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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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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My eyes are stinging from the chlorine. I duck below the surface of the pool and the intense Bollywood music fades away and it’s almost serene. Then I feel the tiny, bony hands of Ashwini grab my hair, and not so gently, she begins to pull me to the surface. The base from the three large speakers behind us vibrates through my head as I wipe my eyes clear of water and see Ashwini’s mischievious grin. “Kane Sir, come on”.  On the pool deck to my right, seven nuns wearing wet salwar kameez dance in a fast moving circle under powerful sprinklers. Ashwini grabs my hand and the two of us run through the sprinklers, past the nuns and up the stairs to the top of a big slide.

Regular followers of DWP stories know Ashwini’s background and that she is a DWP success story in the truest sense. (see DWP blog post Ashwini and Bhoomi ) A rough and tough, scabby and tortured young girl who was abused by the women she lived with in the slum community and ignored by her incompetent, sad mother, Ashwini has the survival skills of a street fighter. Seven months ago DWP helped to secure a placement for Ashwini in the Nava Jyothi home for girls only a few miles from the slum. At 13 years old, Ashwini is only now starting to show her  true potential, thriving in the safe and loving surroundings of her new home where she is encouraged to learn and to begin to trust others again including the other girls in the home who are orphaned or have been rescued from their homes in Mumbai’s red light district, where their mother’s earn a living.

Since my return to Mumbai a month ago, I have visited the orphanage twice, chatting with the Sisters and hanging out with Ashwini.   DWP has continued to support both the home and Ashwini, donating regularly to help fund the day to day needs of the forty girls living there, and providing a Marathi tuitions teacher who arrives every afternoon to tutor Ashwini who has only attended one year of school. The tutor is available for any of the other girls who need help with their Marathi lessons. (Marathi is the language of the state of Maharashtra)  While providing what is necessary, DWP also likes to throw a party!  A few weeks ago the head Sister told me about the girls’ excitement for anything related to water and with June temperatures soaring near 4o degrees in Mumbai, the Sisters and I made a plan to take the girls to a small water park outside the city.

When I arrived at the home before 8 a.m. this morning I saw Ashwini happily playing with friends and it made me smile. My first two visits with Ashwini since my return to Mumbai, have been awkward, both of us feeling shy and I was nervous about today. Upon noticing me enter through the gate, Ashwini looked up and saw me and a smile creased her face. Her friends giggled and she playfully slapped them before she jogged over to me. We “high-fived” and I asked her a few questions that I can utter in Hindi.  ”How are you?”, “Are you studying?”. Without hesitation, she quickly answers me in English. I step back in shock as she laughs and says, “What happened Kane Sir?” I ruffled her hair, which is thick, coarse and clean; the rough and rake thin girl always covered in dirt who I met in the slum two years ago, has been replaced by a modern, confident, groomed teenage girl, and I feel like a proud but nervous father.

By 8 a.m. the Sisters and the girls quickly filled the seats in the bus and soon all 50 of us were chugging down the freeway out of Mumbai. The journey to the water park took two hours and while I sat by the door watching this mega city of millions fly by in a blur, the girls and the Sisters kept themselves amused by singing every Hindi pop song ever written.

A few minutes after getting off the bus, the girls were changed and splashing in the pool and the Sisters weren’t far behind.  I have been a part of two large events at the orphanage, but I still assume the Sisters will be sterotypically subdued, and well, stern and maybe even boring. But, after watching the Sisters cannonball into the pool fully clothed,  and then dance-walking to Hindi hip hop on the pool deck, the stereotype is once again happily washed from my mind.

With two large pools, a kiddie pool and two slides to play on, and a background of mind-numbing, loud Hindi music the stage was set for a fantastic day. By two o’clock in the afternoon, my shoulders were pink and I was exhausted. The Sisters and the girls slowed down just long enough to eat lunch, quickly gulping their food so they could get back to the pool. Their trip back to the pool was halted by the sight of a passing Gola (snow cone) vendor’s cart, and a spontaneous donation by a local family, who, after learning that we were from an orphanage, decided to purchase all forty girls a Gola. The girls, now high on synthetic sugar, were back in the pool, beating the heat by splashing and dunking each other. I stayed in the kiddie pool watching the younger ones but could not keep from watching the sheer joy of the Sisters as they danced through the sprinklers for hours on end.

At the end of the day, a local family who was a relative of one of the Sisters, invited all fifty of us to their home. Walking through the lane ways of the small town, we arrived at a beautiful, old, one level home painted a beautiful blue, set among palm trees, mango trees and pineapple plants. Ushered inside, we filled every room and keeping with typical Indian hospitality we were offered water, followed by sliced mango’s and dried snacks. The Sisters were given fresh, hand picked pineapples from the garden to take back to the orphanage. Thanking our generous hosts, we were on our way again, snaking through intense Mumbai traffic on the way home. While  everyone in the bus slept off the afternoon’s festivities, I sat in the doorway of the bus watching the frenetic Mumbai street life pass us by in a blur of diesel smoke.

I thought about when we first decided to place Ashwini in this home and how I worried that the Sisters would be too strict and straight edged, not allowing Ashwini to be herself and slowly adapt from her life in the slum where she tried to care for herself and two year old Bhoomi, to a life full of rules and constraints. But these sisters run the home with love, care, and a  whole lot of fun while teaching the girls life lessons and ways to become independent and contributing members of Indian society. If there were more homes like this (where impoverished, orphaned, forgotten girls could call ‘home’) the world would truly be a better place and I feel so thankful that Ashwini has been given a second chance at life with these wonderful women to guide her and love her.

DWP’s days are often filled with tough decisions and heartbreaking stories of pain and suffering and I revel in days like this. The gift of frivolous fun is contagious and not easily forgotten and on behalf of all the Sisters and girls of the Nava Jyothi home,  we thank you.

Cheers,

Kane Ryan

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