(no photo because I forgot to click one…)

Mumbai is a city that has mesmerized almost every soul that has come across its exclusivity and developed a taste for it. This enduring affair with a city gives me reasons to spread my thoughts and feel the versatility.

Right now, I am thankful for the train’s slow speed, which gives me a perfect view of these complex structures on the other side of the window.

I am talking about the SLUMS OF MUMBAI.

It’s 4 o’clock, and the sun hasn’t set, but the morning has begun for me and the slums.

These architectures contain various definitions of life, which are accessible for a person to observe from a moving train but not that easy to understand.
Simply gazing at these houses throws hundreds of questions at you.
Life, on the other side of this window, is different, unique, and sometimes can be referred to as the toughest of all.
Their tales of origination are a contemporary phenomenon of increased population in poor neighbourhoods, divisions between the rich and the poor, and limited advancement opportunities for those in poverty.
They lack good medical care facilities, so life in these slums is short.
One can just dwell upon their lives but can’t understand their struggles to make a living.

But,

still, a place where the events of earning a loaf of bread from a bucket of sweat and sleeping with a happy stomach are constant struggles, the slums of Mumbai manage to make their house a home.
From periods of sadness and scarcity to times of happiness and togetherness, these people make a family.

Just take the two most minor two-digit numbers for an area of square per meter, and you’ll see that this measurement has a family in these slums where necessities get perfectly arranged and has a high-standing DTH disc on the top of a corrugated roof.
They simply love to live in these tiny structures and could bet their life to protect every part of their belongings.
.
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And as Professor Dumbledore says- Happiness can be found even in the darkest days; if one only remembers to turn on the lights, life completes a circle leaving behind memories to remember and stories to narrate.

Anant Gunesh.
An excerpt from the diary entry of 8th June 2019