Viviane Dalles is 29 and has been an independent photographer since 2005. Following her first subject After the Tsunami, documented over several months in India, she continues to travel the country that inspires her capturing India from many different perspectives. She has worked with La Vie, Okapi, Ado, Le Figaro Magazine, La Tribune, Paris-Match and Le Monde 2.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
01 Dharavi, Bombay, 2007, Viviane Dalles.jpg
Mumbai's Shadow City
Some call the Dharavi slum an embarassing eyesore in the middle of India's financial capital. Its residents call it home.
By Mark Jacobson
All cities in India are loud, but nothing matches the 24/7 decibel level of Mumbai, the former Bombay, where the traffic never stops and the horns always honk. Noise, however, is not a problem in Dharavi, the teeming slum of one million souls, where as many as 18,000 people crowd into a single acre (0.4 hectares). By nightfall, deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for the putt-putt of auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once you get accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense of relaxation sets in—ah, at last a moment to think straight.
Dharavi is routinely called "the largest slum in Asia," a dubious attribution sometimes conflated into "the largest slum in the world." This is not true. Mexico City's Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi's Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the city's swelling 12 million population lives in what is euphemistically referred to as "informal" housing, other slum pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.
Yet Dharavi remains unique among slums. A neighborhood smack in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull of a subcontinental Harlem—a square-mile (three square kilometers) center of all things, geographically, psychologically, spiritually. Its location has also made it hot real estate in Mumbai, a city that epitomizes India's hopes of becoming an economic rival to China. Indeed, on a planet where half of humanity will soon live in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only on the future of India's burgeoning cities, but on urban space everywhere.
Ask any longtime resident—some families have been here for three or more generations—how Dharavi came to be, and they'll say, "We built it." This is not far off. Until the late 19th century, this area of Mumbai was mangrove swamp inhabited by Koli fishermen. When the swamp filled in (with coconut leaves, rotten fish, and human waste), the Kolis were deprived of their fishing grounds—they would soon shift to bootlegging liquor—but room became available for others. The Kumbhars came from Gujarat to establish a potters' colony. Tamils arrived from the south and opened tanneries. Thousands traveled from Uttar Pradesh to work in the booming textile industry. The result is the most diverse of slums, arguably the most diverse neighborhood in Mumbai, India's most diverse city.
Stay for a while on the three-foot-wide (one meter) lane of Rajendra Prasad Chawl, and you become acquainted with the rhythms of the place. The morning sound of devotional singing is followed by the rush of water. Until recently few people in Dharavi had water hookups. Residents such as Meera Singh, a wry woman who has lived on the lane for 35 years, used to walk a mile (two kilometers) to get water for the day's cleaning and cooking. At the distant spigot she would have to pay the local "goons" to fill her buckets. This is how it works in the bureaucratic twilight zone of informal housing. Deprived of public services because of their illegal status, slum dwellers often find themselves at the mercy of the "land mafia." There are water goons, electricity goons. In this regard, the residents of Rajendra Prasad Chawl are fortunate. These days, by DIY hook or crook, nearly every household on the street has its own water tap. And today, like every day, residents open their hoses to wash down the lane as they stand in the doorways of their homes to brush their teeth.
Some call the Dharavi slum an embarassing eyesore in the middle of India's financial capital. Its residents call it home.
By Mark Jacobson
All cities in India are loud, but nothing matches the 24/7 decibel level of Mumbai, the former Bombay, where the traffic never stops and the horns always honk. Noise, however, is not a problem in Dharavi, the teeming slum of one million souls, where as many as 18,000 people crowd into a single acre (0.4 hectares). By nightfall, deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for the putt-putt of auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once you get accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense of relaxation sets in—ah, at last a moment to think straight.
Dharavi is routinely called "the largest slum in Asia," a dubious attribution sometimes conflated into "the largest slum in the world." This is not true. Mexico City's Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi's Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the city's swelling 12 million population lives in what is euphemistically referred to as "informal" housing, other slum pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.
Yet Dharavi remains unique among slums. A neighborhood smack in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull of a subcontinental Harlem—a square-mile (three square kilometers) center of all things, geographically, psychologically, spiritually. Its location has also made it hot real estate in Mumbai, a city that epitomizes India's hopes of becoming an economic rival to China. Indeed, on a planet where half of humanity will soon live in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only on the future of India's burgeoning cities, but on urban space everywhere.
