The heart of India’s financial capital holds the largest slum of the sub-continent and the continent, Dharavi. Now a universal brand name for all the slums it is the most densely populated environ in the world being a house for more than one million people. Mumbai, the place where the urbanization made people hard to find a living space and enjoys a top position for highest rentals in the planet, holds Dharavi that provides accommodation for the less privileged class for as cheap as 185 Rs per month and makes out an annual turn over of about $650 from its inhabitance. Pottery, leather industry, soap factories, plastic manufacturing units, all sorts of recycling units, and innumerous small scale industries make people run their lives here. These vicinities were fishermen colonies and their roots are now traced out.
These slum where portrayed in many movies and most of the non Mumbai-vallas remember these slums recollecting their heroes of these movies. My propagandistic images of heroes in slums have changed as I read an article in The Week, ‘Born for others’, it was not about the dull shaded tea stall fights, or a scruffy old building fight sequel or not a story of a underworld don or a climax set made by RGV, it was true stories of men and women made of flesh and blood. The pictures that I saw through Google images were not as good as I have thought off, I admit Danny Boyle got a lot of it. Narrow streets, creeks fill with all disposals from recycle plants, human wastes, smelly air, plastics, rows and columns of asbestos making up an aerial view of small houses, cement laid floors, clay, toil and dull half thrown plywood sheets forming walls, all seemed like an thickly crowded sand homes of ant or bees.
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile”, I believe in “It’s your life u live it, do something of it for others”. One’s luxury is the basic need for other. Still three times food a day is a luxury for a lot. Poverty, child labor, child sex abuse, illiteracy, gender discriminations all is not alien to any Indian community and are as clear as nose in our face. Our nation has jumped out from many gray areas; she enjoys a credit of faster developing nation. There are lots of things that we can vow to the society, just when we walk to any eatery we move by many dreary faces, a sense of apathy makes us fell why should I turn? I go blind something like night blindness, a sort of poor blindness. All can act as a one man NGO, well constrained to their limits. Selective Alzheimer’s and selective blindness is something that holds up back for long times, we all are blessed to forget the dull faces that we move by. Truly speaking just seeing leprosies I don’t want to be a Amte, I can help a true Amte by all means, I can help for a one time food, I can help him for a cloth of mine, I can help him for a need of his, I can help him out of all selfishness in me. I would like to remember these men and women, some idles of adore.
Mohammad Yaqub Mansuri, who is blind but could see the needs of less fortunate people for 20 years, the qawwali singer begged on the streets and donated the money for the marriage of 78 Hindu and Muslim girls. Aarti Naik teaches girls in a Mumbai slum to speak up for themselves. An 80-year-old retired railway employee in Bihars Samastipur has set aside his life and pension for cremating unclaimed bodies, even as people around him have little time to spare for even the living. Gauri Shanker Rajak, the poor mans reporter, brings out a handwritten weekly newspaper, Din Dalit, to highlight problems of poor people. A washerman, he himself remains poor. And as the government does nothing about child sexual abuse, Shubhangi Shinde, all of 18, educates parents of other children on the issue.
All we can is a bit of help.
“God gives nuts he dose not crack them”
These slum where portrayed in many movies and most of the non Mumbai-vallas remember these slums recollecting their heroes of these movies. My propagandistic images of heroes in slums have changed as I read an article in The Week, ‘Born for others’, it was not about the dull shaded tea stall fights, or a scruffy old building fight sequel or not a story of a underworld don or a climax set made by RGV, it was true stories of men and women made of flesh and blood. The pictures that I saw through Google images were not as good as I have thought off, I admit Danny Boyle got a lot of it. Narrow streets, creeks fill with all disposals from recycle plants, human wastes, smelly air, plastics, rows and columns of asbestos making up an aerial view of small houses, cement laid floors, clay, toil and dull half thrown plywood sheets forming walls, all seemed like an thickly crowded sand homes of ant or bees.
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile”, I believe in “It’s your life u live it, do something of it for others”. One’s luxury is the basic need for other. Still three times food a day is a luxury for a lot. Poverty, child labor, child sex abuse, illiteracy, gender discriminations all is not alien to any Indian community and are as clear as nose in our face. Our nation has jumped out from many gray areas; she enjoys a credit of faster developing nation. There are lots of things that we can vow to the society, just when we walk to any eatery we move by many dreary faces, a sense of apathy makes us fell why should I turn? I go blind something like night blindness, a sort of poor blindness. All can act as a one man NGO, well constrained to their limits. Selective Alzheimer’s and selective blindness is something that holds up back for long times, we all are blessed to forget the dull faces that we move by. Truly speaking just seeing leprosies I don’t want to be a Amte, I can help a true Amte by all means, I can help for a one time food, I can help him for a cloth of mine, I can help him for a need of his, I can help him out of all selfishness in me. I would like to remember these men and women, some idles of adore.
Mohammad Yaqub Mansuri, who is blind but could see the needs of less fortunate people for 20 years, the qawwali singer begged on the streets and donated the money for the marriage of 78 Hindu and Muslim girls. Aarti Naik teaches girls in a Mumbai slum to speak up for themselves. An 80-year-old retired railway employee in Bihars Samastipur has set aside his life and pension for cremating unclaimed bodies, even as people around him have little time to spare for even the living. Gauri Shanker Rajak, the poor mans reporter, brings out a handwritten weekly newspaper, Din Dalit, to highlight problems of poor people. A washerman, he himself remains poor. And as the government does nothing about child sexual abuse, Shubhangi Shinde, all of 18, educates parents of other children on the issue.
All we can is a bit of help.
“God gives nuts he dose not crack them”
