Bandra Slum - A View from the Bridge

Wed. 5 January 2011 

View from the elevated walkway that leads to the Bandra train station.  There is a slight breeze, but the atmosphere is very hazy, the sky is gray, not blue, the filtered sunlight is warm.   People pass in a continual stream in both directions, even at this mid-afternoon hour.   Below me, and to the rear, four huge pipelines, at least 10 feet in diameter, parallel a dirt pathway that runs between them and an open sewage canal.  Men come and go from the corner behind the public toilet facility, urinating on the trash to avoid paying a few pennies to enter the official outhouse.  On the other side of the canal there is a green patch of grass and low bushes, bisected by dirt pathways where individuals often linger, squatting to defecate, sometimes in the middle of the path!  Is this related to the term "squatter" when applied to unofficial housing sites?  Next to the brush there is a small cultivated area with squares of low green plants, leafy vegetables that will be harvested and sold along the street.  They must be irrigated with water from the stagnant pond next to the toilet areas, the reason salads don't make up any part of my diet at this moment.  Hey kids, be happy you can eat the green things that make their way to the table in America!  Beyond the extension of this elevated walkway are several multi-story office buildings and my small hotel, the Armor Court.  A busy main street separated this area from the Bandra slum quarter, a dense jumble of buildings, most from three to five levels high.  My challenge is how to create an adequate visual of this scene.   The lines I see are like those left on the screen of an etch a sketch after several people have played with it; multiple layers of lines spreading in all directions.   The rooftops form slightly sloped lines; sheets of corregated steel or plywood.   The short vertical lines that are not always perpendicular, create geometric shapes whose names I have forgotten- trapezoids, parallelograms?  various triangles?  These figures outline single room dwellings and workshops where I sometimes spot groups of men seated at sewing machines or cutting patterns for clothing, women preparing dinner, people washing.    Most colorful are the bright blue plastic tarps draped over openings or covering parts of rooftops, adding color to the predominately  gray and brown landscape  dotted with small squares of faded yellow or pink.  Openings are sometimes filled with recycled doors and windows.  Water spews sporadically from pipes extending toward the sewage canal, adding to the already sluggish, stagnant and foul smelling sludge covered with trash.  Drying clothes, an occasional black water tank and an occasional satellite dish decorate the uneven and multi-layered roofs.  To the left of the sewage canal there is a busy bus stop, a dusty playground which serves as a cricket field in the evening ( the ball often ending up in the sewage canal and having to be retrieve with a pole or by throwing rocks to create ripples that propel it to the edge), a small street market and leanto tarps serving as housing.    Between this walkway and the rail station, women scrub their laundry on top of a cement platform that covers the large pipes where they go underground and cook over open fires.  Their living quarters are a kind of row house development of two and three story buildings constructed almost exclusively of sheets of corregated fiberglass and metal- gray, brick red, green and blue.  Access to the upper levels is achieved  by means of steep ladder stairs resting on the ground.  Children, goats and stray dogs share the trash dump that occupies about half of the open space.  The soundtrack to this panoramic scene- a cacaphony of notes eminating from the horns of tuk tuks (three wheeled motorized rickshaws), taxis, buses, trucks and cars, whose impatient drivers have developed the nervous habit of honking, necessary or not.  The shrill whistle of trains stopping in the station for 15-20 seconds to load and unload passengers adds variety to the musical score.

Time to vacate my seat, one of the three plastic chairs provided for pedestrians at the bend of the elevated walkway.  A maintenance worker, dressed in bright orange coveralls, someone I met on my first trip across this pathway, has been seated at my side watching me write this journal entry.  We have a communication problem, but as I rose to leave, he called someone in his family who speaks English, to tell me hello. The information I gained was basic; he is married and has a 3 year old daughter.   His welcoming smile, his handshake and hug, and the fact that he shared the seating space for nearly an hour conveyed his feelings and message.  Welcome to Mumbai.