First Impression: Mumbai

I arrived safe and sound in Mumbai about a week and a half ago. The first few days were spent in getting over my jetlag and getting situated. Mumbai is such a crazy, crowded, bustling city! It’s also really noisy; the sound of horns honking, people shouting, vendors hawking their wares, is sometimes overpowering. My first few days here, when I would walk down the street, I wouldn’t know where to look first, because there were so many interesting things to look at! People set up shop on the sidewalks and sell all sorts of fruits and vegetables, nuts, juice, umbrellas (for the monsoon season!), Ziploc bags, even underwear (although why anyone would want to haggle for undies in public is beyond me).

I started work last Monday and really like it at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health (from now on known as NIRRH, as I am too lazy to type it all out). I’ve been added to the so-called “Violence Team” because our project deals with domestic violence. My co-workers are amazing! They are such nice people, and I’ve become especially close to two women who work with me, Shruti and Meghna. We have been working on developing a survey for women with young children to explore how domestic violence affects maternal and child health, and we do research in the office 4 days a week and do field work 2-3 times per week. The field work requires going to the slums in Mumbai, in an area called Govandi, and doing in-depth interviews with women who live in the surrounding slums.

So far, I haven’t done any interviews, but I have been reading through the interviews that were done recently, and it’s so shocking to see the things that these women, who are so incredibly vulnerable, have been put through. One woman had been forced into prostitution by her husband, and others were beaten before, during, and after pregnancy...others were beaten by their mothers-in-law, others wanted to leave home and improve their lives. It’s worse because these women are so young. The one who was forced into prostitution was only 22, and had 3 kids already, the oldest of whom was 9, so imagine at what age this woman was married.

I’ve been to Govandi twice, and on Saturday, we left the clinic and walked around the community and talked to people who lived there. The main streets of the slums aren’t terrible; they are what you would expect of a developing country, but the inner paths leading into the houses—if they can be called that—are terrible: cramped, barely 3 feet across, houses perched on top of each other. Most of the houses are just one room that is probably just 10 x 14 feet, if that much, and as many as 8-10 people can live in that one cramped room that contains a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bed. There’s no sewage system, just open gutters filled with putrid, periwinkle colored, sluggishly flowing water with garbage floating on top. All the flies of the world seem to have settled here. Garbage collection occurs infrequently, and most of the time, it’s just a redistribution of garbage: garbage from one heap is added to another heap a little farther away. The basic needs of people are not being met at all in the slums.

The poverty in the slums has really shocked me. 80% of the people in India subsist on less than $2/day, and in Govandi, it’s very obvious. Kids run around the streets barely clothed, people can’t afford fees for public schools, lines at clinics are long. What’s most depressing is the fact that people are born in the slums, spend their entire lives there, and then die there as well. There’s no means for them to leave because a good education is practically unattainable.

A part of me was awed by the sheer tenacity of the human spirit to persevere through such immense adversity.

All in all, I’ve had a good experience here so far. I haven’t been able to photograph as much as I would have liked to, but I’m planning on taking more photographs soon. I’ve attached a few of the clinic in Govandi where we work, and of the surrounding area of slums. I also haven’t done any sightseeing, because things have been so hectic at work, and I only have one day free, so I don’t have much free time. The food here is really good! There is so much regional variety and the food from one part of India is so distinct from food in other parts of India that I feel like I’ve been experiencing all sort s of new things.

I’ve been traveling primarily via trains, and that has been an experience in and of itself. There are all women’s compartments in the train, and at first I was lulled into thinking that those wouldn’t be that bad. Ha! My friends, imagine yourself squished on every side between very amply built Indian aunties, whose already admirable girth is further enhanced by yards and yards of sari and you will understand my predicament. These women also know how to shove. Two days ago I almost couldn’t get off at my stop because a quite stout auntie was trying to get into the train, and she was barring the door as she was shoving her way onto the train, and I was being pushed back by the sheer mass of her ONTO the train I wanted to leave, and then to top it all off, she’s screaming at *me* to move. Luckily, an Indian woman took pity on me and grabbed my hand and pulled me off the train. That’s Indian trains in a nutshell. Be prepared to shove and push your way onto and off of compartments.