Bollywood and Poverty in Mumbai

The stark contrast of life in Mumbai.

Poverty

Having lived in Africa for four years in the 60's, I thought I had seen poverty, but what I knew in the bush was life in simple villages: round thatched huts and women chatting in a group as they pounded grain or chopped vegetables. These people were poor; the children ran around barefoot, and played in the dust with toys made of tin cans and twisted wire. There are probably millions still living that same life today as there were when I was there 50 years ago. The urban poverty was far, far less in Nairobi in the 60's than it became later, as people flooded into the towns looking for streets paved with gold.  Yes, people were poor, and they lived a very basic existence in the rural areas, but for the most part, they were not miserable. 

A small wedding celebration

I was overwhelmed by visible affluence of life in Mumbai.  

There are marble-clad shopping malls, luxury hotels, and smart boutiques displaying all the glitz of Bollywood, fuelled by the lust for a glamorous lifestyle. 

The Master Bedroom

The levels of disposable income are the perfect dream for interior designers, whose wealthy clients have deep pockets.
The reality is that India is home to over 200,000 millionaires - defined as people "..having investible assets in excess of $1million."

Bath-night in the slums

And while the baubles and trinkets are expensive, life itself is cheap.

Alongside the search for the ultimate luxury, there is a different lifestyle for the population living in the crowded, tin-roofed shacks that cluster into slums. 
Sometimes the slums are hidden behind advertising billboards, or grubby workshops and shop-fronts.

There are homes huddled together in the shadow of a Technology Park of software companies. Its employees leave their cars in an adjacent multi-storey car-park whose architects have hidden the harsh concrete of its modern structure with lush foliage that tumbles over the walls of each parking level.

Slumming it

My taxi driver grumbled and didn't hide his annoyance at having to drive to a rough slum district, but I am not in India to wonder at the history left behind by the succession of conquests and occupations, from Darius King of the Persians in 520 BC, to the British in the 18th century with the Greeks, the Turks, the Mughals, and the Portugese all adding their influences over the centuries. 

One of the impoverished slums in West Mulund was my destination, to look at a girls' education project that had achieved recognition locally, nationally and from international bodies like UNESCO. 
India has a tradition of producing strong women, and I had come to Mumbai with the sole purpose of meeting a young woman who had found me on Facebook and read about my activities in Bangalore.

As I researched the stranger on the internet, I had realised that I should put Mumbai on my itinerary and see to what extent Aarti's work in Mumbai mirrored what we were doing in Bangalore.

I found Arti Naik in a community hall, sitting on the floor surrounded by young girls who were studiously engrossed in writing in their exercise books.

Like James Ambat in Bangalore, she is totally dedicated to the education of the underprivileged and was recognised for her achievements earlier this year, in the Annual Women Awards organised by Femina Magazine, when she won the award in the education sector for her work in the slums of Mumbai.

I am going to try and link her girls' education project with a girls' school in Lincolnshire. They might raise some financial support, and some of the senior girls might go and see what the rest of the world looks like.

You never know how fortunate you are until you meet people who struggle to get by. Both James Ambat and Aarti Naik are pure inspiration. It's the same sensation as I felt in Athens last year when I met some amazing volunteers who had simply put their life on hold and gone to try and help refugees fleeing violence in their own country.

I think my role in my twilight years is to try to get people to understand that the greatest pleasures in life come from helping others and making them happy.