If I were to tell you to think of a homeless person sleeping at night, you would probably think of an older man with a beard sleeping under a freeway overpass with nothing but a shopping cart full of random things. I don't think I saw any Dalit people in the slums with conditions that nice. Most of the slums we saw were people living in sewers and other dirty, horrible areas. Diseases and illness spread through these crowded slums as well as violence and abuse. This is a much harder sight to see than a man sleeping alone with a raggedy jacket on the cement with a shopping cart of useless stuff. I get asked a lot how bad the slums really are. I usually tell people that it's not possible to imagine how bad it would look unless you've seen in first hand. Here are some pictures from a Dalit slum in Mumbai...
I don't have many pictures close-up or of the people in the slums, because I'm sure it's rude to snap pictures in their face. However, one thing you have to remember is that the slums are insanely overcrowded.
One "house" in particular that was actually a nicer one I will never forget. My team of 8 people walked into this house and we couldn't move at all. Actually, only 5 of us fit inside standing. I did not have to duck because there was no roof. It was about the size of a very small American half-bathroom. Our translator told us that this was the wife of the family. The wife goes to work in the early morning and works as a street sweeper. She sweeps us dirt, dead feces, animal waste, etc. The husband works as a construction worker that is "on-call" and hasn't found work in a few weeks. The wife gets paid the equivalent of a quarter per day. Their five children live with them as well as their nieces, nephews, uncle, and aunts. On the walls were a towel, a pot, and a bag of rice (I think). There was some sort of rag in the corner, and that was it. The wife not only works 7 days-a-week, she is also dying of AIDS. And I would assume the husband is HIV+ as well. They talked about their six children and then started crying when they changed their "6" to '5". We were told that their youngest child died last week. When we asked how, we were told that the oldest brother stepped on his little sister and killed her when he was trying to leave the house to pee outside. When 12+ people try to sleep in a house the size of my small bathroom, they end up sleeping outside in the summer or in layers during the winter... and it's not uncommon for disasters like this to happen.
Thinking of homeless people in the U.S., in L.A. for example, many people would say that these "bums" need to stop drinking and do something with their lives. They would say that they probably did this to themselves, and although I feel bad for them, it is probably their own fault they are in this situation. I would not completely disagree. However, this is NOT AT ALL the case for the Dalit people. They are born into this position and NEVER given an opportunity to get out of the "slumdog" lifestyle. That's what needs to change-- the fact that Dalit people are completely oppresses and abused and usually have NO CHANCE to turn their lives around and live a better life than the one they were born with. I will explore this concept later in further posts.
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