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They have no running water, no TV and no fridge - and
they share a squat toilet with their neighbours. But for
an Australian family, living in Delhi’s Seelampur slums
has been a deeply enriching experience.
Mark and Cathy Delaney don’t need to see the hit movie Slumdog Millionaire. The couple from Brisbane experience
slum life in India first-hand every day. For 13 years,
they have lived in the shanty towns of Delhi, raising
their children and sharing their lives with the locals.
The Delaneys have two sons Tom, 12, and Oscar, 7 who
were born in India and have lived most of their lives in
slums.
The family home, in a neighbourhood called Janata
Mazdoor Colony, is about the size of a typical
Australian bedroom. They have no running water, no
television, no fridge and no washing machine. Two
mattresses double as a lounge in the day, and meals are
eaten sitting on the floor. They share a small bathroom
featuring a squat toilet with neighbours. Most of the
Delaneys’ possessions are stored in a few steel trunks.
But the Delaneys are not complaining. They are strongly
motivated by their faith, believing that life is more
about caring for others than about comfort and success
in the world’s eyes. For them, living in a slum has been
deeply enriching.
“It baffles us that more people in Australia who say
they are sick of their lives don’t do something like we
have,” says Cathy, who holds a master’s degree in pure
mathematics.
“The longer we have stayed here, the more we can see the
positive effect it has had on us as people. I feel much
freer of money and possessions these things don’t define
my life.”
Mark, a 42-year-old lawyer, says having spent more than
a decade in Delhi’s squatter settlements has been a
“radical detoxification” from consumerism.
“For the first couple of years, I thought, ‘We’ll do
this for a while and then we’ll go back to Australia,
get a deposit and build a house’ and so on but I’ve let
go of all that now,” he says. “I just can’t do that any
more it’s no longer a desire within me, and that feels
good.”
Mark has a parttime volunteer job working for an
HIV/AIDS program run by a Delhi-based non-government
organisation. But the chief focus of the family, who all
speak Hindi, is on their slum.
“Our main purpose is simply to experience what life is
like here, to live with and learn from the poor and
contribute something positive to people’s lives,” Mark
says. “It’s a very fulfilling life.”
But it is also very demanding. Most days someone or
other approaches them for some kind of assistance.
“There is not much value placed on personal space here
and I find myself craving it,” Mark says. He sets aside
time every Sunday morning to sit in the tiny office they
have near their house to enjoy his own space. He also
tries to get in a game of tennis or a run in the park
with his boys a couple of times a week.
The Delaneys, who receive financial support from friends
and family in Australia, moved into their current
neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of Delhi in 2003.
About 60,000 people are packed into the illegal
settlement, which takes up less than half a square
kilometre.
Janta Mazdoor Colony, which literally means “Low-class
labourers’ colony”, started 30 years ago as a cluster of
makeshift huts in an open field. It is one of an
estimated 1500 slums scattered across Delhi that house
at least 3 million people.
Over the years, more and more people have moved in,
mostly migrants from the densely populated state of
Uttar Pradesh that borders Delhi.
As time has passed, people have gradually upgraded their
houses. Flimsy walls have been replaced with bricks,
slab roofs have been added in place of black plastic,
and illegal electricity connections have allowed many to
run TVs and fans.
The better-off families even have some white goods and
other appliances. More recently, when private players
were allowed to enter India’s retail energy market, most
households got electricity meters and a legitimate power
source.
Even so, open drains still run along the slum’s maze of
narrow alleys and empty into a putrid canal not far from
the Delaneys’ front door.
There is a constant movement of arrivals and departures
in the slum. New residents often have to resort to
makeshift campstyle accommodation for many years before
they can upgrade.
Properties are bought and sold and there are even
informal titles exchanged to prove ownership. Although
these documents would not hold up in court, they give
those purchasing a slum hut a sense of security.
A three-level slum house recently changed hands for Rs.
190,000. The Delaneys pay Rs.1800 a month in rent,
although many small rooms in the slum are half that
price.
Daily life for the Delaneys is quite different from the
made-for-the-movies portrayal of the Mumbai slums in
Slumdog Millionaire. But some of it rings true. The
movie’s main character, Jamal Malik, is a Muslim, as are
90 per cent of the residents in Janta Mazdoor Colony.
Muslims are a minority community in India and treated
with suspicion by many belonging to the Hindu majority.
This can add an extra layer of marginalisation for slum
families.
The communal tensions depicted in Slumdog also simmer
where the Delaneys live in east Delhi. One scene in the
movie apparently reenacts the bloody communal riots that
rocked Mumbai’s slums in 1992. Two years ago, communal
tensions in the Delaneys’ neighbourhood also erupted
into a riot. Tear gas fired by antiriot police to clear
the streets wafted through the their house. “We found
out how well tear gas works,” Mark says.
However, the most obvious parallel with the slum life
portrayed in Slumdog is the vulnerability and
powerlessness that Mark and Cathy see daily. Slum life
has already nurtured a strong sense of social justice in
the Delaney boys.
