning of April and the prices of mangoes were prohibitively high even for us to think of buying them at our own homes. This was the kind of welcome we received in their houses and the warmth and affection which they showed towards us is something I will not forget in my entire life. With dinner done, the mother ship (read community center) was calling us for a nights rest. We had survived the day and it was 3 down and 2 to go (I don’t know why but I always tend to measure time in terms of number of meals completed and left to be completed when I am out of my home on a long trip)
6th April 2006
The morning that day was spent much in the same way we had spent the earlier day and the afternoon was utilized on finalizing the gifts for the families who were brave enough to accommodate us in their homes for 3 days. That evening was when the action heated up and we experienced something that according to me was the high point of our stay. Most of our community contacts so far were Maharashtrians and we certainly did not w
ant the target audiences of our workshops to belong to only one community. With this in mind we decided to meet up with the Tamilian community, inform them about our project and get their buy-in in the workshops. When we actually got to the area which was inhabited primarily by the Tamilians we were awestruck with the number of people gathered there. They had some festivities going on and the atmosphere there was absolutely electric. Its one of the things…you got be there to believe it. It was amazing, to the extent of being scary. Any word here and there to anger the community and we would have our tombstones right next to the temple. We were however treated as welcome guests and the people gathered there were quite patien
t in hearing us out. We were even invited to the main festivities which were to take place on the 12th and 13th of April. While we were busy with this, the girls were busy shopping for the homes and conducting some other interviews. Having got an assurance from the community that they would support us in our endeavor, we left them with their festivities and walked to Deepmala’s ‘home’ where another sumptuous dinner was waiting for us. It was quite meal complete with ‘bhajia’ and even a sweet dish. With dinner done it was end of day 3 and we were only a night away from completing the home stays.
7th April 2006
Knowing that this would be the last day of our home stay was reason enough for us to wake up early. The morning chores had now become a matter a routine for us and we were literally ‘at home’ in the mornings. Even our neighbors were by now accustomed to our presence which made the stares go away. As we were getting ready that morning, we noticed tha
t T was conspicuously missing from the scene. We later learned that she was being paraded through the locality sporting a saree and we were quite eager ourselves to see her in one. She was actually looking quite nice in the green saree. Much better than one can imagine. With the saree parade over, we just had one interview to be done with a lady called Anita who makes chapattis and that would conclude our home stay. Anita is now more popularly known amongst us as the chapatti lady and T was quite interested in seeing the ‘chapati thing’ for herself. Believe it or not, Anita makes 600-800 chapattis daily by getting up at 4 am everyday and the traveling almost 15 km to sell them. We were all quite impressed by the way she manages everything. With that interview done we were good to go, except for one thing. The good-bye ceremony!. Deepmala and Kanika had already given their gifts to their families and now it was T’s turn to gift the things which we had bought to Kshama. T herself got quite some gifts from the community as we were about to leave from there. It was quite a gathering of people to bid us ‘bye’ from their homes (which were by now ‘our’ homes as well).
As I traveled back home that morning, I began thinking how stupid I was 3 days back just thinking about survival for 3 days. We had not just survived but rather we had ‘lived’ there for 3 days and in a sense were able to get the trust of the people in the community the value of which we realized only later when we conducted the workshops. However, I was also happy that I was finally returning home, victorious, not against someone else but against my own inhibitions. As I stepped inside my ‘own’ home I realized what it meant when people say, “There’s no place like home”. “HOME SWEET HOME”
