This is one of Mumbai’s nicer slum areas. They have walls, running water, electricity and not too much blue tarp.!! It is typical for a slum to be located in the gaps of land between developments. The developers and government would love to develop areas like this. With a population of 20 million land like this is a premium. But the slum holds a whole community, a slum city within the city. These people will not move without a fight. Some figures say that over 50% of Mumbai’s population live in an area designated as a slum.
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September 5, 2008 at 2:02 pm
nick fox
These are not slums! For Christ’s sake Colin, have you led a sheltered life, or what? Some of these ‘so-called’ slums have two storeys, and loads of tarpaulin. What you call a ‘slum’ is bloody paradise to some of us, Colin, my auld crime-partner of intranet notoriety and villainy. Your photo images display the kind of place I long to live in, an impossible step for a dreamer and wretch. In Kidbrooke you dare not even mention ‘tarpaulin’. It would start off a riot. Say the word, and a simmering broth of social unrest would boil to the surface; there’d be mobs of disaffected humanity racing through Kidbrooke’s slums … be in the wrong place at the right time – i.e. anywhere in Kidbrooke – and you’d be kilt. You’d be kilt before you could say “oh my God, I may have inadvertently triggered a wave of mass hysteria by the insensitive use of the word ‘tarpaulin’, being insensible as I am coming to see that I possibly am of the effects of indiscretions – or social ‘gaffs’ – upon a minority population which considers a tarpaulin more sacred than the bloody shroud of bloody Turin … perhaps I ought reconsider the values (and the passions associated with them) of my fellows when it comes to fabric – woven, spun, or otherwise imparted – in which they would not even lay the deceased body of the Son of God, cloth of any description being of such immense value in a life of ever ebbing quality and deprivation” Colin, I’d be kilt before I could form a viable syntax that would alert me to the dangers I faced. These are not slums, Col. They are ‘Time Share’ apartments in comparison to the abodes and dwellings of a true slum (such as Kidbrooke). I was rather hoping that your travels may educate you, if not enlighten you. Why did you go to the sub-continent when you could have learned so much more by hanging around Lewisham Bus Garage? Okay, you like diving, etc. Let me tell you, old horse, there’s much sub-aqua info available to those emboldened (or drunk) enough to lie face down in the ‘loaded’ waters of Lewisham Quaggy. You spent all that money on airfares? Shocking, really shocking! You just wait ‘til you get home … I’ll give you ‘tarpaulin’ indeed!
September 6, 2008 at 11:58 am
colinlaidlaw
You are right Nick, this is a very lovely slum area. Nothing in comparison to Kidbrooke. I will endeavour to get myself in the worst slum for you, with a roof made from pencil shavings and where the only fuel for cooking is your relatives.
col
September 8, 2008 at 2:29 am
nick fox
Yer relatives, eh? Here’s food for thought: The British built Egyptian railways used the dessicated (mummified) corpses of several generations of interred stiffs to provide fuel for the locomotive’s boilers – and very good fuel they made, too. This is absolutely true, Col. Just goes to show that your relatives can be used for cooking, if push comes to shove. Push, and shove, of course, is what you have to do if they’re still alive when you come to put the spuds on. More disarming facts to follow.
Nick
September 8, 2008 at 12:36 pm
toogreytogrind
Blimey, who is this Nick guy!
Tarpaulin is slums and favelas in my book.
I’m off to Kidbrooke for a Starbuck’s.
TGTG