Artist Natalia Rodriguez along with URBZ’s Shyam Kanle and the kids of the Dharavi Shelter have produced this photo novel, which is the first of a series. The story was entirely invented by the kids. This fiction says as much about their reality as about their creativity .
In this series, the kids speak about their neighbourhood and lives. They tell us how Dharavi is anancient place that is surprisingly able to rethink and transform itself again and again
Giving a voice to the kids is urgent and inevitable. Whether it is to talk about communal tension, the arbitrariness of the state or the daily struggles of Mumbaikars. They are not only our future, but also our bright present!
What began as a regular jostling and tugging of the idea in a brainstorm soon took off as an imaginative exercise that encouraged creative and personal readings of the concept and the making of its visual expressions.
"My experience in Dharavi made obvious to me the essential gap between pre-conceived / pre-fabricated ideas of a place, and the actual, live, reality of it".
The second issue of the graphic novel will take you through the history of building and rebuilding of the Vithal Bhaskar Chawl.
Dharavi has been an interesting setting for many Mumbai based films. This article discusses a few films from the past decades that feature Dharavi as a place central to their narratives.
