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He isn’t very committed, even though he’s been a Congress activist since childhood. He offers me a novel reason why people should vote for his party, the incumbents: ‘The Congress has already eaten. Its stomach is full. The Sena hasn’t eaten. Everybody’s a thief, but the Congress won’t eat any more.’
Bombay’s menace is not street crime. It’s bigger and more organized than that.
Madan, a street photographer, asks me to walk with him through Golpitha, the collective name for the red-light district. So much of Bombay is a red-light district that the Dalit poets call the entire city Golpitha.
The slums of Bombay are filled with programmers learning Visual Basic, C++, Oracle, Windows NT. It is a hospitable new world for the bright young slum children of Bombay, people like Girish, showing them the way out, like boxing or basketball in Harlem.
It is a hierarchical city; you are always comparing yourself with others. ‘There is someone on top of you, and someone on top of them.’
