It happened in Dharavi

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Necessity is the mother of invention. If there is one place in the world that brings out the truth in this adage, day in and day out, it is Dharavi. Spread over an area of no more than 2.1 sq km, it packs in a population of lakhs of hard-working individuals from all over India, who turn the challenge of limited resources on its head. It's no wonder then that the locality, one of the largest slums in Asia, has an annual turnover of anywhere between US $665 million and a $1 billion.

Raghuveer Surupa

And this large canvas of against-all-odds stories is made up of many individual accounts of industry and ingenuity, some of which can now be heard at TEDxDharavi, a series of talks by change-makers and entrepreneurs from the locality, and other areas of Mumbai. Curator Raghuveer Surupa says, "Many of the speakers are now well known, thanks to their rags-to-riches stories. But the idea is to share with the listeners that it didn't happen overnight, and that they all had their share of low points," adding that a team has been helping the speakers with presenting their stories in a relatable format.

We bring you three of those in a nutshell.

Putting on his dancing shoes

Like his fellow speaker Baburao Lad Saheb, Jameel Shah, too, carved his career out of love for Bollywood. As a watchman in Bengaluru, he would see people take dance lessons. "So, when I arrived in Mumbai, I saw an ad for Sandip Soparrkar's dance studio in the mid-day and immediately signed up," he shares. There, he would see other participants slip into special dance shoes. "That's when Sandip Sir told me, 'You live in Dharavi, the hub of shoe-making in the city. Why not try your hand at it?'"

But when Shah took a specimen to a shoemaker in the locality, he was mocked. "You see, a dance shoe must be so soft that it can be wrung like a piece of cloth - something that had never been attempted here before," says Shah. He kept at it and ultimately formed a core group of shoemakers who now specialise in footwear for most dance forms, from jazz and salsa to flamenco. Shah Shoes now counts Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif, Hrithik Roshan, Alia Bhatt and even Kylie Minogue among its clients. The venture also supplies shoes for plays and dance reality shows.

"I had a dream of being around Shah Rukh and Salman Khan, and that's why I wanted to be a dancer. With this shoemaking business, which now employs eight to 10 people, my Bollywood dream is fulfilled," says Shah.

Shaping Bollywood dreams

Living in the birthplace of Bollywood means you are never too far from stardust. At the core of Baburao Lad Saheb's four-decade-long career as the go-to man for aspiring actors and dancers in Dharavi lies his own love for cinema. A signboard painter by profession, he would work until he had made a decent sum and then sign up for dance and acting classes as a teenager.

"One day, sometime in the early 1980s, I was at work when crewmembers from a film set came looking for someone who could paint a stack of boards. It was for a fight sequence featuring Amitabh Bachchan. I did it in no time and I became a regular on the sets," recalls the 58-year-old. "Soon, they started asking me for masons and carpenters, and even artistes."

That was the birth of Lad's 5 Star Acting and Dancing Studio, where he has taught about 15,000 youngsters from Dharavi, and helped over 1,500 gain employment as actors, camerapersons, spotboys, dancers and fighters in the film industry.

Lad along with 25 of his students has also acted in Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. "I charge a nominal fee of '50 and '100 for many of my students, while 50 per cent of them learn for free. After all, acting courses cost lakhs. How does someone with no means sign up?"

Kicking off a change

Gulafsha Ansari was first introduced to football at the age of nine, when her mother signed her up for a free session that an NGO would organise in their neighbourhood. While being on the ground with her friends was fun, she realised that if she didn't take the sport seriously, she would be dominated by boys who wouldn't pass the ball.

From then on, she went on to play football at the college, university and state levels, while getting opportunities to participate in camps and workshops abroad. The 23-year-old, who is pursuing her MBA in sports management, now helms Dreaming in a Slum, her initiative for women empowerment through football.

"When a girl is born, it is already decided what she is going to do in life. I want to motivate them and tell them, if I can, you can, too," says Ansari, who trains 60 girls in Dharavi, and also speaks to their family members about how learning a sport also teaches life skills. Her message to the listeners at her first talk? "Give your daughter a chance."

ON April 28, 10 am at Sri Shanmukhananda Auditorium, Sion East
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