Bombay slums of India (54 photos). Mumbai slums: history, description and interesting facts Do children in the Mumbai slums receive education?

Why do Indians deliberately move to slums and how can you feel happy living in dirt and cramped conditions?

The very concept of “slum” did not originate in India, but in Europe and America. With the onset of industrial progress, villagers began to move to cities in order to find work and food. This desire for a better life led them to move from cozy village houses with tomatoes in the garden to the poorest urban areas inhabited by hard workers just like them. Today, slums range from North and South America to the Far East and Oceania. There are even entire countries, such as the Central African Republic, where almost the entire population lives in slums.

Slums in India

Like all Western inventions, slums in India have acquired their own character and flavor. They are found in almost every major city, from Delhi and Mumbai to little-known Jalandhar, with a population of 1.5 million people in northern India.

It is generally accepted that cities are usually much richer and more beautiful than villages, especially large cities. This stereotype may apply to Russia, but not to India. In this wonderland, everything is exactly the opposite. The cities, overcrowded and polluted, are a refuge for the poor from all surrounding areas. Therefore, tourists flying to Delhi often arrive on the main street where travelers stop, get out of the taxi, look around, get back into the taxi, go to the airport and quickly fly away to their homeland. Succumbing to the first impression, they involuntarily compare India with other countries and think: “If the capital is like this, then what will happen next?” - thereby depriving yourself of wonderful impressions from other places in India, much more pleasant and amazing.

Of all the poor areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore, the king of slums can be called Dharavi, the largest slum in India, which is located in Mumbai. About 1 million people live compactly on an area of ​​217 hectares, who wake up every day, have breakfast with their wives and children, and go to the city center to work.

History of Dharavi

In the 18th century, on the site of Dharavi there was an island inhabited by Koli fishermen who hunted in the surrounding mangrove swamps. The fishermen's village was called Kolivadas and existed until the moment when slums began to form in its place.

For 200 years, Mumbai was a major industrial center to which peasants flocked in hopes of finding work. Already in the middle of the 19th century, during British rule, the population of Mumbai (then Bombay) was about half a million people, which was a colossal figure for those times. And the population density of the city was ten times higher than the population density of London.

During this period, the city was divided into areas in which the local population and the British lived. The areas allocated for Indians to live in were built not like “European” ones - according to the plan, but without any planning or compliance with sanitary standards at all. In dirty neighborhoods, where there were often problems with water supply and sewerage, slums initially began to be located. When an epidemic of bubonic plague swept across India in the second half of the 19th century, it claimed the lives of almost half of the city's inhabitants, and the slums became real breeding grounds for the epidemic. It was then that, in order to combat the plague, the British began to move Indian quarters outside the city. This is how the Dharavi slum was formed.

Who lives in the slums

The composition of the residents is diverse. There are also young guys who came from villages to earn money, who exchanged the comfort of home, green rice fields and banana plantations for a small room for $3 a month and the opportunity to earn money. There are real large families in which grandparents, parents, sons with wives and children live under one roof - and sometimes they all huddle in one room. There is a red light district, where, again, for $2 you can spend time with either a girl or a guy, or with a hijra - a representative of the transvestite caste. What’s surprising is that, in our opinion, terrible living conditions do not make people unhappy. Children also run and play in the courtyards, women sit on porches and discuss their household chores, men drink masala tea and play chess.

What do slum dwellers do?

Like other areas of Indian cities, slums are divided into settlements. Here are tanners' workshops, here are waste sorters, and on this street are shops. Hindus and Muslims also traditionally live in different areas.

Slum dwellers can do whatever they want - beg and collect garbage, or even have their own small business. Indians are indeed extremely unpretentious in everyday life, and often even shop owners who work away from home do not bother renting or purchasing housing, but sleep right in the shop.

Slums are not exactly a place where absolute poverty lives. The average monthly income of local residents is $500. Although, salaries, of course, are very different. Servants, for example, earn about $50 a month (approximately 3,000 rupees).

Pros of slums

While depicting the various problems and horrors of the slums, it is sometimes so nice to immerse yourself in the exposure of this way of life and feel how lucky you are to live in a tenth floor apartment. However, India, and especially its slums, teach us, representatives of Western civilization, another lesson. For example, even in overcrowded slums, residents smile at each other when they meet, and treat each other politely and carefully. Living conditions fade into the background, and human relationships come to the fore.

