Finding Inspiration in the Slums of Dharavi - Times of India

Finding inspiration in the slums of Dharavi - Times Of India http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-06-17/mumbai/40026...

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Ads by Google Finding inspiration in the slums of 0 0 Dharavi S Tweet Empfehlen S Nergish Sunavala, Jun 17, 2013, 03.30AM IST

Tags: acorn

An upcoming art show by an Austrian architect on Dharavi shows the continuing fascination outsiders have for the place.

MUMBAI: In 2010, British TV show host Kevin McCloud chose to live in Dharavi for two weeks to understand why many urban planners and Prince Charles had declared the fetid slum a model for Western cities. The show begins with a horrified McCloud focusing the viewers' attention on children playing amidst toxic waste and shanties located near a river of human excrement. Soon, however, he becomes an advocate of the slum's robust community life, impressive employment rate and billion-dollar recycling industry. McCloud is not alone. Over the years, western architects, writers, artists and entrepreneurs have thronged Dharavi to study its communities, edit books and even set up a tourism outfit. Now, as a city gallery gets ready to host 'Dharavi: Spaces and Identities', an exhibition by Austrian architect Martina Spies, we speak to expats who've made the slum their muse.

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RELATED ARTICLES Dharavi in Mumbai is no longer Asia's largest slum Pharmareferenten-Seminare July 6, 2011 20 Jahre Ausbildungserfahrung Partner der Donau-Universität Krems Dharavi locals to protest against film www.pharmareferent.or.at February 3, 2009

Deconstructing a slum Dharavi at your fingertips June 12, 2009 Martina Spies, Architect

IN-DEPTH COVERAGE In 2005, while visiting Mumbai, Austrian architect Martina Spies accidentally came across Dharavi Dharavi. "I thought I'm in a big village within the city," she says. Spies, who knew nothing Architect about India's largest slum, was unfazed by the squalor and ended up exploring Dharavi's Kumbharwada or the potters' district.

In 2011, she moved to Mumbai and started researching four Dharavi communities, whose place of work is four chowks or public squares-broom makers, dhobis, Muslim tailors and papad suppliers. Spies was fascinated by their fluid use of public space. For instance, Hanuman Chowk, where female papad-makers work, is an urban planner's dream because of its lack of traffic and proximity to a balwadi and kirana store. "In Europe, we dream of no cars and short distances between living and working," says Spies.

In the last two years, Spies has built strong ties with the residents and has also picked up Hindi from the children and spent last Diwali at the dhobis' villages in Andhra Pradesh.

Growing up in Austria, Spies went ice-skating and skiing in the winter and fishing in the summer. So she is particularly dismayed by the lack of open spaces in Dharavi especially for girls. "Boys can use the streets for playing cricket, while girls are restricted to the house," says Spies. "They also have the right to play." Over the next few months, she plans to start an NGO, which will set up playgrounds from recycled plastic.

Ben Parry, Artist

British artist Ben Parry's project 'Reversing the Gaze' involves returning photographs of Dharavi, shot by journalists and researchers, to the slum residents. "The swell of international research in the last 10 years is part of a culture that is extracting information and not making it usable to the locals under investigation," says Parry. The goal of his project, done in collaboration with the Acorn Foundation, is to explain to locals why their area is attracting so much attention and how this can benefit them. It also ties in with the foundation's objective of recording the history of the communities, who once lived along Dharavi's water pipeline. Their homes were demolished in 2011.

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Some of Parry's favourite memories include tracking down the girl, who was photographed while walking along the pipeline and a boy snapped in Kumbharwada by National Geographic. Both images have become famous but neither resident had ever seen them. "She was a bit tearful, emotional and quiet for a few minutes," says Parry. "These pictures are charged with the trauma of those demolitions," he says.

Parry, who grew up in Liverpool, arrived in Mumbai in 2012. He was initially working on a project for urban research firm URBZ, whose office is in Dharavi. He chose to live in the neighbourhood and was soon fascinated by the locality. "It is so lively and visceral," says Parry, who plans to return soon. "You see fish and meat hanging and chickens having their heads chopped off, all these raw everyday things that in the city would be hidden behind walls."

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Joseph Campana, Editor and teacher

In 2008, Joseph Campana, an English teacher at the American School in Bandra, took his students on a slum tour as part of an assignment on social justice. He had moved to Mumbai, a year earlier, from a small town in Montana, USA, and this was the first time he had ever seen the slum. During the tour, Campana was told about the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan, which involves dividing the neighbourhood into sectors, modernizing its infrastructure and replacing slums with high-rises. "I remember thinking that it would be a shame if these people were forced to move against their will," recalls Campana. "It is clear that there are problems but also that they have systems that are working."

So when Campana was asked to edit a book documenting the life of the slum residents and how they would be affected by redevelopment, he jumped at the opportunity. The book, 'Dharavi: A City Within' was launched last week. During his research, Campana visited the slum over a hundred times but never encountered any hostility. Locals would often guide him to the doorstep of a potential interviewee even if he only knew the man's name. He recalls fondly an interview he conducted one lazy Sunday afternoon.

"The entire extended family was home and I got invited for a meal and ended up staying for a couple of hours," he recalls. "It was just wonderful."

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