Chapel Street, Bandra

Walking through the streets of Mumbai is an intense experience with every excursion being an adventure of its own.

For most people in the city, walking is a banal activity, something they hardly think twice about. However, during the last one month with URBZ, taking a walk through various neighbourhoods in the city has made me aware of its many unexpected dimensions.

In the city where I come from – that is Delhi – I’ve hardly ever walked. A pedestrian is considered to be a trifling being. Moreover, public space in general is highly gendered and often a long sojourn from your house to the neighbourhood deli would make you understand the power hierarchies much faster than a two hour class discussing radical feminism.

Thus, often I could not help but feel like a stranger in my own city. What kind of cities are we making? Are big cities killing the pedestrians? How public is “public” space really?

When I read Michel de Certeau’s “The practice of Everyday Life”; I could not help but be riveted by his idea of the city and what makes a city, or what I would like to call the city-fabric. According to him, the practice of walking is one of the most elementary forms of experiencing the city and something, which resonates in my mind every day.

Veronica Street, Bandra

In Mumbai, I walk daily from Sion Circle to the URBZ office in the Transit Camp. I walk in the quiet streets of Bandra where I live, I walk in the parallel universe of Dharavi with narrow streets but warm people, I walk in rush hour at the Dadar station and I also walk along the dimly lit Marine Drive at night.

Once in Bandra, wandering through the narrow lanes which melted into each other, I found myself in Chapel Street. It was a special visual experience to absorb that space in its entirety and at once I heard the city speaking to me and also to many others simultaneously.

This street- the most basic element in urban sociology- was at once static and full of life. It represented the everyday and the spectacular at the same time. I was with my colleague Francesco, and, our search for old Portuguese bungalows in Bandra led us to discover many other interesting aspects about the city. It was like having a conversation with the city-spaces and the age-old heritage- which ultimately lead me to read the “real city”; accessible only to the pedestrian and one which cannot be found in concrete apartments or high rises. It exists in all its ethnographic beauty on the street.

And, that’s when I also realised how spaces are an affect. Reading spaces, streets, neighbourhoods-be it by walking or any other such fundamental impulse – makes you re-discover the larger relationship that exists between the social and the purely geographical.

On another assignment with Shyam, who also works at URBZ, I walked into the labyrinth called Dharavi; knowing little what was to come. We started from our office in the Transit Camp and within the next two hours wehad reached Mahim and crossed almost every street that lay between. The rich texture of the neighbourhoods that we saw, the people we met and the houses we were invited in, created an immediate relationship with the physical spaces we explored that day.

Mary from Dharavi

Amongst the twenty odd people we interviewed that day, we met Mary. She makes chai just around the corner from the URBZ office. I did not even know of her existence during the last two months of my working. Mary makes chai all day long in her little shop which she shares with another lady, Devi. For both of them, the street is their office, home and playground all at once.

The small streets in the big city are one of the most important features of Mumbai’s fabric. And, somewhere down the line- the everyday practice of walking and this raw city-fabric lead you to each other. On both the above mentioned occasions, in some odd way; it seemed like I strengthened my relationship with the city.

I wonder what Michel de Certeau would have said had he walked the streets of Dharavi! More on that in a subsequent post….

“Bombay is a crowd. But I began to feel, when I was some way into the city from the airport that morning, that the crowd on the pavement and the road was very great, and that something unusual might be happening.”

Every new visitor to Bombay, has had a similar observation to that of V. S. Naipaul, as he arrived in the city to write his dark, vibrant, and exciting travelogue, India: A Million Mutinies Now. He was introduced to a city of much warmth; a city of much chaos; a city of many people.

Ever since Naipaul’s experiences were documented between 1988 and 1990, an incredible process of transformation has continued to change the face of Bombay; now Mumbai. Many of the neighbourhoods of 1988 have grown into sky-scraping districts, embracing global connections and international faces. The faces of Naipaul’s “crowds” themselves have changed in so many ways, experiencing warm embrace, violent clash, and boisterous development. Some have become wealthy, while others have remained poor.

As urbanists continue to stretch and scrunch the literary fabric of today’s Mumbai, it is important to make reference to these wonderful works of the past. They remind us that documentations must be made of the city’s most cherished and personal vessels; its people.

Mumbai, “is a crowd”. But what do we see in the crowds of today?

On the 6^th and 7^th of this month we organised a 48 hour workshop with and for the residents of New Transit Camp in Dharavi. We have spent now nearly 3 months working with the children at the Dharavi Shelter, creating a new platform for art and expression, learning about the residents’ lives and thoughts and sharing this space for learning and growing.

We have been engaged in activities ranging from drawing and painting, animation screening, dance, visits to the city, as well as improving the current space we inhabit. What has been very special from the start of this small initiative, is that we have closely worked with the residents of the community, always seeking elders advice and understanding the communities´ aspirations and hopes for the shelter, and we have been working hard to try and achieve them.

The 48 hour event we organised in Dharavi had two main aims, one was to gain some more funds for our dreams for the site to include a space for a library and a computer room, as well funds for more activities, and the other was to raise more awareness and get more people involved in the shelter and its activities.

The event was incredible, not because we raised a lot of money (because we honestly didn’t!) but because together with the effort of so many volunteers and the community we engaged in two days of sharing, learning and lots of fun with so many new creative activities with the children.

The first 24 hours

So the first day, after setting up the artwork for sale and organising the hall, we began our daytime activities. The children engaged in a drawing competition facilitated by Common Room artists Khushnam and Anitra. This was followed by a clay workshop by a group of youth from neighbouring ‘Khumbarwada’ (a part of Dharavi where Gujarati potters live and work) who made little toys and objects out of clay. In the afternoon, a painting workshop was conducted by American artist Alison Reeves and in addition to this, Sejal and Snowy, also conducted a mural painting workshop with a group of children inside the Shelter. They painted the walls with blackboard paint to enable the space to be used for learning in the future.

