DINDOSHI REVISITED

When I was first taken to Dindoshi in April 1988 it was a piece of wasteland at the very edge of Bombay where the city had literally dumped several thousand pavement dwellers who'd been living in the heart of the Tthings were pretty bad. There was no work, no electricity, just one water pump, and many of the people Julian talked with had already decided it was better to sell up and move back into the city, to their work and life on the pavement. In 1993 I finally returned.

I think this is same place. But it doesn't look the same. Unless my memory's playing me tricks! Dindoshi was cold and desolate and empty, surrounded by the jungle and wild beats. But this place is buzzing with life. Full of houses and people. Can't be the same place! With me are Bali, one of the Sadak Chhaaps, and Yunus, my taxi driver who lives on the pavement on Water Street back in Byculla.

Back in 1988, several thousand pavement dwellers from the heart of the city had been deposited here. They were literally dumped out of trucks at the edge of the city limits. Even today, if you climb up the top of the hill behind Dindoshi you can see the downtown skyscrapers on Nariman Point through the haze, twenty miles away. The City gave them land on a hillside surrounded by what was then jungle. Told them to get on with their lives and to be thankful for small mercies.

The only other thing I know is that Mahila Milan now works up here.

I've got a date with Lopez, who's in charge here. But I've forgotten how to get to the office. And Bali and Yunus aren't much help either. But after what seems like an eternity we eventually turn a corner and bump into Nutan, a familiar face, and the right place.

“You had come here before? No?”

Five years ago. t didn't look this at all.

“Lots of changes.”

Lopez - a familiar face - enters the office
“Finally, you reached!”

And then, before we've even had a chance to sit down, a sudden monsoon shower just sweeps up the lane, and then goes as swiftly as it came.

As soon as it stops Lopez whisks me off down the lane. The houses on either side of the lane were built without permisison on city land. But the end of the lane opens out into a little square of neat, brick houses. These are legal and they're Lopez's pride and joy.

A big sign reads Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society, designed and constructed by Mahila Milan. It's like a little Mediterranean village. Forty houses, the first ever designed and built by the pavement dwellers here and in Byculla. Proof that there is a rainbow at the end of the long tunnel.

Sunandar Kalgoankar wants to show us her house. But her husband's got the day off and he needs to put his trousers on before I can cross the thresh hold. And there's someone else I need to get permission from.

Lopez asks Sunanda to switch off the ceiling fan. The room measures twelve by sixteen with a mezzanine that you get to via a wooden ladder. Sunanda and her family made the mezzanine themselves. The electricity is also a legal connection.

That's what Lopez says. But Sunanda says she's getting her electricity for the moment from a private party, which doesn't sound very legal to me. Sunanda says the legal connecti.on will happen next week.

Tommy the dog has plopped back into his snooze so thoroughly that for one moment an awful thought crosses my mind.

“That dog’s gone very. He's still alive?”

Tommy heard me and suddenly starts barking.

“Sunanda, how much did you have to borrow?

Sunanda saved 1,000 Rupees as a member of Mahila Milan's housing bank. That was her down payment. Mahila Milan used its collateral to get each of the forty householders a low interest loan of 13,000 Rupees from the HDFC, the Indian equivalent of HUDCO.

Sunanda has to repay that loan at 9 percent interest or 135 Rupees a month. Now, building a solid house for 13,000 Rupees is just about unheard of. But the members of the Dindoshi branch of Mahila Milan had done it with sweat equity. They'd done most of the heavy labor themselves.

And one of them - Meera Ale - learnt how to make the reinforced concrete blocks called ladis that are used for the mezzanine floors and the roof. And then she taught the others.
None of these houses has a toilet. It would take up valuable living space and raise the cost of the house. The new homeowners, like most poor people, prefer community toilets. So they've built eight toilets plus a wash room in the middle of their compound. Lopez says they're already hooked up to the city sewage system.

The toilets look and smell clean, which is unusual and reassuring. But what Lopez really wants to show me is the model house, at the bottom of the lane.
The floor plan of each house is just twelve by fifteen feet. But by raising the roof from eight to fourteen feet there's now room to put in a second floor or loft, almost doubling the square footage.

If necessary, up to ten people can sleep in the loft.

“Who's the person who thought up the loft floor, the idea of it?”

Lopez says it’s used everywhere in Mumbai. “The Municipality gives 115 square feet, but that’s not enough for a family, because half of the place goes like kitchen, bathroom. The municipality designed the original houses, but there was no loft.”

Lopez is a man of trenchant opinions. Somewhat embarrassing sometimes, because he just barges in without any pretense of respecting the privacy of the poor woman who's resting and enjoying the afternoon movie on her old 21 inch color TV.

Lopez cautions me not to ask if the connection is legal. Anyway, Lopez would much rather watch the film than talk about how it ends up on the screen here.

It's one of those splendid Bollywood musicals where the hero - Shami Kapoor - serenades the gorgeous girl while somehow managing to keep his MG sports car on the road. But it’s his female companion who intrests Lopez.

“This is Vyjantimala. You think she is very beautiful?”

“Quite beautiful, Lopez.”

