Mumbai Living

The residents of Dharavi, allegedly Asia's biggest slum, are thriving in hardship .With maybe a million residents, crammed into a square mile of low-rise wood, concrete and rusted iron, Dharavi is a squeeze.

As the sparrows stir, so do the neighbours. Parapa, a semi-skilled electrician, lived with his parents, two brothers, their wives and two children in a room of 48 square feet. A month ago, explained Parapa, a strapping, beaming, Chaucerian fellow, he chased one of his brothers and a wife from the hutment in a violent, drunken rage. They fled back to a remote village in southern Karnataka.

Parapa then fixed a man-sized plank to the hutment wall, so that while his father and brother made love to their wives below, he could stay chastely on the shelf.

As Bombay boomed, on the back of its port and textile mills, poor peasants flowed in from the land. During periodic famines—including one in Bengal in 1943 that killed 3m people—they came in spate.

With this history, Dharavi's population is diverse. Tamils, Andhras, Assamese, Biharis, Bengalis and local Maharatis; all India's peoples are here. Perhaps a little over half belong to India's poorest groups: dalits and Muslims.

During a four-day stay in Dharavi, as the guest of Shashi and his friends, your correspondent heard many such tales: of hard times, facing up and getting by.

The narrators were sometimes bitter or suspicious, but mostly friendly, almost invariably courteous, and occasionally, like Parapa, very funny.

From The Economist, A flourishing slum, Dec 19th 2007