On the other hand, it is so strange and incomprehensible why living in a city, where the air is saturated with toxic fumes and there is so little space that you have to share a room with strangers, is preferable for people than on the ocean shore, surrounded by palm trees and a snow-white beach? We will probably never understand this.

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For most Indian cities, slums are an indispensable attribute and look quite harmonious. But Mumbai is a successful and large metropolis, which means that the size of the slums here fully corresponds to its size. Tourists are mostly misled into thinking that the Dharavi slums in Mumbai, India are necessarily filled with immoral individuals and other destructive residents - this is not the case at all.

Not long ago, this area was the largest in Southeast Asia. Its area is 217 hectares, with a population of up to 3 million people (it is difficult to accurately count them due to constant migration). For a long time, among similar agglomerations on the planet, it rightfully occupied the palm. In this article we will look at how life works in the slums of Mumbai (Dharavi), how they arose, what their residents do, etc.

History of Mumbai slums

This Western invention has taken root well here and has taken on its own unique form. Due to this, the history of slums in Mumbai (India) is quite interesting. With the beginning of the industrial revolution in America and Europe, masses of people began to move to cities from villages in order to gain financial well-being and, accordingly, not die of hunger. Thus, crowds of homeless people seeking a good life arose. They needed somewhere to live, and since most of them were outright proletarians, they looked for housing to suit themselves, therefore, slum ghettos appeared in every major city, most of which are still doing well today.

In Mumbai the story was similar. The modern city was built on islands, while in the 18th century most of them were on their own, and there were much fewer inhabitants here than today. Mumbai grew, and at the same time it required more inexpensive labor; only in the 19th century the city’s population was able to exceed the mark of 500 thousand people, while only 50 thousand lived in London.

The peasants who arrived here began to settle anywhere, including settling in the fishing village of Kolivadas - now here is the famous slum of Dharavi in ​​India (Dharavi Mumbai Slum). Soon, fishing here became irrelevant, and a slum area began to slowly grow in place of the village. The then owners of the country (the British) did not care what happened in this area, since it was outside the city. The European part of Mumbai was actively built according to interesting architectural plans and corresponded to European cities. At the same time, slum areas had absolute freedom of action.

However, Dharavi was not the only place where the Mumbai poor lived. She lived compactly in various areas of the city. At some point, the time came for change - an epidemic of bubonic plague began, which significantly reduced the number of local residents. The sanitary conditions in the areas of compact residence of cheap Mumbai labor caused great concern among the British; it was necessary to quickly localize their spontaneous settlements and somehow streamline this process. It was decided to move all the workers to one remote place - to Dharavi. At this moment, the area began to live life to the fullest and became more and more beautiful every year. The Dharavi slum area appeared in this way, perfectly preserved to this day.

The government of this city has a huge interest in a large piece of land in this expensive city, on which the shacks are located, and it is likely that very soon the inhabitants of these slums will have a chance of being thrown onto the streets - this is what happened with similar slums located in Delhi. Of course, the government has plans to resettle local residents into comfortable homes, but this outcome only makes all people, including those who came up with such a plan, just smile.

Slum dwellers

Incorrect, it cannot be said that the slums of Mumbai are a place of residence for non-humans, as well as other obscene public - the phrase “city within a city” is more suitable here. In fact, young people who have recently arrived from all over the vast country to earn money live here, and they can live for a month in a room with an area of ​​10 m2 for just 3 dollars. At the same time, Mumbai is the most expensive city in the entire country. Large, real Indian families also live in the local slums, and they have settled here from the very beginning of the slums.

Residents of Mumbai are trying to live a full life and keep up with the population of prosperous areas - there are schools (private and public), there is even a street for carnal pleasures, where for 2 American dollars you can get to know Indian guys and girls better. There is also a choice for the advanced - getting to know hijras ("third gender", i.e. transvestites).

What is life like in the slums of Mumbai?

Slums, like other urban areas in India, are divided into small settlements. In one place there are tanners' workshops, in another there live waste sorters, in a third there are shops. Muslims and Hindus also traditionally live in different areas.

