Matunga 1

What do you do in Mumbai on a Friday at 8.30 in the morning? A visit to Matunga.  Matunga sounds like a very exotic fruit with maroon flesh and a big stone. But no. Matunga is  home to one of the biggest slums in Asia, it is a part of Mumbai only 20 minutes from us. I am really not a big fan of slum visits. I feel a bit voyeuristic, a bit uncomfortable seeing where other people live, peeping into their homes and taking photographs as a group, smiling at people sleeping or holding their children on their laps. Throughout the guide’s explanation of  how poor they are, and how life expectancy  is only 40 years, snotty children smile with big smiles and white teeth and you say hello to them. Grannies smile with toothless smiles and you say hello to them.  No, this is not me at all.  But my friend promised good food on banana leaves and some temples so I followed her there.

 We drove through the slums. There is a big road in the middle and a very clogged filthy river crosses it, big water pipes lie parallel to the brick huts, concrete one room buildings  and dirty lanes. Television dishes stick out housing big black crows. There is lots of  hustle and bustle. Trucks going in the tiny lanes, bikes rushing out carrying everything, women balancing huge bundles on their heads, men drinking cloudy liquids from tiny paper cups.  A big smoke coming out of  a mountain of a heap of burning something on the side of the road, goats on the corners of the streets eating whatever they can find accompanied by crows and dogs. A very busy, crowded, lively place.  As soon as you open the car window the heat and the smell hits you. This is the sickeningly sweet smell of rotten everything in 40’C, the smell of rotten rubbish, sewage, fried onion and curried cabbage based food,  unwashed clothes, dampness of the huts, mass public loos, smell of poverty.  My friend tells me that people do not have regular jobs, and they chew paan regularly and drink and in the evenings the place is not safe even for the people who live there.  Morning is not a good time to go either. There are a number of public loos and not enough for all, so when the nature calls in the mornings, they respond to that call wherever they think is the best. Prince Charles came here and donated some money for big block of council house kind of buildings but the slum dwellers did not have the money to keep the flats they were given, so they had to sell those and ‘shifted’ (as they say  here) to their old huts.   I stayed in the car, learned all about these and took secret photographs  whenever we stopped at the traffic lights. Surprisingly there were no begging children around. Only young men selling car sunshades and pink fluffy dusters.

 We followed the road to the Matunga Station. There is  a big market behind it, first fruits and veg, then clothes. 12 oranges for Rs120, thin cucumbers, bean sprouts, broccoli, good lettuce, green peppers to make dolma, Mexican baby chillies; all the things a good home needs. The market people are calm, pleasant. There is no ‘Madam, Madam’ shouting, wolf whistling. (They wolf whistle to call you ,not for other reasons). Us ladies, with our cameras hanging from our necks, talked to everybody, smiled at every available child, took photographs of whoever wanted us to take their photograph. They offered us  camun camuns, showed us their best oranges, colourful bed spreads, bangles, we even found pomegranate molasses. When we walked out of the coolness of the market, the aubergines and beetroots shimmered in the sun. The religious shop has a canopy to stop their brass getting banning hot. Shiva on his lotus sits comfortably cool in the shade. All the way on the street to a temple there are flower stalls, the whole place smells like Radha’s hair. Tiny white jasmine buds are tied one by one to a string to be put around a ponytail or to be wrapped on a deity in a temple.  People sit on their stalls, happily folding flowers, giggling, chuckling  at life passing by. It is not even midday yet but it is getting bright and oven hot and the jasmine smell flutters in the air whenever the flower makers twirl the string of milky white jasmine bundles. The incense of the spinach seller's morning offering mingles with the sandalwood of the nearby temples. One stall sells the good smells. 'Gunnuk’ he says ‘this is the best one.’ I am dizzy with the heat, the whiteness of the flowers, and the combination of fragrances. It is time to go into the coolness of a temple.