The 'wrong' turn

India has this uncanny ability to consistently shift my perception of things, and remind me to not form judgments of things that I know nothing about...

Today, I took a wrong turn (or a right turn, depending on your Point of View). I ended up into what I think was a 'slum'. Though, if it was a 'slum', the title 'slum' is wrong.

After wandering in circles through the labyrinth of seemingly arbitrarily constructed homes and shops, I decided that this could be better described as a densely populated and wealthy village. It should be called an 'urban village'. There are chickens running around outside, but also, when one looks through a window, one sees a sparkling clean tile floor with a flatscreen tv and sofas... As a rule (though there are no rules), the outsides of homes seem to be falling apart, and the inside of homes can be nicer than many of the apartments in the McGill ghetto.

The people in the 'slum' were almost consistently better dressed than me (I really need to start dressing better). There was every possible retail outlet that one would expect in a city (and the barbers had cleaner shops than in the tourist district). Its as if the village was always there, and that as Mumbai grew around it, more people moved in and built homes, and as the people inside grew wealthier, they chose not to leave.

It is impossible to figure out direction in the urban village. I passed the same bright green building 4 times, only realizing the 4th time, not quite understanding how my centrifugal voyage through a maze brought me back to the same spot... I had no idea how to get out...

The urban village also has 'neighborhoods, some wealthy, some not so much...

I eventually made it out... The 'slums'defy logic, along with principles of sound engineering.. Our stereotype of abject poverty in the slums is false; the truly poor don't even have tin roofs, they live in tents or use the blistering hot sun as a roof.