Willem and I met up again yesterday and took a local train two stops north to a poorer area of the city where conditions are far inferior to the area I’ve been living in. The local train, kind of an open-air subway, is very crowded and old. Many people hang outside the open train doors to catch the breeze — it’s feels a bit unsafe to me, although the train doesn’t travel very fast.
Took a lot of photos available in two albums here and here. Please check them out. Words are insufficient to describe what I’m seeing.
Filled mostly with run-down little shops and slum flats, the sidewalks were covered with chickens and goats, the roads filled with the congested traffic of angry taxis and people pulling very heavy loads. Tons of street vendors sold all sorts of food and fruit, mostly covered with flies.
Willem bought this sweet cake thing that actually looked quite good, but I’m still a bit afraid of trying anything off the street. Walking into smaller alleys off the main road, we came across several shops that looked like auto wreckyards, with many men crouched around destroyed car parts, trying to sort through them, looking for something usable.
By Western standards, these conditions are wretched. It’s no wonder that disease is so highly communicable when conditions are so unsanitary, and children are playing in areas infested with insects and dead animals.
Willem said that most of Mumbai’s population lives in similar or worse conditions — and that the reason many people sleep on the streets is that they cannot afford to commute from work areas to residential locations that are even less expensive and more abysmal. It’s impossible to compare life here with the kinds of luxuries we enjoy back home. But it does make me think of how very privileged I have been.