The walls of the little house are painted bright blue. There's a large wooden bed that doubles as a couch and, at the back, a kitchen area with racks and racks of clean metal thalis.
“So that's the most perfect house...I could live here!”

To show off his muscles, Lopez tries to lift a ladi. The thing weighs 60 to 80 pounds.
“no, no, Lopez, don't do that! You're forty three. You'll be dead. Have a hernia!

Next, Lopez wants to show me another communal toilet, but this one built by the city. Same basic eight cubicle toilets. But so dirty I can't get within fifteen feet of the first one without putting my foot literally in it! No maintenance. In other words, if you don't have responsibility for something you have no incentive to keep it clean.

The Mahila Milan members of the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society, on the other hand, put money and muscle into building their toilets. And they keep them clean. Pride of ownership. Nothing to do with being poor. In fact, the poor are often the cleanest people I know in India. Poor and Proud both begin with the letter P.

One man steps through the filth to fill a water bucket from the municipal pump, and then has to wash his feet clean before daring return home.

But he's the exception. The only people who dare brave the muck are some hens, and a cock who struts around as though he's Lord of the Manor. And a goat, who's foraging garbage from a trash barrel.

Goats in India are extraordinary animals. They have to be to survive. They'll strip a tree of its bark and leaves and condemn it to a living death.

But this goat's highly enterprising, even by the usual goat standards. He's actually climbed inside the barrel, so that no one else can lay claim to his meal.

Outside another house is a small field of bright red mirchis or chillis.

If you want to dry something like chillies in India, you just spread them outside your front door. People will simply walk round them. If you leave chillis to dry and then pound them into powder they’ll become very hot.

Down the lane come a group of girls in school uniforms, black pigtails bouncing in the breeze.
“Where are these school girls coming from? Is there a school just here?”

Lopex says the school is just here. It only goes up to seventh standard. Beyond that pupils have to take the bus and go elsewhere. I pester Lopez why they can’t build a high school if they can build houses and toilets. The question simply doesn’t interest him.

It's this sort of attitude from Lopez that gets me mad. If pavement dwellers can build houses, set up a bank, why the hell can't someone like Lopez go out and badger the Education Department into setting up Secondary Schools in places like Dindoshi?

I had the same argument earlier today over transport. Lopez told me it costs most families 300-400 Rupees a month in bus and train fares just to get to and from school or the train station.

“OK, I said. Why don't you get a loan, buy a second-hand minivan and run it as a private bus, taking residents to the train station? You can charge half the price of the city buses, pay back the loan and generate employment for some of the men and women here as drivers and mechanics?”

“Oh no! We can't do that!” says Lopez. “It's not allowed!”

Lopez. There are times I just want to beat you up!

I offer Lopez an ice cream. Most of the schoolgirls in their navy blue and white uniforms have giggled round Raju the ice-cream seller. It's hot and I like ice-cream.

“Is this real cream?” I ask Raju.

“No, It is not real cream..it is not real ice-cream. It is like 50% is real and 50% is from milk curds.”

Raju makes it himself. Raju's an unemployed engineering graduate. He and his family makes this concoction every morning at home. They don't have a fridge. So it has to be sold pretty quick. And doubtless it is!

Now for the taste test.

”What do you put in it? Milk? Sugar?”

“Sugar and milk and some sweets. And substances. Sweet substances.”

“What substances?”

“Condiments!”

Raju has lots of eager customers. He's buying time. I don't think he wants to answer me. But I want to find out.

“What sort of substances? I'm worried about this...what sort of substances, Raju?” A list of disgusting possibilities flits through my mind.

“Milk or sugar, What I say? Butter. That will be product of the milk. Cardamon. And then ice.”

“So there's some sort of butter product in here. Is it ghee? No, it's not ghee.”
“Not ghee, no.”

Truth to tell, it wasn't very good. The unidentified substances give it a taste of melted cardboard with flavoring.

First time I came here in 1988 I remember beyond the perimeter road is thick jungle.

Still there. And in the distance a waterfall tumbles down the hill. When the sun's out and your tummy's full it's quite nice.

But if you're tummy's never full and you have no work and no money it's just another hell-hole.
Total population here is now 20,000 crammed into these few acres. Mahila Milan's got 400 members. A drop in the bucket. But not bad.

We head back towards the office, past rows of barbers, and the astrologers wonky two story house that sounds crammed to the gills with clients.

And run smack bang into the lolly or popsicle seller. Time for another taste-test.
These Golas or popsicles are basically shaved ice with a shot of colored liquid of dubious origin but supposed to be fruit juice. The stuff is dirt cheap. And it looks it. Four annas a glass.

I decide against doing the taste test. The guy is a bit pissed off and starts shouting things that are not very polite at me and Lopez.

We beat a hasty retreat, first to the office, and then into Yunus's car and home, to the Big City, twenty miles and two hours of bumper to bumper traffic jams to the south.

Essay
Episodes 1 - 4
Episodes 5 - 8
Episodes 9 - 12
Episodes 13 - 16
Episodes 17 - 20
Episodes 21 - 24
Episodes 25 - 28
Episodes 29 - 32
Episodes 33 - 35

Main Episode List
Cast of Characters
Credits
MP 3

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