Imagine this, you hop on a plan to Mumbai waiting impatiently to see the skyscrapers and other tall building and get once in an lifetime opportunity to get a aerial of the dream city. Your plane starts descending through the clouds. Expectantly, you wait for the opening shot.
Not only you do not get what you expected but all you see is a sea, a sea of blue tarpaulin sheet stretched across hundreds of shoddy homes. You somehow ignore them till you arrive at the beautiful International Airport. While your plane is taxing you see numerous hangars with various kinds of fancy planes but lift your eyes up a little and there you have it again.The same old slums.
This experience literally describes the real condition of Mumbai away from all the spotlight and fancy buildings. It's one of the most disturbing I have found in Mumbai which has rightly been ignored by the people, media and most of all the government. Anywhere you visit, you will find this parallel irony rich and poor living on the different sides of the road. On the one side you have the clean, aesthetic looking buildings and on the other slums which lack even the basic facility of drinking water. The culture of these two different areas shows two different cultures of Mumbai. On one side you have the hip-hop up to date fashion streak and on the other side you have the low labour class which does all the lowly work of the city.The rich part of time depends on the part for keeping the city going and poor part relies on the rich to keep the city going.
Now the place where the rich part meets the poor part is the public transport system of Mumbai. This is where Mumbai gets it's uniqueness from. The thing which is great about Mumbai is that the public transport system is not only used by the poor( as the norm in other cities of India) but also by the rich equally. This presents to anyone who is looking( like me) a great kind of zoo where you can see all the animals of the city from the fully dolled up office worker, to the construction worker who just fractured his hand.
Coming back to the irony part, The irony of the whole thing is just how a simple road can differentiate between the rich and poor. I mean the difference is literally in front of ones eyes. On one side we have a area where there are complains about not allowing puppies in buildings whereas the other area lacks even the ability to ensure enough food themselves let alone the poor puppies. Everywhere you go, every new that is developed has the same scheme of things, and what does the city do about this problem, apparently nothing. The slums are either removed completely or ignored. The city department instead of trying to solve the problem.. erases it(how intelligent of them). What's worse the shoddy "redevelopment" plans take lifetimes to develop.So when the city should be trying to create an environment which inculcates the growth and development does nothing but destroy, the results are horrific. It results into an whole generation of kids pushed again into the same cycle of poverty which affected their parents, grandparents and their parents before them. The PARALLEL IRONY is shocking!!
What is amazing about it is that it makes Mumbai a totally different experience where you get the salt and sugar in the same bite. The slums have been, in contrast to popular opinion a great boon for the people of this city because slums here are the reason the city is still alive.
So the solution to this problem is to just provide the slums with better facilities, ensure that there are just provided with basic human facilities. Believe me when I say this, the people of the slum will be happy with just basic water, health care and schooling. They don't need tall skyscrapers or puppies for that matter of fact....
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| source: gettyimages.com |
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