A walk down Tadiwala Road
I originally posted the following blog elsewhere... Hans has requested that I put it up on this site too, since it's about the community where Deep Griha Society operates.
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It's a sunny late February morning, around 9.30am. Although summer doesn't begin officially until March, winter is definitely over and it's going to be a hot day. I leave my first-floor flat, and take the stairs down. The panoramic views from the roof eight storeys up are stunning, especially at night.
I take a left out of the front gates, giving a brief nod to the uniformed security guard. There's a team of seven, and the gate is manned 24 hours a day. Sometimes I get back late at night and tiptoe past the slumbering watchman as he lies by a small fire, trying to keep warm.
Immediately outside I encounter two small girls balancing heavy water jars on their heads. Dressed in rags but sporting beautiful smiles, they've just fetched water from the public tap down the road, and are returning to their homes on an otherwise barren patch of land adjoining the small car park.
The children of construction workers - the women work as well as the men - hired to build the apartment blocks, they live onsite in temporary hutments fashioned from corrugated iron sheets and tarpaulin. My building was finished a couple of years back, and the next block is almost complete. Perhaps soon they'll start on the final building. After the work is finished, say in a year or two, the land they currently occupy will probably be turned into a couple of parking spaces and they'll have to move on. Yet they're the lucky ones. A few years of steady employment and a place to stay - although it's squalid, it's better than the street.
As it happens, their hutments are on the other side of a wall surrounding the residents' swimming pool and clubhouse. I wonder what they make of it all. We don't share much in common, although as a mere tenant I don't get to use these facilities either. It's best not to consider that my monthly rent alone is probably equivalent to half-a-year's salary for one of the male labourers. The women usually get paid even less.
A little to the right outside the gates sits a large skip, piled high with rubbish. In the mornings, there'll usually a rag picker atop this pile, searching for some small treasure - a plastic bottle, some newspapers, old clothes perhaps - that they can sell on for a couple of rupees.
As I walk down the lane that leads to Tadiwala Road proper, I overtake two teenage boys, strutting in the fashion of teenagers the world over, and dressed in the typical fashion of urban Indian lads: tight jeans, mildly flared and a little high-waisted; slim-fit wide-lapelled shirts; oiled hair. Just here there's an autorickshaw rank - very handy - and on my left I pass a tiny one-room tailor shop. On my right there a couple of general stores, where you stand outside and ask the shopkeeper for whatever supplies you're after. All the goods are arranged on shelves or hung from hooks - an assistant will clamber up a ladder or hop on a chair to fetch down your order. A few more small shops along this lane include a doctor's surgery, a pharmacist and a laundry. Drop your clothes off here and a couple of days later they'll be returned as good as new.
Turning on to Tadiwala Road, things are lively. It's not a wide road at this point - you won't see many cars - but there's always the odd rickshaw and no shortage of bicycles, motorbikes and scooters. There's a vibrant, colourful mix of pedestrians, stalls and roadside hawkers. Fancy a tattoo? A bootleg Bollywood VCD? A poster of Shah Rukh Khan? No problem.
If I turned left, I'd be walking towards the centre of the slum. Tadiwala Road is little more than a kilometre in length, yet more than 30,000 people live in the slum area. When you see the cramped, narrow lanes and packed-together shanty housing you can see just how this is possible. The road here, petering out into a rough lane, terminates up by the river. When the river burst its banks last July due to the excessive monsoon rains, many families were displaced and a number of hutments were destroyed or washed away. For several days, everyone here was knee-deep in filthy water.
Today, as on most days, I'll take a right turn instead. On the corner there's a small tapri stall selling tea, samosas, wada pav and onion bhajis. Tasty if not necessarily healthy, there's usually something frying away in a deep dish of oil. Next door there's a watch stall; opposite, another grocery shop. A couple of guys have parked up their handcarts and are selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Some women, sitting on the ground, are selling today's newspapers. I get my copy of the Indian Express home delivered, so I walk on.
