Mallory and I visited the Kathputli Colony, the biggest slum in Delhi, in the Shadipur neighborhood.

Built some 50 or 60 years ago, the colony now comprises 65 acres, and is home for some 2800 families with about 40 000 people. It has a big community from Rajasthan and other ethnic or religious groups.

People live in 11 zones, according to their origin, religion or language, or tasks, some polish shoes or specialize in handiworks, for example.

But Kathputli Colony is mostly known for its street performers: magicians, snake charmers, acrobats, singers, dancers, actors, traditional healers and musicians and especially puppeteers.

It is the world’s largest community of street performers. The name Kathputli Colony comes from Hindi word for puppet, Kathputli.

Our guide Laxmi, from the Rajasthani group, introduced us to some of them, who performed a few tricks, sang a song or did a little dance.

She works for PETE – Providing Education To Everyone, which is an organization that tries to improve living conditions for kids in the colony.

They organize these walking tours, the proceeds of which go to the three projects they run in Kathputli: a kindergarden, a school, and a vocational school for women, where they learn handiwork, sewing, etc.

 

We walked through different zones, and even within a slum there are clear distinctions between the (relatively) better off and worse-off areas.

Some areas have some sort of open water drainage system that washes away the dirt. There’s trash in the streets. Depending on the area it is kept relatively clean, or you have to walk through piles of trash and rubble.

The worse-off ones are really bad. Houses collapsed, heaps of trash everywhere and so many flies. Things become relative, you realize it when you walk back into the cleaner, more ‘developed’ areas, if you can say so.

What struck me were the colors: even though most houses are at best makeshift brick buildings on the verge of collapse, they are colored in bright blue or green, violet or yellow.

Sanitary conditions aren’t good of course, there are water pipes, but the water flows only a couple of hours a day, and always at different times. That’s when you see the people queue up with water containers to get the daily ration.

The kids are adorable… they are friendly and come up to greet you, and they are wild to be photographed.

At first I was shy, not wanting to intrude and document them in their poverty. But I soon realized they love to pose and then see themselves on the little screen.

It gets so wild, they are hard to control and you have to stop at one point. They could play this game forever.

There were a few moments that were hard to take in, an older father with a tiny newborn on his arm… Naked, dirty kids….

Most of them seemed relatively fine though, cleaned in orderly clothes, so it seems their parents do take care of them as good as they can.

In 2010, the Delhi city government initiated a redevelopment project of the colony. 2800 flats will be built in 10-storey buildings.

Part of the land – prime real estate by now in the middle of Delhi – will be given to the developer to construct its own commercial and residential buildings.

In early 2014,  some of the families started shifting to transit camps where they are expected to stay for two years, while the site undergoes construction, according to Wikipedia.

Let’s hope they really do get moved from there and into new houses.