Incredible. Thursday, I had too many close calls on emotional and mental break downs. At 11:15 am I met up with Mumbai's field organizer, Anil, at Dadar train station to go to Dharavi. After visiting members in Dharavi (which was enough of an over-whelming experience for one afternoon) , as we crossed the sky walk from the Bandra station, a crowd had gathered on the side that looked over at the slums. I peeked over and heard the man next to me say that the slum had caught fire the night before and the fire brigade had been trying to put out the blaze since 4 in the morning. The fire had started at 2 a.m. People living in the slums had gathered into the field owned by a school next to the slum and had set up tents on the sidewalk. The gutter lines had backed up and the young men were desperately trying to pull out the trash and debris that was blocking the drains. The stench of sewage, the body odor, along with the smog from the fire was too much to bare. Anil and I rushed through to get to the office but as we walked through, people from the slums who knew Anil, stopped and spoke about the fire. It was the same story over and over..."there was a fire, gas cylinders blew up, the firemen showed up late, we can't leave our place on the side walk or someone else will take it over, still trying to find bodies..."

At the office, Vinod, director of India ACORN, indicated that the fire was either an accident or could have been ordered by one of the developers. June 17th was the deadline for people to move out so the community could be grazed for new buildings.

Later, I was invited by Vinod to attend a meeting organized by well-known progressive organizers, architects, professors, former government officials, and city planners, the same issue was brought up. The meeting was about Mumbai government's plan to build low-income housing (keeping in mind the low-income projects in the U.S.). Of course, it was a terrible idea. An intense debate in Marathi, English, and Hindi between the attendees went on for 2 and half hours. The guidelines for building the rental housing were not "inhabitable" and that it was an attempt to push the poor out of the city boundaries, creating slums outside of Mumbai. What was even more outrageous was that part of the government's plan is to cap off the amount of time people can live in the rental housing, which is 5 years, and just hope that within 5 years the renters will have saved enough money to buy property and move out of rental housing. Of course, this is all without any real planning or any pressure to address the issue of lack of jobs and the high cost of living in Mumbai.