After just another twenty seconds or so, dodging scooters, running children and some mangy-looking dogs, I come up to Deep Griha Society's Family Welfare Centre, facing a small flour mill operation, where the sound (or silence) of the threshing machine gives a useful indication of whether the electricity supply is functioning or not.
Past the FWC, there are a couple more snack stalls and a barbershop. Opposite is a 'lottery centre' for those who like to gamble. Conveniently for those concerned, there's a dingy looking place next door where some of the local men - and it is only men - like to enjoy some illicit liquor. Today there's a man slumped outside. His trousers are open, his shirt is riding up and he's passed out by the none-too-clean gutter.
I continue over the junction with Dhole Patil Road. From here, Tadiwala Road is a little wider - suitable for cars - and is surfaced with tarmac. On the right hand side are a several residential buildings that provide housing for the families of Indian Railways employees. Squat blocks of three storeys, they remind me a little of the ex-council flat I used to share in Balham. They are not luxurious. The buildings are arranged around an open space usually occupied with children playing street cricket.
Passing by a few months ago, I saw a crowd gathered outside, watching the demolition of a couple of unauthorised constructions that had utilised the exterior wall of one of the railway buildings as a convenient starting point. Within minutes, a JCB had pulled down the flimsy structures and loaded the rubble into a waiting dustcart. DGS lost a one-room Balwadi (pre-school) during this operation. The area is now walled off - I don't know what happened to the previous occupants. Slum dwellers are always wary about the threat of demolitions; when politicians promise a crackdown on illegal constructions, slums are always first in the firing line. Yet the wealthy homeowners and businessmen who have added illegal extra floors and balconies to their buildings usually sleep soundly - they'll probably be allowed to 'regularise' for a small fee.
Continuing down the road, things start to move upmarket. Mixed in with the cheap-and-cheerful restaurants along here, there's a fancy-looking business hotel, a British Airways office and a Chevrolet dealership. Just past the railway housing, Tata Consultancy Services has a shiny new building. Next is the National Institute of Naturopathy, which offers a variety of ayurvedic treatments along with beginner, intermediate and advanced yoga classes. I lasted about a week.
Now I'm almost at the bottom of Tadiwala Road. On the right hand side there's a modern church building - Our Lady of Perpetual Help. On the left, there's Sohrab Hall, a kind of office block-cum-shopping centre that houses several boutiques, travel agents and life insurers, a Pizza Express restaurant, a high-end gym, and a US visa centre. Thirty or forty homeless people live on the pavement just opposite. At the traffic lights, children beg at the lights. Women holding newborn babies breathe in horrendous pollution all day as they weave in and out of traffic asking for a few rupees.
So there you have it - a microcosm of urban India itself. The rich living side by side with the poor. Opulence and luxury contrasted to abject poverty. Be it the homeless people by Sohrab Hall, or the labourers in hutments next to the Kumar Pinnacle swimming pool, this is India.
A few years ago, someone coined the term 'India Shining' to describe India's promised economic miracle. President Bush has just been in New Delhi to discuss free trade so that India's burgeoning middle-class - estimated at 300 million people - can spend their disposable income on American goods and services.
But the fruits of the growing economy are not available to all. Is India really shining for the slum residents of Pune? Are the ever-expanding slums in Mumbai and Delhi a healthy sign of increasing urban employment or a stark reflection of life in rural areas? Are farmer suicides, gender-based selective abortions, communal riots and large-scale political corruption all healthy indicators of the state of the nation?
In India, 45 per cent of all children aged under five are malnourished. But in the cities at least, you can always go for a pizza.
-------------
It's a sunny late February morning, around 9.30am. Although summer doesn't begin officially until March, winter is definitely over and it's going to be a hot day. I leave my first-floor flat, and take the stairs down. The panoramic views from the roof eight storeys up are stunning, especially at night.
I take a left out of the front gates, giving a brief nod to the uniformed security guard. There's a team of seven, and the gate is manned 24 hours a day. Sometimes I get back late at night and tiptoe past the slumbering watchman as he lies by a small fire, trying to keep warm.
