[Reader-list] Dharavi in Fashion: An article by Smita Mitra, Outlook magazine

[Chintan Girish Modi]

 *From http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?270932

The Slum Of All Parts *

Artistes of the world are converging on a much-bemused Dharavi
  <http://www.outlookindia.com/peoplefnl.aspx?pid=5866&author=Smita+Mitra>
By Smita Mitra

When well-heeled Mumbaikars stride into Dharavi, you know something odd is
afoot. And sure enough, there they were on a January morning to take in the
“buzz” generated by Artefacting Mumbai, Dharavi’s first “art residency”, for
which artist Alex Mazarella White, videographer Casey Nolan and
photographer  Arne de Knegt had “immersed” themselves in Dharavi for three
months. Given the language barrier and their lack of engagement with the
locals, the trio’s “artistic interventions” had left Dharavians feeling
rattled. They wondered why these “foreigners” had made gigantic murals
(“Christian paintings?” they asked), why their own mugshots were up on large
posters; why their children had been made to pelt a tin sheet with dripping
red wax that got their clothes awfully messed up (apparently to recreate
Anish Kapoor’s *Shooting Into a Corner *installation!). But for the chic
Mumbaikars chattering excitedly as they viewed the artwork in Dharavi’s
snaking alleyways, none of that was particularly relevant. Nor the fact that
the huge multicoloured ‘Welcome’ sign greeting them was painted by
outsiders, not Dharavians.

Welcome, indeed, to the new Dharavi, dismissed for years as an eyesore but
now the muse of artists, writers, filmmakers and academicians. Two reasons
shape this meteoric rise of Mumbai’s, and India’s, biggest slum in popular
consciousness. The first, and obvious one, is *Slumdog Millionaire*, the
urban fairytale that exoticised its garbage piles and bustling alleyways,
and went on to trigger a flood of documentaries capturing the “real
Dharavi”. Since the movie hit Oscar glory in 2009, film crews from
Discovery, Nat Geo and BBC’s Channel Four have come and gone. With real-time
“casting” by the likes of Dharavi resident Rajesh Prabhakar, who earns
between 250 and 300 dollars a day finding “characters” in his
neighbourhood—from ragpickers to super-rich entrepreneurs to rap
singers—they are able to wrap up their shoots fast, and go back with a
made-in-Dharavi tale.

The second, more subtle reason for Dharavi’s new, “hip” turn is that it’s
the ‘ideal’ slum, and one threatened by redevelopment to boot, at a time
when urbanists across the world are looking at slums with new respect as
industrious, dynamic, sustainable, eco-friendly urban settlements. That
Dharavi, home to about a million people from all over India, sits bang in
the middle of the city, flanked by five train stations, only adds to its
allure.

More than one Dharavi-trawler, camera in hand, is well-versed in ‘slum
aesthetics’, a term that has found its niche in cinematic idiom and popular
culture in the last decade. “Slums are used as dramatic backdrops to tell
stories like in *City of God* or *District 9*,” says Mathias Echanove,
founding member of Urbz, an organisation that works on alternate ideas of
urban development. While *City of God* was set in the favelas or slums of
Rio de Janeiro, a film called Tsotsi, set in Johannesburg’s Soweto slum, won
the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. And so, while Rio now has
favela tours, Dharavi has Reality Tours and Be the Local tours, plus an
unending stream of foreign researchers, architects, planners, design
students, artists, musicians and photographers from across the world making
their way here to see, observe, research, write and conduct workshops. Their
route into Dharavi is usually via organisations like Urbz and SPARC (Society
for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres), who make no secret of their
passion for Dharavi, through essays, cultural and design workshops and
websites like dharavi.org and urbz.net.

But how do locals themselves react to seeing their own lives repeatedly
documented via art, design and research? At least some are openly sceptical.
Bhau Korde, now over 70 years old, is dismissive of “intellectuals” who love
to comment on Dharavi without really engaging with it. “On any day, at any
hour, there are at least 10 foreigners walking around with cameras. Most are
interested in only capturing the poverty of the place,” he says
sardonically. Anjum, another resident, is just as cynical. “The numbers of
visitors have shot up in the last two years. Most of us just ignore them and
carry on with our work,” he shrugs.