Ask any longtime resident—some families have been here for three or more generations—how Dharavi came to be, and they'll say, "We built it." This is not far off. Until the late 19th century, this area of Mumbai was mangrove swamp inhabited by Koli fishermen. When the swamp filled in (with coconut leaves, rotten fish, and human waste), the Kolis were deprived of their fishing grounds—they would soon shift to bootlegging liquor—but room became available for others. The Kumbhars came from Gujarat to establish a potters' colony. Tamils arrived from the south and opened tanneries. Thousands traveled from Uttar Pradesh to work in the booming textile industry. The result is the most diverse of slums, arguably the most diverse neighborhood in Mumbai, India's most diverse city.
Stay for a while on the three-foot-wide (one meter) lane of Rajendra Prasad Chawl, and you become acquainted with the rhythms of the place. The morning sound of devotional singing is followed by the rush of water. Until recently few people in Dharavi had water hookups. Residents such as Meera Singh, a wry woman who has lived on the lane for 35 years, used to walk a mile (two kilometers) to get water for the day's cleaning and cooking. At the distant spigot she would have to pay the local "goons" to fill her buckets. This is how it works in the bureaucratic twilight zone of informal housing. Deprived of public services because of their illegal status, slum dwellers often find themselves at the mercy of the "land mafia." There are water goons, electricity goons. In this regard, the residents of Rajendra Prasad Chawl are fortunate. These days, by DIY hook or crook, nearly every household on the street has its own water tap. And today, like every day, residents open their hoses to wash down the lane as they stand in the doorways of their homes to brush their teeth.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/29slide1-taj-first-images-inside.htm
Few weeks back, I was near the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel, it stood tall like a monarch facing the vast expanse of the Arabian Sea... I walked by it, looking up, admiring the work of fine craftsmanship. The architecture spoke volumes about the aesthetic & skills that came together in creating this wonder... Built by Sir Jamsetji Tata in the year 1903 to prove a point to the Goras, who refused him entry at the Watson's as it allowed only elite Britishers...
The sky was empty & calm, few peigons were scattered around along with a handful of distant tourists, who stretched their necks to grasp a full view of the majestic dome of the Taj, these pictures are my tribute to this unforgettable landmark of Bombay.
This is what Suketu Mehta, acclaimed author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found, wrote in his article in The Hindustan Times on the morning of 29th Nov, the terror-ridden tragic day, when the 48hrs seize came to an end... "The Taj Mahal Hotel is to Bombay what The Empire State Building is to New York: it is what you see on a postcard of the city, a building that does not need to be further identified. It is simply Bombay"
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Some New Books...
Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws. Jim Morrison
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes; tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers, characters we have hidden if as if caves, fears we have climbed up as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when i am dead. I believe in such cartography, to be marked by nature. Not just to label ourselves like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communial books, communial histories. All that I wished was to walk upon an earth that had no maps - The English Patient, Michael OndaatjeTuesday, November 25, 2008
Textures of Time
Have you seen a wall bleed…?
I’ve seen it. Not just bleed but crack and peel under the summer sun, I’ve seen it swell during the rains, showers seeping through its pores, I’ve seen it silently covered within a blanket of thick green moss… I have closely observed the seasonal metamorphoses it undergoes… almost like a canvas that’s constantly being painted by time.
My love with textures began in the early days of NID, where as a Photography student I was taught to look carefully through the lens. The view finder opened a new world for me; I started to look closely at surfaces and could see vivid forms emerging out of mundane things. The intermingling of strange shades of colors, the stark juxtaposition of forms & patterns resulting in a heady labyrinth of sorts… An old plank of wood weary with age, the Iron Gate wrapped in rust, the parchment seeped in sepia tinted stains…
I would get attracted to everything that was “aging beautifully with time”. It was a joy seeing old posters peep out from a new coat of paint, the cracks on the road swallowing the freshly painted pedestrian signs, grainy copper locks latched on to old blue forgotten doors… thus began the journey in pursuit of capturing the decadence of time…
As I travel for work or for the joy of it, I witness a visual montage created by the residue of time. An ever-changing play of textures that forms a skin to the surface of things…
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old – Franz Kafka
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