Immediately outside I encounter two small girls balancing heavy water jars on their heads. Dressed in rags but sporting beautiful smiles, they've just fetched water from the public tap down the road, and are returning to their homes on an otherwise barren patch of land adjoining the small car park.
The children of construction workers - the women work as well as the men - hired to build the apartment blocks, they live onsite in temporary hutments fashioned from corrugated iron sheets and tarpaulin. My building was finished a couple of years back, and the next block is almost complete. Perhaps soon they'll start on the final building. After the work is finished, say in a year or two, the land they currently occupy will probably be turned into a couple of parking spaces and they'll have to move on. Yet they're the lucky ones. A few years of steady employment and a place to stay - although it's squalid, it's better than the street.
As it happens, their hutments are on the other side of a wall surrounding the residents' swimming pool and clubhouse. I wonder what they make of it all. We don't share much in common, although as a mere tenant I don't get to use these facilities either. It's best not to consider that my monthly rent alone is probably equivalent to half-a-year's salary for one of the male labourers. The women usually get paid even less.
A little to the right outside the gates sits a large skip, piled high with rubbish. In the mornings, there'll usually a rag picker atop this pile, searching for some small treasure - a plastic bottle, some newspapers, old clothes perhaps - that they can sell on for a couple of rupees.
As I walk down the lane that leads to Tadiwala Road proper, I overtake two teenage boys, strutting in the fashion of teenagers the world over, and dressed in the typical fashion of urban Indian lads: tight jeans, mildly flared and a little high-waisted; slim-fit wide-lapelled shirts; oiled hair. Just here there's an autorickshaw rank - very handy - and on my left I pass a tiny one-room tailor shop. On my right there a couple of general stores, where you stand outside and ask the shopkeeper for whatever supplies you're after. All the goods are arranged on shelves or hung from hooks - an assistant will clamber up a ladder or hop on a chair to fetch down your order. A few more small shops along this lane include a doctor's surgery, a pharmacist and a laundry. Drop your clothes off here and a couple of days later they'll be returned as good as new.
Turning on to Tadiwala Road, things are lively. It's not a wide road at this point - you won't see many cars - but there's always the odd rickshaw and no shortage of bicycles, motorbikes and scooters. There's a vibrant, colourful mix of pedestrians, stalls and roadside hawkers. Fancy a tattoo? A bootleg Bollywood VCD? A poster of Shah Rukh Khan? No problem.
If I turned left, I'd be walking towards the centre of the slum. Tadiwala Road is little more than a kilometre in length, yet more than 30,000 people live in the slum area. When you see the cramped, narrow lanes and packed-together shanty housing you can see just how this is possible. The road here, petering out into a rough lane, terminates up by the river. When the river burst its banks last July due to the excessive monsoon rains, many families were displaced and a number of hutments were destroyed or washed away. For several days, everyone here was knee-deep in filthy water.
Today, as on most days, I'll take a right turn instead. On the corner there's a small tapri stall selling tea, samosas, wada pav and onion bhajis. Tasty if not necessarily healthy, there's usually something frying away in a deep dish of oil. Next door there's a watch stall; opposite, another grocery shop. A couple of guys have parked up their handcarts and are selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Some women, sitting on the ground, are selling today's newspapers. I get my copy of the Indian Express home delivered, so I walk on.
After just another twenty seconds or so, dodging scooters, running children and some mangy-looking dogs, I come up to Deep Griha Society's Family Welfare Centre, facing a small flour mill operation, where the sound (or silence) of the threshing machine gives a useful indication of whether the electricity supply is functioning or not.
Past the FWC, there are a couple more snack stalls and a barbershop. Opposite is a 'lottery centre' for those who like to gamble. Conveniently for those concerned, there's a dingy looking place next door where some of the local men - and it is only men - like to enjoy some illicit liquor. Today there's a man slumped outside. His trousers are open, his shirt is riding up and he's passed out by the none-too-clean gutter.
