Walking on alien streets all by yourself is not as daunting as walking on the streets of Dharavi for the first time. It was for the first time, last week; I walked on the most hostile roads of Mumbai. The experience was quite intimidating especially for a person like me - born and brought up in the same city and yet unaware of this crude mass of commercial settlement, `Dharavi'.
When I first landed at Mahim station, I encountered an unlikely environment, prone to civil conflict all the time. Mahim station- a host to a temple on one side of the road, and to its diagonally opposite, proudly stood a mosque. As I walked towards my destination, dharavi police station on the 90 ft road, I was welcomed by a mass of lewd comments, comments that were vulgar and funny at the same time. I think I heard someone say to me ‘seh-xy danger’ it almost broke me in to giggles. While I made conscious efforts to ignore it and walked towards my destination, I was dismayed with the experience of walking on these roads all by myself. My only goal was to reach the journey’s end as soon as possible and take the shelter of comfort from my other team members.
An experience not so pleasant to share, but what kept me going was the anticipation of a career I had been wanting to pursue, the eagerness to know my own city better and to see Asia’s largest slum.
-Ushma Jani
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