Bangkok--11 Mar--eTurboNews
Michael Cronins job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites temples, monuments, markets when one day he happened across a flier advertising slum tours.
It just resonated with me immediately, said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years salary for many Indians. But I didnt know what to expect.
Soon, Mr. Cronin, 41, found himself skirting open sewers and ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires as he toured the sprawling Dharavi slum, home to more than a million. He joined a cricket game and saw the small-scale industry, from embroidery to tannery, that quietly thrives in the slum. Nothing is considered garbage there, he said. Everything is used again.
Mr. Cronin was briefly shaken when a man, obviously drunk, rifled through his pockets, but the two-and-a-half-hour tour changed his image of India. Everybody in the slum wants to work, and everybody wants to make themselves better, he said.