Slum dwellers can do whatever they want - collect garbage and beg, or even open their own small business. In everyday life, Indians are indeed very unpretentious, and often shop owners who work away from home do not bother purchasing or renting housing, but relax right in the shop.

It is worth noting that a slum is not a place where only the poor live. Local residents have an average monthly income of about $500. Of course, salaries here are very different. For example, servants earn about $50 (about 3,000 rupees) per month.

Problems

Poverty, unsanitary conditions, one toilet for a huge number of families, lack of drinking water - these living conditions can hardly be called pleasant. And all this is typical for the slums of Mumbai. The government is trying to solve these problems as best it can. For example, the famous slums in Delhi near the banks of the Yamuna, in which about a million people lived, were demolished. True, the government did not build or provide new housing, while the fate of a million people slipped through the fingers of officials like sand. After this, many went to their homeland, others remained to live right on the street.

Advantages of slums

Oddly enough, life in the slums of Mumbai has its advantages. Depicting all sorts of horrors and problems, you can understand how lucky you are, living in an apartment on the 10th floor. But India and its slums teach a lesson to representatives of the entire Western civilization. Thus, when local residents meet each other, they smile and treat each other with care and politeness. Living conditions fade into the background, while human relationships come to the fore.

At the same time, it is so incomprehensible and strange why living in a city in which the air is thoroughly saturated with toxic fumes, and there is so little space that one has to share a room with strangers, is preferable to living on the ocean, among a snow-white beach and surrounded by palm trees? We'll probably never know.

Economy

Civilized tourists are very surprised to learn how much money is circulating in the slums of Dharavi. At the moment, trade turnover here is about $650 million annually, while the average person's income is $500 (as mentioned above, this depends on what exactly the person does).

So, what else is interesting about the slums of Mumbai? Here they sew clothes, produce ceramic pots and lamps, bake bread for city cafes, and grow all kinds of vegetables in small fields, which will also go to the tables of city residents. There is a high probability that the T-shirt in which you are now sitting at the monitor, bought in one of the city’s supermarkets, was made in these slums.

The Dharavi region is divided conventionally into different zones according to the areas of activity of representatives of different specialties, as we discussed above. Moreover, Hindus and Muslims also have different areas in the Dharavi region.

Excursion and tourists

Thanks to the famous film “Slumdog Millionaire”, filmed here, tourists wanted to see everything with their own eyes, walk along the large pipe that locals use instead of a road, plunge into the true Indian atmosphere, look at all the houses, etc.

Many tourists book excursions and go to the slums as if to a kind of human zoo. Having paid a fairly decent amount, a person expects an adventure similar to a safari, only instead of animals there are people here. Yes, there is actually poverty here, unsanitary conditions, problems with water, as well as 1 toilet per 1000 rooms - these living conditions cannot be called pleasant or even acceptable, but the local residents remain human.

From the point of view of modern ordinary people, accustomed to a mortgage on a cozy apartment, sitting idle in traffic jams in a credit Hyundai, these are terrible conditions, but, oddly enough, they do not make people unhappy. In dirty courtyards, unwashed children are having fun and running around, women in colorful saris are sitting on porches and lively discussing the joys of home, while men are drinking tea and playing chess.

Slum dwellers do not look angry, but on the contrary, they seem open and polite. Stop by to visit someone (they will gladly let you into their house) and see for yourself how people live. Basically, the inside of the home is incredibly poor, cramped, but at the same time surprisingly quite clean.

Some of the tourists who have been here rethink a lot, including their attitude towards each other and towards comfort. Terrible living conditions fade into the background, while human relationships remain in first place instead of the eternal counting of money and other modern tinsel.

Although there are still tourists who sincerely want to burn everything with napalm in the hope of making life easier for the unfortunate Indians. Decide for yourself whether this excursion is necessary for you.

How to get here?

Potential tourists do not have to overpay for an escort and take an excursion; they can get here independently and cheaply. You need to take the Mumbai Skytrain (local train) to the Sion Railway, Maxim Junction or Chunnabhatti station, adjacent to this area, and walk a little.

Dharavi slums in Mumbai: reviews

But it’s hard to believe and understand how strong these contrasts are until you visit here. In Mumbai, the most expensive houses in the world can easily coexist with a garbage dump. To see how an ordinary Indian lives, we suggest going to the slums.

