The shop barely has enough room to turn around in. Glass bangles fan out in stacked displays at the entrance, gold, red, blue, green, the kind of colour that stops you in a narrow lane. Inside, toys hang from the ceiling sealed in clear plastic: small kites still folded flat, soft balls, dolls in bright packaging. Shelves at the back hold rows of beauty products. Everything is close together. No space is wasted. 

Ajeet stands somewhere in the middle of all this with a quiet ease, unhurried, watching the lane from the threshold.

Ajeet was born in Dharavi. He grew up in these lanes, studied here through his early years before shifting to a school near Masjid station, Urdu medium. He finished his 12th standard and started his working life at a café somewhere in the city, where he trained as a barista. It was work he became fond of and which he started to take seriously. When an opportunity came to take that skill somewhere further, he was ready. Three years in Dubai. He worked at Jamaica Blue, a café chain, and the barista training he had built in Mumbai transferred cleanly into something bigger. According to him, the city was rich and fast, the work he did was more polished, and the environment was unlike anything he had experienced before. Thanks to his previous experience as a barista, he was able to speak both Hindi and English throughout his Job. He expressed his pride in learning and adapting at such a young age, and thanked his first job for teaching him that. However, despite liking the place, staying in Dubai was never the plan.

"Dubai teek tha, lekin humara desh to hamesha behtar hi hoga."

"Dubai was nice, however our country will always be better."

While he continued to admit that Dubai, the company, and the life he lived there were excellent, he always had an internal plan to go back. In his own words, he preferred to come back because he felt like he belonged in India, as his family still resided in Dharavi. According to him, he collected enough money to return and use, so the three-year stay was the plan from the beginning. When those three years ended, coming back was the default decision.

He returned and started his own business/shop. The years away had given him money, confidence, and a clearer sense of what he wanted to build. While he was originally part of a different glass industry, it had later led him to sell bangles, and bangles led him here, to this narrow shop in Dharavi Koliwada that he has been running for two years with his partner. From the outside, it displays its stock right on the street: bangles on wire stands, children's clothes hung at the entrance, everything visible and within reach. From the inside, it is even denser, shelved floor to ceiling, every corner accounted for. The bangles are mostly glass, sourced from suppliers across Bombay. The toys and beauty products fill in around them, whatever the lane asks for. 

While we were talking, a boy of about eight appeared at the entrance. He stood with his neck craned back, scanning the ceiling with the particular focus of a child who knows exactly what he wants. A Dhoom 3, he said. A spinning top, named after the Bollywood film, is somewhere up among the hanging toys. Ajeet looked up, reached, found it, and handed it down. The boy paid and left on a run. Ajeet returned to the conversation without missing a beat.

Whilst making conversation with him, we spoke about Mumbai the way people do when they’ve seen the world outside of it. He said that Mumbai is open to all, and there’s not much discrimination compared to other cities because at the end of the day, everyone just wants to get on with their business. 

In Dharavi, he said, “there is no distance between people, because the lanes don't leave room for it” subtly implying that due to the dense fabric of the neighbourhood, people end up knitting themselves and their community closer to one another. Though he had spent three years in a city that was larger, richer and more polished than anything he had ever known, in his mind, he still belonged in Dharavi.