{"id":3644,"date":"2016-04-11T20:04:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T14:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3644"},"modified":"2016-04-11T20:04:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T14:34:04","slug":"mumbai-redevelopment-gentrification-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3644","title":{"rendered":"What Mumbai Stands to Lose When Chawls Turn to Skyscrapers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\u00a0\n

I<\/span>f you\u2019ve taken your eyes off your mobile phone recently, you\u2019d have noticed that the city you live in, is changing. Our sprawling city of sewers, slums, and housing societies, is getting a facelift. That exercise comes with <\/p>clean beaches<\/span><\/a>, sleek flyovers, promenades, and walkable sidewalks where until a few years ago only gutters overflowed. It\u2019s like a city-sized <\/span>Brazilian wax<\/span><\/a> has been undertaken to complement the steel and glass towers that are now taking over the Mumbai skyline.<\/span>\n\nDon\u2019t get me wrong. It\u2019s nice to live in a city where a block of <\/span>chawls<\/span><\/a> with a common toilet located next to a garbage dump is giving way to hygienic, livable, and safe homes, but Mumbai seems to have gone straight from slumdog to millionaire with no pit stop in between. The buildings that are taking the place of chawls are straight out of Manhattan with noiseless chrome elevators and French names that make actual French people cringe. What was once a small Christian colony with old bakeries from where Church-going aunties picked up fresh laadi paav, will soon be replaced by the new <\/span>Kanakia Miami<\/span><\/a> with a Starbucks that serves a juicy couture hottie. <\/span>\n\nFor the older generation \u2013 my parents, these aunties, redevelopment is a strange time in their lives. The homes that they\u2019ve grown up in are soon to be demolished, and if all goes well, they will live in apartments where the living room won\u2019t double up as a bedroom. The thrill of moving into a new home, is accompanied by the exhilaration of no longer being embarrassed by your address, the fear of being shafted by the builder-BMC mafia and having your home classified as a slum. It is an exciting, yet confusing and scary time. <\/span>\n\nFor the recently gentrified people like my grand-aunt, top on the list of amenities, is a self-contained home, where you can empty your bowels without having to smell what has become of your neighbour\u2019s dinner. For days after her kholi transformed into a flat, my grand-aunt would make it a point to stand at the window of her new one-BHK flat and watch people in the neighbouring row of chawls go about their <\/span>ablutions<\/span><\/a>, with buckets in their hands, Paragon chappals on their feet, and dreams of a working flush in their eyes. She\u2019d hoot and holler every time she saw someone walk 100 metres to take a dump, teasing them and forgetting the fact that she too once trudged the mile, just like the rest of us. <\/span>\n

These are the masses playing the hand fate dealt them, waiting for their turn to fold or go all in.<\/blockquote>\nLike my grand-aunt, there are countless others who can\u2019t wait to get the fuck out of the dodge, awaiting their economic and social salvation, that will come riding on a bulldozer. With it will come glad tidings of an extra room for the family, taking away the stigma of living in a chawl, a space which has now become synonymous with peons, maids, and other <\/span>ignorables<\/span><\/a> who exist to make your rotis and drive your Bugattis. These are the masses playing the hand fate dealt them, waiting for their turn to fold or go all in. <\/span>\n\nRedevelopment means a flight up the social ladder, without the added indignity of going back to a pigeonhole to stare at their families and their life choices in the face. Now, they\u2019ve got an iota of space for themselves. A kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom, a fucking elevator, where they can be alone with their thoughts or the plotline of their favourite <\/span>TV soap<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\n\nOur neighbour, Bharati maushi, maid and nanny to an affluent south Mumbai family, can\u2019t wait for our chawl to be demolished. Her nightly bitching sessions with my mum have now turned into conversations of interior decoration and making her new home look somewhat like the home she cleans on a daily basis. There might be no home theatre system but at least there will be some room for a 43-inch flat TV; there might be no chandeliers but she can get a remote-controlled ceiling fan. That way it\u2019ll probably be less degrading when people ask her where she stays.<\/span>\n\nBut some of us absolutely dread moving out of the 10X10 cubbyhole where we \u2013 and before us, our ancestors \u2013 have eaten, fought, fucked, and slept. People like my next-door neighbour, Chetan kaka.<\/span>\n\nIn the future, when <\/span>Mumbai<\/span><\/a> will be all skyscrapers and vertical slums, Chetan will probably be part of a museum exhibit displaying the ancient <\/span>Marathi male<\/span><\/a>. This half-chaddied, bare-chested kaka from another shakha clings to the home he and his family of eight inhabit with absolute pride. He\u2019d rather die than leave his kholi and move into a poorly ventilated box where you don\u2019t know who lives in the next flat but have a view of a distant garden. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nFor him, moving away is giving up the bonhomie, security, and freedom that living in a chawl affords. It means he can no longer sleep semi-naked in the shared veranda outside his home when it gets too hot. He can no longer walk into our house when he falls short of cigarettes or when the aroma of chicken curry is irresistible. And it means saying goodbye to his carom and daaru sessions at the naka. The free bird called Chetan kaka will morph into a tame parrot, imprisoned with his katkati baiko (cribby wife), suffering in silence, till he dies. And when he does, his neighbours won\u2019t come and mourn. <\/span>\n\nI have mixed feelings about this whole redevelopment shebang. I\u2019m not embarrassed about my pincode or the toilet on the outside. But it\u2019d be nice to enjoy some <\/span>personal space<\/span><\/a>, where I don\u2019t have to share the bedroom with my folks. What I\u2019m worried about though is when I am at work and my mama needs help to push my dad\u2019s wheelchair, in that fancy high-rise which will soon become our home, whom will she call out to? There may be no Chetan kaka or Bharati maushi for help. <\/span>\n\nGentrification and redevelopment are like a circus, where the rest of my ilk and I have ringside seats to a whole lot of drama and action. But when the curtains finally draw, I\u2019m not sure all of us will be laughing.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Mumbai undergoes redevelopment, skyscrapers are taking the place of the city\u2019s old chawls. For the people living in these 10×10 pigeonholes, it means moving into apartments with a toilet inside the house. It also means giving up the bonhomie and security that living in a chawl affords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[3470,6842,6843,2535,3476,80,6844],"class_list":["post-3644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-chawls","tag-drivers","tag-gentrification","tag-maids","tag-middle-class","tag-mumbai","tag-redevelopment"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Mumbai Stands to Lose When Chawls Turn to Skyscrapers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As Mumbai undergoes redevelopment, skyscrapers are taking the place of the city\u2019s old chawls. 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