Slums are not a unique feature of Mumbai; they are common to many Indian cities. The Mumbai slums became widely known thanks to the film “Slumdog Millionaire” and the book “Shantaram”, while becoming a kind of calling card of the city.

Due to the Western mentality, it seemed to us that immoral individuals, asocial elements - homeless people, in general - should live in the slums. But this is a misconception that greatly offends the proud residents of slums who are not ready to exchange their housing for any other.

One of the largest slum areas in all of Southeast Asia is Mumbai. Dharavi. Its area is 2.17 square meters. kilometers, and the population is about 3 million people.

In fact, slums are a Western invention that took root and assimilated in India. In the process of urbanization and the industrial revolution in developed countries, people began to actively move from villages to cities, often at the behest of the state (a striking example of such a policy in the modern world is).

Newly arrived city residents were resettled in temporary houses of the appropriate level. But we know that there is nothing more permanent than something temporary. Therefore, those “temporary” ones are still functioning perfectly.

Mumbai did not escape a similar fate. The city grew, developed and required more and more infusions of labor, and the cheaper the better.

The urban population grew rapidly. The British cared very little about this, there is cheap labor, but where and how it lives is none of their business, as long as it does not catch their eye and does not in any way affect the smooth flow of their measured aristocratic life.

Therefore, while the center of Mumbai was being built up in accordance with the urban planning ideas of the best European architects of that time, the slums were growing spontaneously and chaotically, without a plan or idea; whoever wanted to build what.

But this couldn't go on forever. Everything was put in its place by the bubonic plague epidemic, which reduced the city’s population by almost half. The disease spared no one, neither rich nor poor.

Naturally, the slum dwellers were recognized as the culprits of the epidemic. This is partly true, because there was no talk of observing any sanitary and hygienic standards. On the other hand, the European nobility can also hardly be considered neat. Take, for example, where nobles relieved themselves in alcoves and wiped themselves with curtains.

Nevertheless, the English governors decided to localize the settlements of Mumbai workers and resettle them to some place very remote from the center, and preferably from the city itself too.

The Dharavi slum area became such a place, which still exists today.

Mumbai is one of the most expensive cities in India, but slums give the poorest sections of the population a chance to live in it. Judge for yourself, you can rent a room here for $3 a month. So what if it will be made of shit and sticks and the size of a dog kennel, but there is a roof over your head and you can work in peace.

A slum is a city within a city. It has its own schools, hospitals, its own government. There are even prostitutes for any choice. If you want a girl, a girl, a guy, you can also find a hijra (as they are called in India).

They also say that Thailand, along with it, is a nest of debauchery, and the Thai Kathoys are like walking to the moon from the Indian hijras (someday I’ll tell you about them in more detail, but for now, take their word for it).

I don't see much point in feeling sorry for the slum dwellers. The average monthly salary here, according to the Internet and Indians, is about $500, and the average annual turnover is $650 million per year.

We did not photograph the slum dwellers in their “natural habitat”, after all, they are not animals in a zoo. But looking at them, I got the feeling that they feel quite happy and are not eager to change anything.

To be honest, I haven’t fully decided how I feel about slums. On the one hand, at least some housing is better than none.

On the other hand, again this is an incomprehensible breeding of shit around oneself, as in . Poor doesn't equal crap, does it?! Or is it all the same?

January 5th, 2017 , 12:57 am

Mumbai is the largest city in India, with almost 20 million people living here. It is the capital of the state of Maharashtra, until 1995 the city was called Bombay. It is also the most active and rich city, the financial capital of the country. More wealthy people live here than in any other city in India. It looks like an Indian New York, but from what I've seen, incredible social inequalities persist. There are many slums in the city; I walked through the most famous ones with a guide, but more on that towards the end, but for now let’s look at more decent places.

Judging by the landscapes along the way from the airport, the city is actively developing. They are building a lot, the economy is growing. It’s a huge city, we drove from the airport to the hotel for almost an hour, life is in full swing all around.

View from the hotel window towards the bay.

In the area in the south of the city where we lived, there are many old interesting buildings, probably left over from the British.

In the evening we went out for dinner, walked a little from the protected area of ​​the hotel, and here was a small branch of the slums. They are scattered in different places around the city in small areas; sometimes you can find a small settlement literally in a vacant lot of one hundred by one hundred meters.

