Dotted...

~ Raina

On my morning commutes from Defence Colony to Okhla I pass a mini-slum. The slum is along a small stretch of the main road. I can see the people in the slum getting ready every morning. They’re on the sidewalk brushing their teeth or taking a bath. The women are over a fire cooking something. The whole process of us waking up and getting ready – something we do behind close doors, the slum dwellers do in public with hundreds of cars and eyeballs passing by. Getting ready in public has become a part of their daily routine and something they seem quite comfortable with.

There’s something else I saw the other day: children squatting on the sidewalk shitting (excuse the not-so-pleasant terminology or description). There were three kids just sitting arms length from each other just doing their business. On the sidewalk you could see other people’s “doing” from earlier that day or maybe previous days. The sidewalk was dotted by it. It was almost grid like. The children are sitting there attending nature’s call with a bottle of water right next to them to wash, oblivious to the hundreds of car passing by. There was someone else’s pile of shit next to them but they didn’t seem to care. This is their bathroom. From what I could see, the sidewalk was almost full. It made me wonder where the kid’s next bathroom will be when the sidewalk would be too full to use. It made me wonder if anyone ever cleans it.


In my mind I remember thinking, “Eww!. How can they not care that so many people are passing by? How can they just do it out in the open like that?” Haha…

It’s funny how we get used to some things and some environments. Places that are completely unacceptable for us to even walk through are living grounds for others. The worst is how we drive past these places and don’t even for a second think about what we’re witnessing. It has become such a part of our lives to see the slum dwellers live their lives in the open. We have so openly and quietly accepted it.