In addition to all the art activities, Sudharak Olwe, from the Times of India Group, and his team of photographers also exhibited the photographic work they have been doing in Dharavi and made a presentation about their future work. Now their team is interested in commencing a photography workshop with the children so that the children document their environment and neighbourhood streets.

In this space, we also displayed an Austrian exhibition which documented ´cultures of living´ through images of homes and people which were photographed and then exchanged to later emerge as a book.

At the event, Italian and German and students from Liebniz University that had been working in Dharavi for a week learning about the history of the houses, presented back to the community what they had learnt and what they wished to work on in the future. The work was exhibited in the main hall enabling community residents to discuss and critique what they saw. It was an extremely valuable opportunity for sharing and learning as well as generating discussions about people’s stories, their creative efforts and their aspirations.

Lastly, the evening ended with a beautiful musical performance by sitar player Madhusudhan Kumar who was accompanied by his tabla player. The musicians called on the participation of the children and beckoned them onto stage to give them an introduction to classical Indian rhythms. The children sang and screamed to their hearts content!

The last 24 hours

The second day began with new energy and new volunteers. Roy, Avani, Parul and Steve, brought with themselves lots of paper plates, feathers, glitter and paints and conducted an extremely enjoyable mask making activity with the children. In addition to this an Italian photographer, that has travelled around India for quite many months, dropped by to show his work to the children and learn about their opinions and thoughts about what they saw. The Khumbars, dropped by again as well, this time to demonstrate to the audience, their pot making skills on the spinning wheel. In addition Yashmi and Namta did an incredible mural painting workshop with the children in the entrance wall of the shelter, where they joined in a collaborative effort to paint a tree with many branches and gathered the children to write their names all around it.

In the early evening, we were joined by the Capoeria group in Mumbai, who came to conduct a small class and perform their beautiful art at the event. Rezah Massah, the professor of the team, imbibed the audience with uplifting energy and gathered the children to do some capoeira exercises. This was then followed by a brilliant performance from the team.

Koli (the fishermen folk and original residents of Dharavi and the city) set up a stall and sold delicious fish treats for the hungry bellies throughout the evening. People mingled, gathered, shared, learnt, danced, smiled, participated and most importantly enjoyed themselves!

The final activity for the event was the much waited dance competition the children had been practicing for weeks. Paul’s wife (who owns the shelter and has encouraged us to work there) took over the stage and presented the dancers show. This was followed by a prize distribution and lots of music, dancing and fun!

The event was a great opportunity for us to reach out to more people that came to learn about the Shelter, but most importantly for the children and  residents to engage in a 2 day art event that brought people from outside to step into Dharavi for the first time and learn what this place is really about; a place where ambitions are strong, and aspirations are high, where children have an incredible energy and a capacity to learn and swallow the world if given the opportunity, where the worlds future artists and creative minds exist, where people have the will, the strength and heart to make things change for the better by themselves. A place that needs to be legitimized so that people can synergize all their positive energy into working towards their future rather than battling against a system by which they are deemed illegal, by a system that doesn’t collaborate with the residents to understand who they really are, by a system that wants to use a ‘tabula rasa’ approach and force them all to start from zero all over again.

A few weeks ago, our Sunday was spent painting clay pots that we purchased from the nearby Dharavi neighbourhood of Khumbarwada, which is only a five minute walk from the Dharavi Shelter and the Transit Camp.

From some of our small donations that we have received up to this date, we managed to buy some pots, paints, brushes and wire. The children from the Shelter organised themselves into groups and painted the clay pots producing some incredible patterns and designs. A local resident then came in to help us hang the pots in the entrance patio of our Shelter and at the same time we began painting the bricks on the entrance wall in the patio.

This activity was one of a series of activities we are want to carry out to transform the Shelter and develop it into an incredible and beautiful space for art, creativity, exchange and learning.

The following images have some more of our plans to convert the remaining space we have surrounding the existing structure. We have included approximate costs for each of these activities.

Your contributions are most welcome!

A picnic had been a strong request for weeks now and so Himanshu and I thought that taking them to the Kala Ghoda Arts festival in Mumbai would be an extremely enjoyable experience for learning, sharing and engaging in other creative activities that are experienced by other people in this city.

Our Sunday began with a slow start. Organising 22 children and getting them on a public bus into town was a hard task! However on arrival, we realised that things were actually no going to get easier as we had initially thought! At the entrance of the children’s activity area of the festival we met a little resistance. We had asked for prior permission to bring approximately 20 children to the activity area and had received an ok, but when we arrived on Sunday, with our 22 children, 6 volunteers and all our bundles of excitement, we were told at first – ‘’sorry these children cant come in… you cant do this….and we will not get them a t-shirt….these children will come tomorrow again asking for t-shirts!”

Why does our class-based society promote so much social exclusion? These sweeping judgements were unnecessary and uncalled for. Just because our children don’t speak english and wear expensive clothes, they need not be excluded in actively participating in a festival that promotes arts and culture in the city. We were shocked! The children from Dharavi have homes, go to school and live in a place of richness and importance to the rest of the city.

But that was just a sour start that we soon sorted with a little anger, a little passion and a bit of pointless paperwork. The manager then came to meet us and was a nice young man that let us participate in the activities! The rest was a day of fun and memories, not only for the children but also Sytse, a fellow intern, said it was his best day in India so far!

The children got involved in clay-making activities, painting, getting tattoos painted on their arms, and some of the bold ones even got on stage to sing the audience a song. They walked around the festival curiously eyeing what caught their attention, listened to music, watched capoeria, ate wada pao and returned after a day of pleasurable enjoyment!