Mumbai Monsoons

When monsoon brings relief to most Mumbaikars, there are some who just dread it. Like the anticipated birthday of mother nature, monsoon season strikes Mumbai, India without fail every June. Earsplitting thunder, bright shocks of lighting fills the sky to predictable heavy rainfall. Many Mumbaikars take this time to relieve from the scorching Indian sun that shines the majority of the year. Although most of the city is safe and dancing in the rain, the unpredictability of when exactly the monsoon hits puts the BMC's claims of draining the waters efficiently, well quite frankly to shame. Because of the BMC's incompetence of handling the yearly rainfall in a timely fashion, it puts Mumbai as a flood hit region almost every year.

Now, I was not in Mumbai for monsoon season, but staying a mile away from the closest river, I soon realized that the place we were living in was flooded up to at least the first floor. Which made me wonder what happens to the people who don't even live a mile away from the river. What happens to the majority of the poor living by the waterways? Under bridges, under the waterlines, plotted their shanty homes alongside the river or sea with no other land to turn to.

Evershine Nagar, the slum of around 3,500 people I was working in suffers with just that problem. As you can see in those photos, the slum is not only against that river (which ceases to flow), but they are officially located under the water line. Meaning, every monsoon season, without fail, the water line will go at least a few feet over leaving all of Evershine completely sunken underground. Imagine, every year having to flee for your life from the only place that you can call a home. Not only that, many of the inhabitants of Evershine are children, many orphaned living in the trash piles or bound to slavery in sweat shops. Even families living there face devastation, having no place to go from June until September left on the wet, waterlogged streets of Mumbai roaming with their children by their side searching to just survive.

In this black river lie the city's sewer, feces, dead dogs and cows, plastic bags, trash of all sorts, even dead bodies. As you can imagine there lies countless diseases you could get from the river by just breathing in the air let alone being a young child without any parents to direct your every move and playing on the dried over parts of the river. The location of where the residents of Evershine are placed is not just an issue during the monsoon season, but it is a constant year long problem, especially for the orphans. These children have enough to deal with on everyday life, living with problems not even an adult should face. They have to fend for themselves, children of slavery, some begging constantly on the busy city streets, even some working in the brothels. They have very few chances in their week to just be. To skip, to play, to sing, to laugh. When they do, they should not have another concern of contracting a deadly disease by a small infected cut.
This I know sounds depressing, or perhaps harsh truth, but that is what it is. It is truth. It is what real people with dreams and personalities and spirits are dealing with as you are reading this. Children whose lives have not been given a second take on life, who have to deal with harsh and brutal realities of the world. Let us give them hope, a safe refuge, a warm, dry place to rest their heads at night, where they can be educated, they will no longer go hungry, they will no longer have to sell their bodies, they can have a chance at success. Be apart of something that is so much bigger then ourselves. They just need somewhere safe, to simply be loved and protected. Is that too much to ask in life? Is it? They sincerely need you and I to help them.