The kids are playing football near the business center where we went to the Oman Air office. Of course, at the entrance to the center I had to go through security control, and even get a temporary pass with a photo! Notice the barbed wire on the fence. Soon a security guard came out and started chasing the children away from the sidewalk with sticks.

The infrastructure in the city is much better than in Chennai and Jaipur; almost everywhere there are normal sidewalks on which you can walk without fear for your life. But real improvement is still a long way off.

Some cattle are roaming here and there.

Great, the whole family got on one motorcycle. As often happens, a man in a helmet, a woman in a headscarf. I was told that because of the heat, people begin to have real problems with their hair, they simply fall out if they ride a lot with a helmet. Maybe women are more afraid of this and sacrifice safety for the sake of beauty.

If you remove the garbage, it will turn out to be a very pleasant street. In the area where we lived there is a lot of greenery, this, of course, ennobles the surrounding area.

Another good street. Neat parking, garbage removed, sidewalks in place, trees. Beautiful!

"Starbucks" in Indian. There are, of course, only tourists inside. There is a security check at the entrance. The building on the right is the large expensive Taj Mahal Palace hotel, a legacy of the colonial era. In 2008, Pakistani terrorists attacked the hotel, killing 31 people.

Nice sidewalk. If only they could lay the tiles more evenly and expand them a little, any prosperous Europe would be envious.

The big attraction is the India Gate. They were founded at the beginning of the 20th century in honor of the visit of King George V. There was also a terrorist attack here in 2003, now you can only get to them through security, and it seemed that women were checked more thoroughly. There are a huge number of Indian tourists here, I even took one selfie. In fact, we were asked to take pictures together several times; in Jaipur we posed with the whole family. Then they always ask what your name is, where you are from, and shake hands. Strange fun.

May 27th, 2012

Hello! I am Gleb Kuznetsov, I am 26 years old, I once lived in Moscow, but that was before I went on a trip from India to Argentina. Today I want to talk about one of my days spent in the Indian city of Mumbai, which is however known throughout the world under its former name Bombay thanks to the wonderful book “Shantaram”. Below the cut are 55 photos taken on May 23, 2012 in the same Bombay slums where Shantaram takes place and around.

Just this evening I arrived by train from the mountain resort of Pune, famous for the Osho Ashram, and did not have time to comprehend this phenomenon - Bombay. Therefore, the first look out the window upon waking up, and a shiver runs down your spine.

Having seen this, a person cannot remain indifferent, and a photographer cannot sit idly by. It’s half past six, it’s quickly getting light, but I do the prescribed exercise, take a photo for memory and run into the city.

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People sleep everywhere, they sleep in families, side by side, in deep sleep, women, children, old people. It is obvious that they are not tramps or beggars, since there are bags with spare clothes and some belongings nearby. I understand that I am walking among those whom I read about in children’s books about India, among the untouchables, engaged in the dirtiest and lowest paid work and who have never had housing. I take hundreds of photographs, but photographing people sleeping on the streets of Bombay is like photographing clerks running through the streets of New York - there are countless of them.

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The night is very warm and people don’t even need blankets, and cardboard is enough for bedding. But I notice that among the homeless men sleep alone, usually near the doors of the shops. Later, my guesses would be confirmed - these were their employees or even owners who chose to spend the night at their workplace on the way home to the suburbs. But the room is stuffy - and the street is like a shared bedroom.

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By half past six the city wakes up. Servants and taxi drivers appear on the streets, and those sleeping on the sidewalks begin their morning toilet. I see that they are not tramps at all in our understanding, and after half an hour I would not distinguish them from most Indians. People from the sidewalks comb their hair and wash themselves and brush their teeth, drawing water from special barrels, and cook breakfast here over the fires.

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All of them have developed unquestioning obedience - they allow themselves to be photographed in this unsightly form, and do not interfere with taking pictures of sleeping members of their families. They just smile timidly and often thank you for the shot, but don’t even ask to see it.

