Dirty Wall Project

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Written and photographed by Cindy Ryan

Flying low over Mumbai, the plane rushes over squares of torn blue plastic, pulled and pinched, secured with bricks and steel pipes. Squint your eyes and slum homes from the air resemble a river of water, its tributaries  invading every space not occupied by high-rise towers. With my forehead pressed against the window of the plane, I try to sort out which blue plastic roofs belong to the Saki Naka community and I get excited about landing. Soon I will be in the thick of it and my heart sings at the thought.

I’m only here for a scant three weeks this time and already my guts are telling me to stay longer. There is always so much to do, so many people to see, and what will I find behind the curtained doorways of the slum community this time?

I leave the plane with an imaginary coat of thin armour to protect me from what I can’t do in such a short amount of time and step out into the humid air of Mumbai. Kane, one of the few white faces in the crowded arrivals area, steps out and welcomes me once again. Suddenly, I am mobbed by Indu, Shashi, Seema and Ruby, who have waited patiently to welcome me. Now I am giddy with excitement again. I have worked side by side in the GCB centre with these beautiful women for months, and I think of them as friends, albeit the conversation is limited to what Indu can translate for all of us.

This whirling, active, bleak and bare bones community, stuffed with too many people, is also the scene of a meeting that has ended in a wedding, another reason why I have returned to Saki Naka. Sarah Petrescu, a journalist from Victoria B.C., volunteered with DWP last October. She immediately attached herself to the women of the GCB and helped us create prototypes and products before leaving for a volunteer stint in Bangalore. Within days of Sarah’s arrival in Mumbai, she attended a Diwali celebration in the community. Also invited to this event was Ashley Fernandes, a friend from Mumbai who has  contributed to DWP. A brief introduction in the midst of the overcrowded garden in the middle of the slum community during the Festival of Light, has led to their wedding 10 months later.

On July 26th, 2012, Sarah and Ashley were married in the Catholic church just down the road from Kane’s apartment. Wanting the community to be part of the celebration of the relationship which blossomed in their midst, Sarah and Ashley invited the GCB women and their small children and Ranjana and her family. Ashley Pereira (Janvi Charitable Trust), a devoted member of the church where they married, did a reading, and beautiful fabric garlands, made for Sarah by the GCB women, draped the elegant doorway to the church. A full circle of events inspired by the generosity of a slum community, friends and family, in the middle of the monsoon season where cement walls resemble, thick, wet, green sponges.

Between wedding festivities, I have been running after children in the slum, jumping over puddles thick with mud and gooey remnants of garbage, finding shelter from the rain in the school or in slum homes where I am invited for chai and dal, and nodding in faint comprehension in conversations conducted in Hindi or Marathi.

While the monsoon rains bring relief, and sometimes a cool breeze, slum dwellers, hiding from the rains, stay inside, breathing the foul air of their cramped huts. Infections, coughs, runny noses, plus lethargy, bring a host of complications to already fragile health. Sweet, young, frail Maya, who is four months pregnant with her fourth child, was hospitalized with the worry of TB. Almost excited for her to be confined to bed rest in the relative comfort of a soft bed in the confines of a hospital, I was incredulous when she was desperate to go back to her tiny home, where the family of five sleep in an 8 foot by 6 foot cement room, on plastic billboard vinyl laid over a bare cement floor. Putting aside my assumptions of comfort, I must understand this is what Maya knows and this small, damp hut is where her family heaps its joys and sorrows.

Opening my eyes in the morning, the first shaft of light from dull, cottony skies brightens the room where I sleep and I take it in. The rain water has been sucked through the coarse mix of sand and clay bricks that form the outside of the building, creating water stains on the side wall of the room, damp to the touch. Mould forms at the corners and the flaking paint on the ceiling above the whirling, clicking fan, threatens to fall in thin slices onto the bed. The honking that never abates invades the room with a crying, tinny sound. Mumbai is not comfortable, inside or out, it is never clean, never quiet and never dull. What is comfortable here is the people I have met, the slum community I feel at home in and the notion that why I’m here is because it’s where I should be. It will be hard to leave, again. It will be divine to be back in the fresh air of Vancouver, Canada. That is the push and pull of Mumbai, up close and personal.

* A full post about Sarah and Ashley’s wedding with photos from the beautiful day coming soon…

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My shoulder rubs against the pale green wall of the school, and crumbling bits of paint fall to the ground behind me. I squeeze past a row of teen age kids, who are eager to get a look at the foreigner amongst them, and I smile, prompting laughter and giggles. I pass classroom after classroom, filled with row upon row of children, sitting at old wooden desks, surrounded by damp walls covered in flaking paint. The boys jet black hair is oiled tight to their head, the girls hair is braided and looped and tied with floppy, pressed, ribbons. Maybe, in these classrooms, sits a handful of India’s next generation of doctors and engineers.

