By Bubba Sugarman
We finished a delicious lunch atop the roof of the Colonels Retreat, the hotel in which we were staying, and packed up our backpacks for our afternoon of exploring. Two guides in bright orange shirts with “Delhi by Locals” printed on them met us at the gates of our building. They walked us through the busy streets and up a flight of stairs to the bustling metro platform. They gave us a token for the checkpoint gates, and we boarded the metro. We traveled for about 15 minutes to the outskirts of Delhi.
We stepped out of the metro and found ourselves on a platform overlooking a small town. On one side, a dirt lot that had once been a dumping ground was home to a few stubby trees. Children, feral dogs, pigs, and cows played among the debris and tufts of plastic bags and refuse peaked out of the hard-packed light brown soil-like tufts of artificial grass.
Walking through the crowded streets, we passed market stalls with tarpaulin roofs. Vendors offered snack foods, shoes, freshly pressed sugar can juice, and other wares. The median served as a trash dump where cows lounged, chewing their cud and sorting through the pile for bits of garbage to eat. Their watery eyes blinked in the bright sunlight, and their tails flicked off the flies that settled on their sunbaked backs.
Our guide led us down a street segregated by makeshift market stalls. Tarps stretched between branches fluttered in the weak breeze forming divisions between each seller’s goods. Large 50-gallon white plastic mesh bags lined the backs of the stalls resting on one another like a pile of overstuffed marshmallows. Men, women, and children lounged on the bags sorting colorful fabric scraps of various sizes into piles. As we walked, our feet tread on a carpet of discarded scraps, slowly collecting dirt, forgotten in the street. Our guide explained that these individuals made their livelihood by purchasing large bags of mixed scrap cloth from manufacturing factories and sorting them by material, color, and quality. They would then resell their raw materials to factories, which would turn them back into cloth. We walked down the street of cloth recyclers and turned into a small wooden door.
We stepped down four earthen steps carved into the rock and found ourselves in a dimly lit shed-like structure about 20 by 50 feet. In the center, a massive metal machine stretched the length of the building. The air inside was stifling as we walked down a narrow metal walkway. Our guide explained that his small building was a metal printing factory. The giant machine printed company logos onto sheets of aluminum that were then baked in place in the massive oven. Our guide passed around a variety of products that had been printed among them, pencil case tins, and a Baskin Robbins bottle caps. We left the small factory and stepped back into the sunshine.
Our guide explained that we were in one of the slums of India. They were called slums not because of the living conditions but because they were built on public land. As we entered the narrow streets of the slums, it was clear that the development of the area had not been planned. Narrow pathways lined by gutters of rancid water weaved in and around brick buildings. Tangles of wires ran along with overhead and terminated in plastic-covered meters outside doors. Our guide explained that the government had installed these lines to supply individuals with clean electricity and reduce the use of polluting diesel generators. Each home received 100 free units of electricity each month, and any overages were charged at a reduced rate.
As we ventured onward through the dark corridors, we passed by the residents of the slums. They sat in doorways, lounged on makeshift beds, or leaned against their buildings. Some watched videos on mobile phones, some talked to one another, others stared blankly into space. Many of the homes had converted their lower floor into a shop. Some sold snacks and toys, and some were filled with sewing machines whirring away as they made clothes, others sold hot food or tea.
As we walked, it often became dark as the leaning four-story buildings blocked out the sunlight leaving the narrow pathways in perpetual darkness. The occasional bare led bulb lit the space illuminating the muddy trash-strewn pathways below. Many of the walls of the building were painted in vibrant blues, yellows, and oranges bringing color into the perpetual twilight of the streets.
Our guide led us to an open area and showed us a local government school. He explained that this school had two sessions a day, one in the morning for the boys and the other in the afternoon for the girls. He told us that in India, to get into a college, children had to score above 95 percent on their big tests. He explained that many students were under tremendous pressure to be successful in school so that they could move out of the slums.
Our guide led us back into the heart of the slums and motioned toward a dark doorway in which we found a flight of stairs leading to the roof of a four-story brick building. We emerged on the rooftop and took in the sight below us. Square brick buildings rose from the dark alleys below. Each faced a different way, stood at a different height, and was completed to a different degree. People hung colorful laundry on wires strung between buildings. Children and dogs climbed between buildings playing among the waste that covered the roofs of the structures. A small girl around the age of eight with dark braided hair climbed up from the darkness below. Crawling on all fours, she scaled the crumbling brick walls with a bright yellow book which red SCIENCE in bold black lettering clenched between her teeth. Found a patch of clear ground on the rooftop and settled down to read.
Our guide ushered us into a small room where he asked us to remove our shoes. The walls were painted in bright murals, and the floor was covered in patterned cloth. A row of mismatched computer monitors and a bookshelf lined the walls. Our guide explained that this was an NGO he had started to help students continue their studies after school. Here they taught computer skills, art, math, and other disciplines. We talked with him for a while, and soon a group of young girls between nine and ten years old pushed open the door. They shyly introduced themselves and told us what they wanted to be when they grew up. They dreamt of being teachers, doctors, and singers and knew that this education was the path toward their dreams.