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Meanwhile, the morning is in full swing, but I went too far towards the “Central Railway Terminal”, running from one group of sleeping people to another, like Mashenka ran from mushroom to mushroom until she ended up in a den. Thus, the idea of ​​having breakfast at the table with a fork in hand fails, since there is not a single safe establishment in this area. But there is an opportunity to try street cuisine. Unlike most taverns for locals, street food in India is both tasty and safe (at least I, having traveled this country from Trivandrum in the south to Varanasi in the north and tried all the local pies and gingerbreads, have never had any problems). Well, a few red pepper puff pastry potato pies and a glass of sweet milk tea for $2 and I'm ready to hit the road. Oh, I completely forgot to tell you that any minute now a night bus from Goa is due to arrive in the Borivali area and on it are my friends - the Chistozvonov couple. Sasha and Ira were spending their vacation on the beach and, for the sake of the thrill, decided to sacrifice two nights on the bus, but wander with me through the Bombay slums. This is our mission for today, and to facilitate it, I agreed in the evening with the taxi driver Fazil on a tour of the slums and brothels and communities of transvestite hijdras.

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I get to Borivali by local train faster than expected and, while my friends are still approaching the city, I go into the entrance of a concrete high-rise building near the station that I like. The wealthy middle class lives in such houses in Bombay and, as far as I could see, all the suburbs are built up with them, while the city center is occupied by slums and a patch of the World Trade Center with the local Latin Quarter.

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The entrance to the entrance is blocked by a crazy man, Faisal. He forbids taking photographs of himself because he is afraid of death from the camera. But Faisal is not a coward - he protects his home from evil. He has an amulet on his bare chest, and the ghost will not be able to pass by him. I still made my way in and, not wanting to frighten or offend the crazy person, I focused on photographs of the situation in the entrance.

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But here comes San Sanych! And without delay I plunge him and Ira into the world of real Bombay!

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Guide Fazil meets us in Borivali. However, he is afraid of getting on the front pages of world publications as a person involved in exposing the Bombay “dark kingdom”, so he avoids a group photo. We manage to persuade him to capture it on film much later, when all the tests are already behind us. In the meantime, he takes us to the slum area in his forty-year-old Fiat, which is parked on the sidewalk in the photo below.

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The city center, called the World Trade Center, is virtually indistinguishable from the slums. There is neither a stone wall nor a wall of machine gunners - these two completely different worlds exist side by side and, unlike the large cities of Latin America, they do not show hostility in any way.

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Bombay slums are closed areas surrounded by wide streets. Inside there is an unimaginable tangle of narrow alleys. Basically, slums are divided into Hindu and Muslim, and also into slums where there are houses, albeit made of sheet iron, and those with only plastic sheds. Fazil is a Muslim and a member of the middle class, so he takes us to those slums that are close to his spirit. We don’t mind at all, since the Muslim slums where the Bombay middle class lives are, as they say, classics of the genre.

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The outer perimeter of the slums is occupied by shops and workshops, in the barracks closest to them there are always warehouses, and further inland there are residential “neighbourhoods”.

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After walking around the outer perimeter, Fazil asks us: “Maybe to the India Gate?” But we stubbornly demand to the very depths, and with fear for my camera and our mental health, he leads us into the slums.

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By the way, the Bombay slums are universally recognized as the safest place in India. They are completely under the control of local communities; no outsider will penetrate here, and if they do, they will not leave if local laws are violated. For tourists, access to the slums is completely free, but... one of the basic rules in the slums: “Do not take photographs!” Muslims are categorically against cameras. However, how would I tell this story? All along the way, you first have to bow to the models, politely ask how they are, and then timidly ask if they can take one picture. Men and children are always happy about this, completely dispelling established ideas. Women, especially old ones, on the contrary, react incontinently: often not understanding that I am only asking permission, they begin to call their husbands - they run out angry and it takes a lot of time to explain. In short, step by step deeper into the slums.

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After a tangle of back streets with sewage flowing and rats and children running interspersed, we reach the heart of this part of Bombay - the courtyards. They are relatively clean and spacious and in spirit resemble a kitchen in a communal apartment. Here they wash and dry clothes, play, tinker with motorcycles, in a word, people’s entire lives are focused on these pieces of “land” in the middle of an ocean of nightmare. Here the air is like air!

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Fazil tells us that in Bombay they are outraged by the myth that poor people live in slums. According to the guide, men earn up to $500 a month here, and the housing itself in the slum can cost several tens of thousands of dollars, since it is close to the center and, so to speak, is located in a comfortable and safe area. As for general poverty, its main reason is the large number of children in families and unemployed women. And even if our Fazil doubled the earnings of the Bombay slum people, Sasha, Ira and I simultaneously came to the conclusion that these people were not so much hopelessly poor as they had become irrevocably accustomed to the surrounding nightmare situation and were unable to adequately assess it.