I reach the main gate, which is a rusted metal door. Twenty women stand on the other side, clutching the bars. The scene resembles a women’s prison, and I hesitantly reach for the gate and slowly swing it open. A swirl of colourful sari’s part, and I move through the group of waiting mothers, and then I feel a hand on my arm. I turn around to see a Muslim woman in a full black burka. She releases the piece of fabric covering her face and smiles quietly. I recognize her as Javed’s mother. (Javed is one of her four children, and just last year had open heart surgery which nearly ruined the family financially).  I reach to shake her hand, which she offers to me, shyly. I tell her in broken Hindi that I have paid for her son’s yearly school fees, and she smiles and thanks me. Then I begin to tell her, that as a surprise, I have also paid her youngest daughter, Yasmine’s, school fees. She looks confused for a moment, and then her eyes well up with tears and she offers her hand again.  I clasp her hand in both of mine, and tell her, “You are most welcome”. I am humbled to be of help, and as I turn to walk away, she thanks me once more, and dabs at her eye with a piece of fabric.

June is the start of the new school year in Mumbai, and a very busy time for families, and all NGO’s working in the education sector across the city. DWP currently has nearly 60 sponsor children, from grade one to college, in about 15 different schools, throughout the area. Each June, parents looking for help, crowd the doors of Janvi’s centre, bombarding Ashley with stories of hardship and financial woes in a bid to get their child sponsored.  Discover Urjaa, (run by Vanessa and Vignesh Manjeshwar) runs an amazing sponsorship program through Janvi’s centre, with Ashley at the helm, sponsoring over 200 children.  In slum communities, almost everyone requires some help, but determining who needs the most help, is the difficult , strenuous and a frustrating part of the work. As Discover Urjaa reaches their threshold of children that they can sponsor for the school year, DWP steps in and takes on some of the cases that they could not.

Every day, for the past week, I have set out from the community, my notebook in hand and back pocket filled with worn Indian rupees, into the soaking wet streets of Saki Naka. Although I have visited these schools several times over the last few years, navigating the small network of alleys, jumping over huge puddles and dodging traffic is forever difficult and time consuming. When heavy rains fall suddenly, and without warning, I find myself huddled in shop doorways with groups of strangers, all quietly and happily waiting for whom ever is in charge, to turn off the tap, so we can all resume our lives and get back to the hustle of the maximum city.

I arrive to each school, find the fee counter, and lineup behind mothers and fathers, also waiting to pay. I encounter stares and intense curiosity where ever I go; a white spec in a brown landscape.

I practice my Hindi in my head as I wait in line, and finally it’s my turn. The rehearsed line is ready, sitting on my tongue. My mouth opens, and the practiced Hindi words that sounded so good in my head, come out garbled and backwards. I smile embarrassingly, and feel awkward as the grumpy woman behind the counter looks up for the first time and sees my white face and smiles condescendingly. I repeat the child’s name over and over till she tells me to stop, and then she quickly flips the pages of my damp notebook, looking for the records, feeling the burning stares of impatient mothers behind me. Five more minutes pass, and finally I reach for the rupees in my pocket and count out the full years fees. I’m handed my receipt, and I feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement. I turn around and realize, no one cares, or is particularly happy, that the guy with the “golden” hair and the speech impediment, has managed to do something right. I smile awkwardly for the hundredth time that day, and head for the exit. I immediately get lost again in the labyrinth of water-clogged alleyways, until a small girl takes pity on me, and walks me to the main road. I turn to thank her but she is gone, quickly disappearing into a row of tin shacks. A large truck thunders past, smashing a three-inch deep puddle, covering me in brown water and mud. I pull at my shirt, and wipe my face,  but it doesn’t matter. The sky opens up, and soon I’m soaked again, searching for cover and the next school….

In the past week, DWP has paid the full year fees for 18 children at 6 different schools across the Saki Naka area. I am working hard at reviewing last years sponsor children, and paying their fees, and I have also added three new cases this week. I’m a sucker for a heartbreaking story, and I find myself nodding and committing to new cases before I’m ready, adding to my workload, and the overall cost.

While DWP has been busy attending to the educational needs of individual cases, I have also purchased 250 school books (nursery rhyme, picture, and notebooks) for Janvi’s kindergarten class in Saki Naka. Each child has been given 3 books, and pencils, to help reduce the cost for their parents, and to encourage more parents to enrol their children in kindergarten to give them the chance at an education.

* I would also like to thank DWP’s friend, Jaita Guha, from Mumbai, who, last year, arranged for 11 students to be sponsored via friends and colleagues. This year she has doubled her efforts, adding another 13 cases. She’s personally responsible for filling an entire classroom!