I continue over the junction with Dhole Patil Road. From here, Tadiwala Road is a little wider - suitable for cars - and is surfaced with tarmac. On the right hand side are a several residential buildings that provide housing for the families of Indian Railways employees. Squat blocks of three storeys, they remind me a little of the ex-council flat I used to share in Balham. They are not luxurious. The buildings are arranged around an open space usually occupied with children playing street cricket.
Passing by a few months ago, I saw a crowd gathered outside, watching the demolition of a couple of unauthorised constructions that had utilised the exterior wall of one of the railway buildings as a convenient starting point. Within minutes, a JCB had pulled down the flimsy structures and loaded the rubble into a waiting dustcart. DGS lost a one-room Balwadi (pre-school) during this operation. The area is now walled off - I don't know what happened to the previous occupants. Slum dwellers are always wary about the threat of demolitions; when politicians promise a crackdown on illegal constructions, slums are always first in the firing line. Yet the wealthy homeowners and businessmen who have added illegal extra floors and balconies to their buildings usually sleep soundly - they'll probably be allowed to 'regularise' for a small fee.
Continuing down the road, things start to move upmarket. Mixed in with the cheap-and-cheerful restaurants along here, there's a fancy-looking business hotel, a British Airways office and a Chevrolet dealership. Just past the railway housing, Tata Consultancy Services has a shiny new building. Next is the National Institute of Naturopathy, which offers a variety of ayurvedic treatments along with beginner, intermediate and advanced yoga classes. I lasted about a week.
Now I'm almost at the bottom of Tadiwala Road. On the right hand side there's a modern church building - Our Lady of Perpetual Help. On the left, there's Sohrab Hall, a kind of office block-cum-shopping centre that houses several boutiques, travel agents and life insurers, a Pizza Express restaurant, a high-end gym, and a US visa centre. Thirty or forty homeless people live on the pavement just opposite. At the traffic lights, children beg at the lights. Women holding newborn babies breathe in horrendous pollution all day as they weave in and out of traffic asking for a few rupees.
So there you have it - a microcosm of urban India itself. The rich living side by side with the poor. Opulence and luxury contrasted to abject poverty. Be it the homeless people by Sohrab Hall, or the labourers in hutments next to the Kumar Pinnacle swimming pool, this is India.
A few years ago, someone coined the term 'India Shining' to describe India's promised economic miracle. President Bush has just been in New Delhi to discuss free trade so that India's burgeoning middle-class - estimated at 300 million people - can spend their disposable income on American goods and services.
But the fruits of the growing economy are not available to all. Is India really shining for the slum residents of Pune? Are the ever-expanding slums in Mumbai and Delhi a healthy sign of increasing urban employment or a stark reflection of life in rural areas? Are farmer suicides, gender-based selective abortions, communal riots and large-scale political corruption all healthy indicators of the state of the nation?
In India, 45 per cent of all children aged under five are malnourished. But in the cities at least, you can always go for a pizza.
posted by Paul Heron at 11:56 pm
6 Comments:
What a great piece of writing. You've really managed to get the feel of the place and it is the next in a string of things that have made me think. I'm impressed and it was a real joy to read.
David Lyon
I have visited Deep Griha Welfare Centre and walked down Tadiwala Road and I feel you have captured it realistically. Your piece of writing really touched me as I could imagine myself walking through the hussle and bussle all over again. It was a pleasure to read your article.
only hutsmen dont stay in d slums next to kumar pinnacle
good right up! i was really engrossed when you mentioned the church - our lady of perpetual help!! they used to run a school at the same place and studied there!!Studied from kg1,kg2,1st, and 2nd standards! the places you mentioned are the very places i learnt cycling and biking in ! and most of the tennis ball cricket matches were with teams from these places on tadiwala road and ladkatwadi! this was where i grewup long before they demolished an old christian hospital and built the sohrab hall on it! i dunno if its still there, but i think u missed divadkar lodge (famous for housing international students) and a gandhi sevashram!!Whew!
But the issue is that, the liqour shop and the public urinal...make it the worse place.
Thank you for bringing that road back to life. I spent a fair amount of time on that street at the Mother Teresa's Home, and your description took me back there.
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