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But okay, the photo is a souvenir, and we gradually leave the slums, because after several hours of wandering here, the stench makes your throat feel nauseous and you want only one thing: to take a full lungful of air without fear!

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Here is the main sports arena of the Bombay slums! Comments are unnecessary - we are skipping towards Fazil’s minibus!

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And we ask for fresh air. The slums united us!

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But the beach is also not exactly a beach, but a combination of a fishing dump and massive deposits of Indians. Sasha and Ira desperately ask Fazil to take them at least for half an hour “to a quiet place,” but he just laughs: “Where can I find a free place in Bombay?”

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But we walk through the city center and find it quite civilized and nice: the university and administrative buildings of English construction, wide streets, wonderful old Fiats...

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But after catching our breath, it would be nice to have lunch. We go to a vegetarian restaurant. For four dollars we order a classic dish of rice and vegetables, and we get a palm leaf like this, with a mountain of delicious food. One question: “How is it?”

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I don’t dare show what we did with this food with our stubby fingers. And there is no time, since Fazil is already driving us to the Congress Hall area - Bombay's red light district. So the first charming lady shyly attracts visitors to her porch.

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Prostitutes in tacky outfits mill about along the street, but at the sight of a camera they scatter to the corners - that means they are afraid of fame. Fazil says that young ladies come to work from Nepal and Bangladesh, and for half an hour of work they ask for $3.

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But be careful! India is famous for its LGBT community called Hijdras. The danger is not so much in confusing such a representative of the sexual minority with a natural lady, but in not pleasing her! Hijdras are the oldest and most authoritative caste of Indian society. They have the privilege of cursing people, and paying off such a curse will cost a lot! My dear Sasha was seriously afraid of the hijdras and hid in the car, leaving me alone with them, but I, having talked enough, came to an opinion about them as sweet creatures (don’t get me wrong).

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The price for half an hour with a hijdra is the same as with a prostitute, and the money will go into the same pocket. At the back entrances to cheap brothels sit “cats” - local pimps. In addition to their strict protective function, they also supervise children while mothers are busy serving clients.

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Brothels merge with slums, and, in the end, you can never distinguish a respectable Muslim from a Bombay tycoon.

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But is it enough for one day? Unnoticed, 6 o'clock in the evening came, and it was time for Sasha and Ira to go to the bus station and back to a cozy hotel in Goa. They categorically reject all my offers to stay for a day and only ask to accompany them to the bus. We pay Fazil - the six-hour all-inclusive excursion cost us 30 US dollars. But in Bombay there is no need to look for miracles - at the station of the ultra-modern city train we find ourselves in the epicenter of a gypsy camp. Under no circumstances should you give money, because at the sight of banknotes these gypsies go berserk and start tearing you apart (I had this experience in the south of India, in Madurai).

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By the way, there are traces of Bollywood influence here. The whole city is plastered with such posters, and any European who wants can act as an extra and will receive 10 dollars for it. But Sasha and Ira don’t want to act as extras, they want to go to a hotel!

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First class on the train is cozy and cool. We have been driving for about 40 minutes, and Sasha and I are cheerfully drinking a bottle of Indian rum, so to speak, for disinfection.

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The usual welcoming crowd at the bus station!

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Wonderful gypsies sit by the bus, but all this, although it looks a little scary from the outside, does not carry any aggression - so you walk in the middle of such bedlam and, of course, you don’t feel comfortable, but it doesn’t cause much tension either.

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But the sleeping places in Indian buses are still not for Russian people. But okay, I escorted Ira and Sasha back to Bombay the same way.

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It’s sunset on the beach and crowds of Indians eat and drink after work, but they’re afraid to swim because they don’t know how to swim and they believe that an evil miracle Yudo lives in the ocean. I didn’t go swimming, because I didn’t want to return to the hotel naked later.

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Well, the end of this extraordinary day, as almost always on my journey, is at the computer. Photos must be selected as soon as possible, because new ones will be added tomorrow. While doing this I fall asleep without even noticing it.

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