Shivaji Nagar

One day, in 2017, I encountered hell on earth. I was conducting research on behalf of a team partly funded by my own company, Dalberg, and seeking to understand the perspectives of the lowest income group of India’s population on privacy. The argument being made to the Supreme Court of India was that low income populations do not inherently need it - they’re more concerned about their day-to-day. The Supreme Court refuted this - around 2016, they declared an ‘inalienable right to privacy’.

Our research agreed with much of this - privacy is important to all Indians. But that’s not the focus of this - the focus of this is how, on this quest, I stumbled into Hell.

It was the Monsoon season - we had just had a few days of mild to heavy rains. The ground was still wet in most of the city, but at Shivaji Nagar, it had pooled, and begun to fester. Shivaji Nagar sits at the base of Bombay’s landfill. All the junk that the rich throw away gets dumped here, after being filtered through the rest of the population. The average lifespan in this slum is significantly lower than that of the city - flies swarmed in my face as I walked through on the hot, wet day. It stank of garbage. There were half naked children running about, school a forgotten dream. There seemed to be no parents around. Likely working - left with no choice but to leave their children unattended or to skip the next meal.

They played in the filth. Laughing uproariously at a game.

An old (ish) lady we spoke with sat with me once the interview was over - she described the locality. It was run by a gang. Everyone seemed to be dying earlier than normal. The kids were often orphaned. They had little choice but to join this gang. Fistfights were common. The food was often rotten. The only place to shit was in the common bathrooms - which stank and often ran out of water. Filth stuck to me after I left - often depressed and weary, I always felt a need to bathe after getting home.

Welcome to hell.

Another interviewee was a dancer - he had joined a Capoeira troupe formed by some Brazilian dancer looking to give the children a purpose. He had stayed on, while many had not. As a side effect of this, he had opened himself up to being a quantitative interview candidate for research companies, and now earned some money giving interviews. That individual was the only one I met who displayed a glimmer of hope. But you could see the despair in his eyes. The awareness that he was floating on an unsustainable bubble that could pop any day.

Either the bubble pops, or it doesn’t. There is a universe in which our intrepid interviewee finds a way out of his hole. There is a world where he meets his wildest dreams, as he tries to sleep in the darkness. This light is what keeps humans going at their lowest - and it penetrates even hell.

Who am I to complain.