FROM Reel TO Real
Danny Boyle may have picked, packaged and exoticised harsh Indian realities like poverty and prostitution, but Slumdog Millionaire remains loyal to reality in Mumbai's slums. All it took was one recce of Dharavi - sanitation, sewers and schools that teach of three musketeers - to know that this Hollywood film tells it like it is. Post-watching the movie however, few Westerners will know that lodged into the crevices that this community calls its by lanes, also exists entrepreneurship, industries and employees who work at multi-nationals. Indipepal does a reality check on the Hollywood flick.
One-way Traffic
As a cop in Slumdog Millionaire chases away street children playing cricket on an airport runway, you are drawn into a circuitous maze of back alleys that make up Dharavi (portrayed as a Juhu slum in the movie). In by lanes barely 25 inches wide, it's a wonder how everything from trucks and gunny bags filled with recycling waste, to goats and video-game totting kids get through. The camera sucks you into this kaleidoscopic maze.
DHARAVI at a Glance
One glance at the top-shot patchwork of plastic, tin and cloth that make up Dharavi, and it's easy to see why this settlement is often described as the biggest slum in Asia. It's not (according to the National Geographic, Karachi's Orangi Township is larger), but the statistics are still mind-boggling: in Dharavi, 300 square feet of space is shared by 15 people.