Photo by Sudharak Olwe

Photo by Sudharak Olwe

Photo by Vishal Olwe

Photo by Anuja Gupta

Photo by Ravi Shekhar

Episode 1

Early one chilly January morning, Anuja Gupta, Vishal Olwe and I stand on a paver-block pavement fronting a vast stretch of hutments, part of the Mahim stretch of Dharavi. This is where the scrap and plastic recyling units, which contribute significantly to Dharavi’s famed economy, are located. Anuja has been working in the area for over a year, Vishal too has charted it for a considerable time. This is my first visit. I don’t quite know what to expect. Or maybe I do, fuelled by the ideas of Dharavi that have become part of our consciousness through the images of garbage and filth most often seen in the media. But as we step into the narrow alley that leads into the unknown expanse ahead, the first thing I smell is washing soap.

The alley is faced on both sides by tall sheets of corrugated metal. As we walk down this bounded passageway, I catch glimpses of young men sleeping in the little available space in rooms that double up as workshops. Some of them are just beginning to rouse, washing up in the space outside the rooms, in the passage itself. A few are engaged in sweeping. That this is a Sunday makes no difference. It’s just another working day in Dharavi. Most of the rooms are piled high with white sacks bulging with scrap. In another section, the piles are of rubber tyres.

“People here mean business,” says Anuja- a message that I soon discover the truth of in subsequent trysts with Dharavi. People here for the most part are brisk and busy, and time indeed is money. But for now, she’s taking me to meet a man who was done with the ‘business’ phase of his life, and who has seen Dharavi grow around him. We find Hariram Dilliwalla seated on a charpoy in the lower level of his two-storey house, looking through the morning papers. Behind him, against a rough brick wall rise the ubiquitous white sacks, attesting to Dilliwalla’s profession as a scrap dealer.

“I came to Dharavi in 1973,” he says in chaste Hindi, recounting his journey from Haryana to Mumbai. “I taught P.T. at a school in a small village. I was appointed headmaster because I was a graduate, but there was a lot of pressure from the parents of students to pass them in subjects and so on. We’d be offered bribes-ghee or wheat or milk-but I didn’t want to be a part of that. My uncle was here in Mumbai, running a scrap business from Kherwadi. He wanted someone who could help him and take care of the accounts as well. So I came here.”

Dilliwalla’s first years were spent traversing Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, sourcing scrap. When that became unprofitable, he confined his operations to Mumbai. The decision to set up home in Dharavi was a pragmatic one. “All the scrap dealers were here, and they opened shop at different times. Rather than move back and forth from Kherwadi to Dharavi, I decided to live here itself. My first ‘home’ was cane matting wound around four bamboo poles,” he smiles.

Built in that same location-incidentally on a plot that was reserved to build a primary school-Dilliwalla’s home now has two rooms on the ground floor and a flight of steep stairs leading to the quarters above, from where we hear the sounds of his family just beginning to wake up. It has even survived the wave of demolitions that took place under former BMC deputy commissioner G R Khairnar, an event which set Dilliwalla onto his second innings as social activist. He joined the People’s Responsible Organisation of United Dharavi (PROUD) and soon became the local area representative. This morning, he dispenses quick advice to a woman who comes in asking how to renew her ration card as per the new governmental directives.

Dilliwalla was a firm supporter of the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan when it was first announced, but has grave doubts now. “When they talked about redeveloping the area by dividing it into five sectors, we were assured that only big builders would take up the project, which would have ensured a certain standard of work and uniform facilities across sectors. But with the subdivision into 32 clusters that the government is now proposing, smaller players will come in. And each cluster will definitely not have all the utilities, whether it’s a hospital or school or park. That can create a lot of problems for residents,” he points out.

In the children’s fable Rumplestiltskin, a young woman is locked into a room and forced to spin hay into gold. Dilliwalla has, quite literally, made gold from scrap. “In the days when everyone used fountain pens, the nibs were sometimes made of gold. I saved each one I found and took them to the goldsmith and got some jewellery made for my wife,” says Dilliwalla who sorts the scrap by hand and can identify 15 different qualities of plastic by touch, only occasionally needing to use chemicals. His earnings from the scrap business have helped him raise a daughter and two sons, who now want him to “retire”. Dilliwalla struck a compromise-he works just as much as he wants to. “I tried not working for a while, and relied on my sons to support me. But I like to have a little money in my pocket. I have a lot of friends whom I enjoy treating to tea, and I like spending my own money for that,” he says to us, grey eyes twinkling over steaming cups of tea.

-Rohini Nair