“I have realised that the most important thing is to
help other people,” Tom says. “But I have also realised
that I have limits.” There is hot debate in the
household about how simply they should live.
“Cathy is a bit harderline than me,” Mark says.
“Sometimes she says, ‘Let’s move down a bit’, but I’m
usually a bit resistant. Most people think we are pretty
stupid already.” Yet Cathy, who is 44, says she often
feels uncomfortable about how much more she spends than
many of her neighbours.
“I guess I am more hardcore about living a simple
lifestyle,” she says. “There is something deep within me
that is still the farmer’s daughter, who wants to
conserve everything and not waste anything. I tend to be
more optimistic and idealistic. I think: ‘Of course we
can do it.”’
Her son Tom thinks along the same lines. He once asked
how much income his neighbours had to live on and
insisted they do the same. So, for the experience, they
cut their monthly budget of 10,000 rupees ($A306) in
half for a month.
“First we ran out of corn flakes and then we ran out of
jam. Our diet got much simpler,” Cathy says. “It was a
hard experience but a really good one. It gave us so
much more respect for the people who live here.”
Mark has been pleasantly surprised by how much their
boys have benefited from the experience of living in a
poor neighbourhood. Oscar is in year 2 at a local school
and Tom recently switched to home schooling. “It is
really a great place to raise kids,” Mark says. “They
have been exposed to what the real issues are on a
global scale.”
When the boys were asked if they wanted to move back to
Australia later this year or stay in the slum, they
chose to stay. “I used to think that, with the kids, we
would just endure living here for a while and then go,”
Mark says. “But now I’m thinking this is a good thing
for them, and I want to stay not for my sake but for the
sake of my kids.”
Things that most families take for granted give the
Delaneys great satisfaction such as electricity. The
power goes off in the neighbourhood for several hours
each day.
To help cope, the Delaneys got a small solar panel,
worth about Rs. 3400, for Cathy’s 40th birthday. This
powers a lamp during the blackouts. “It’s just been
great,” she says.
A striking feature of the Delaneys’ lifestyle is their
small environmental footprint. Like most people who live
in India, they are responsible for a fraction of the
greenhouse gas emissions of the average Australian.
They use very little electricity, create very little
waste and rely exclusively on public transport. During
Delhi’s long summer, the Delaneys even use a solar oven
basically a metal box with a glass lid for baking.
“Living here makes you ask: What gives us the right to
have more than our fair share?” Mark says.
Like many Indian slum families, the Delaneys have often
had to move. In 2000, they were forced to leave a slum
called Barapula, where they lived in a rudimentary hut
with a plastic roof. One day a sign went up on the
community toilet block informing the locals their homes
would be demolished within six days.
The Delaneys’ efforts, together with a group of
residents, helped delay the demolition for several
months, but ultimately the 7000 residents were scattered
to slum “resettlement areas” on the urban fringe.
Several years after moving to Janta Mazdoor Colony, the
Delaneys started a small community development project
called Kari — Hindi for “link”. The aim is to promote
self-sufficiency.
“The best way we have figured to help around here is to
make sure people can access what they are entitled to,
like schools and health care,” Mark says. “What we do is
really an advocacy role.”
A team of five local workers helps children get into
government schools, ensures local families get proper
treatment at government hospitals and helps people get
jobs.
They have learnt that something as simple as helping
neighbours get official documentation, such as voter and
ration cards, can change lives. These documents provide
access to government programs such as food subsidies and
pensions.
Small gifts can also make a big difference. A neighbour
came to the door recently saying a doctor had
recommended a CT scan for her baby. She could not afford
the 1000-rupee fee, so Mark and Cathy paid it. The scan
revealed tuberculosis of the brain serious, but
treatable.
The baby is now getting the right medication, but the
story might have ended in tragedy.
The Delaneys, with a local community group, are now
planning to mount a campaign to convince government
authorities to upgrade the buildings in their colony and
grant the residents permanent tenure.
“It will take a long time, because it’s a very
controversial process,” Mark says.
Arfa is one of the many friends Mark and Cathy have made
in their neighbourhood. Her life is typical of that of
many locals. She lives with six other family members in
a hut about 1.8 metres wide and seven metres long.
Arfa migrated from a rural village in Uttar Pradesh 18
years ago, but her husband died, leaving her to raise
four children, including a son with a mental disability
and a deaf daughter.
Tragedy struck again three years ago, when Arfa’s only
married daughter died, leaving her with four
grandchildren to care for as well. “My whole body aches
to think of all the problems I face,” she says.
Arfa’s son, Zaki, 24, is the only breadwinner, bringing
home Rs. 4000 a month, which is pooled with Arfa’s
monthly widow’s pension of Rs.1000. But Arfa has a
defiant cheerfulness despite her poverty.
“Whether you laugh or cry, life goes on so I might as
well laugh,” she says. “If you laugh, you can forget
about your problems for a minute or two.” Mark says
people like Arfa keep him going.
“Sometimes I get sick of all this,” he says, “but
meeting people like Arfa is very inspirational.”
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