Cheers,

Kane Ryan

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Laxmi.

Another installment in the interview series with the women of GCB.

Written by Cindy Ryan 

They married five years ago and then did not see each other until one year ago, but Laxmi thinks her husband is a good match for her.  At 15 years old, Laxmi’s parents arranged her marriage to a 20 year old man from Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India where it is customary for women to hide their faces behind the veil of their sari when out in public.

Laxmi, now 21 years old, started her life in a village in Uttar Pradesh until she and her siblings moved to Mumbai with their parents. Her grandmother became responsible for her care when her mother moved to Dubai to work as a maid. Not sensing or understanding the need to educate Laxmi, her grandmother took Laxmi out of school in the 5th grade to work alongside her as a maid in Mumbai. Working Laxmi as if she were a strong adult, not a thin, tiny boned, small girl, the grandmother refused to feed her during the work day.  With only a slight measure of disdain for her grandmother’s actions, Laxmi described her days working  as a maid as a mere interruption of her childhood while she continued to carefully embroider the hand made cards we were making at the Girls Can Be centre, only looking up to smile sweetly while I scribbled my notes.

As a poor, lower caste Indian woman whose ambitions and hopes are hobbled by poverty, misogyny and a life in the margins bracketed by tradition, Laxmi is forgiving and not overwhelmed by having no power or choice in her life. Her vibrant personality, punctuated by fits of giggles seems to negate the dread I sense for her future. Often wearing a bright yellow sari, Laxmi arrived at the Girls Can Be centre with the enthusiasm of a small puppy eager to play with a stick. Rarely sad or forlorn, she sat in the circle of women learning new skills and looked forward to the routine paydays, something she has never had and will not have again once she begins living with her husband after the second, more official, marriage ceremony which will take place in the near future.

As she described her upcoming second Hindu wedding celebration, her eyes were bright, and she struggled to remain demure as the excitement of the celebration almost overwhelmed her. She described the gathering of family, the feasting, the image of herself in a beautiful new sari, her delicate hands decorated with mehendi, and the nervousness she felt about moving in with her husband’s parents after the wedding. She was looking forward to a trip to a village in Uttar Pradesh to meet her husband’s relatives, a long train journey as husband and wife. While Laxmi dreams of her wedding, her parents will have to borrow money for a gold ring and the dowry payment, expected to be between ten and fifteen thousand rupees. ($180 – 280 CAD)

During a baby naming ceremony held in the community for one of Laxmi’s relatives, Laxmi was animated, anxious and excited to be part of this grand celebration. During the evening, the baby’s parents and grandparents held court over an elaborately decorated bassinet containing a pudgy, sleeping infant gently swaying in the chaos of the never-ending line-up of community members who crowded into the eight by ten foot home to peek at the baby, leaving behind coins and well wishes. Laxmi pulled me through the crowd, and pushed me inside though the small doorway, motioning me to look at the baby who she obviously cherished. Grabbing my hand again, we slithered back through the crowd and she lead me to a small room off the narrow lane way where the roofs of the ragged, cobbled together houses almost touch, and sat me with Indu and Shashi. While trying to manage heaps of food on a small plate, Laxmi said she wanted to have children and hoped they would get the education she was not allowed. Her mother, a beautiful woman with a gentle nature, joined us, and it was clear that she and Laxmi share a close bond, regardless of the distance they were separated by when Laxmi was a child.  Confined to the community, with the exception of one outing with DWP, Laxmi has never been to other parts of Mumbai. During the few outings to the nearby streets, she has noticed other young women wearing modern clothing but she knows this is not the life she will live or the person she can imagine herself to be. She has confidence and an eagerness to embrace her future and the nerve to go through with a marriage to someone she barely knows. I am awed by her excitement and her generous view of the life she is headed toward.

Laxmi and her husband, a furniture maker, will move to his uncle’s home where she will learn to live under the rules and the guidance of her mother-in-law. A few weeks before this interview with Laxmi, I noticed her sitting on the stoop just outside the Girls Can Be room. She was smiling sweetly, her eyes had that far-a way look and she was unaware of my presence. When I tried to squeeze by without disrupting her, she grabbed my hand and pointed to the phone pressed against her ear. “Cindy-mom”, she squealed, “It is him, my husband!”. Laxmi is sure her husband is a good person and she is excited to be starting her life with him. Leaving her side to allow her the pretense of being alone with her husband, I walked down the lane way, picking up children, stopping to chat with some of the other women who were busy with chores,  and I began to imagine the life I hope Laxmi will have.  A life with healthy children whom she will encourage to have choices and an education, a husband she will always love and who will cherish her, and a future that she can walk towards with confidence. I want that her life will be as sweet and charming as she is.

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