Richa Hushing, an independent filmmaker who made a series of short films on
Dharavi’s communities, admits to hearing a common complaint here. “They say,
‘you come with your cameras, make films but we never know for what’,” she
says. It made her think, and eventually decide, to screen films, her own and
those of others on Dharavi, for residents. Similarly, Lutz Konermann also
screened his documentary *Dharavi: Slum for Sale* in Dharavi, attracting
strong reactions, both positive and negative, from residents since it dealt
with a subject uppermost in their minds—redevelopment.

Dharavi’s children, the most favoured subjects of photo essays on the place,
have come up with their own unique reaction to the invasion of visitors.
“They want to take pictures too. They want to play at becoming surveywallahs
and photographers,” says artist Himanshu S., who interacts with the kids who
come to The Shelter, supported by Urbz, for art and other classes. This has
had a positive spin-off. The children were able to document their
neighbourhood like no outsider could, and their photographs, priced at
between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500, were exhibited at the Kala Ghoda Festival,
held this February. Only two were sold, but the exhibition did attract
volunteers eager to work in Dharavi.

Such engagement is exactly what Vinod Shetty of Acorn Foundation, which
works with Dharavi’s ragpicker community, is aiming for too, despite fumbles
like Artefacting Mumbai. He has tied up with a theatre director to create a
play with Dharavi’s children. They will pen the dialogues and also act in
the play, portraying their realities. Blue Frog, the hip “live music” club,
has also become an unlikely entrant into Dharavi’s world—its visiting
foreign artistes hold music workshops for Dharavi’s kids through Acorn.

Not all such interventions are sustained and it’s this lack of consistency
that feeds the scepticism of Dharavians like Bhau Korde. The photography
workshops are sporadic, and as Emanuelle de Decker of Blue Frog herself
admits, some older kids question the point of music workshops that let them
“have fun for just a day where they get to perform with the artiste”. She
rues how there’s “always a long wait for the next interested artiste”.

How great a cultural interaction can be, when it actually works, is
encapsulated by the experiences of HeRa aka Netarpal Singh in Dharavi. This
hip-hop dancer, who grew up in the ghettos of Queens, New York, visited
Dharavi to see French graffiti artists work. Spontaneously, he began
B-boying, an acrobatic version of hip-hop dancing, and was soon joined by
enthusiastic Dharavi kids. “Hip hop came naturally to them. It connects us
people from the street, in South Africa, Korea, Palestine, the US and
India,” says HeRa, who was so charged with this encounter that he decided to
start a hip-hop centre, Tiny Drops, on the slum’s outskirts. Now Dharavi
kids like Akash, Rashid and Faizal come here whenever they can, practising
for hours to get their moves right. On discovering that the kids he was
teaching hated the term “slum dog”, he turned it around, starting an
artists’ collective called Slumgods with his Indian-American rapper friend
Mandeep Sethi and Dharavi’s dancers. “It makes these kids redefine their
identity by connecting to an international hip hop culture. They become
empowered,” he says. Creative or jarring, sincere or exploitative, loved or
hated, there is no doubt about one thing: the invaders are changing Dharavi.

*Dharavi In Fashion*

*TV shows* *Slumdog Secret Millionaire* and *Kevin McCloud: Slumming It* on
Channel 4, *The Real Slumdogs* on Nat Geo; documentary on Discovery Channel;
another on human drug trials in Dharavi by Al Jazeera TV and a third on the
area’s recycling units by Sky News

*Independent films:* *Dharavi: Slum for Sale*, directed by Lutz Konermann,
Canadian film *Slum of Millionaires*; audio-visual series on Dharavi by
Richa Hushing

*Online projects* dharavi.blogspot.com and dharavi.org

*Books* *Dharavi: Documenting Informalities*, ed. Jonathan Habib Engqvist
and Maria Lantz; *Dharavi Anthlogy* (forthcoming) by HarperCollins, compiled
by Joseph Campana

*Exhibitions* ‘Artefacting Mumbai’, a 3-month artistic exploration of
Dharavi; ‘Places We Live’, a multimedia exhibition by Norwegian photographer
Jonas Bendiksen

*Tours* Reality Tours, Be the Local

 <http://www.outlookindia.com/peoplefnl.aspx?pid=5866&author=Smita+Mitra>