I'm a Master in India

Chapter 42 Urban Desert

Not long after Ron moved, he arranged with Luca to visit the Mumbai pharmaceutical market.

Lena was eager to go along, but after hearing that the pharmaceutical market was near the Dharavi slum, she gave up the idea.

"I heard that place is like a ruin?" Luca asked curiously as they got into the taxi.

"A ruin?" Ron smiled. "Do you remember your first impression of Mumbai?"

"Uh… a lot of people, very noisy, and a strange smell."

"It's a stench, no need to be so subtle. Everyone knows that."

Every foreigner who arrives in India and gets off a plane or train is immediately greeted by a nauseating stench.

This is not an exaggeration. Whether it's New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, or Chennai, the entire city exudes all kinds of foul odors.

The smell of sweat, the stench of rotting food, the odor of excrement, the stench of garbage fermenting—the moment you land, it assaults your nostrils.

Look at the streets now. Garbage and rats are commonplace, even for foreigners. There are a few Indian men urinating in the corner, and even bigger business going on in the bushes further away.

As soon as the man leaves after dropping his loincloth, a group of pigs and dogs rush over, snorting and fighting over the fresh excrement.

Ugh… not to mention Luca, even Ron, who has seen a lot, feels nauseous.

"Buddy, why are your police indifferent to all this?"

"Because the police sometimes do the same thing."

"What?" Luca's eyes widened.

"There's nothing strange about it. This country itself is built on contradictions. Okay, we should get out of the car."

"But it doesn't seem like we've arrived yet?"

"There's a cow blocking the road ahead. Judging by its temper, we might be stuck here until dark."

Indian cows are not afraid of people at all. Even if they are skin and bones, they can still sit lazily in the middle of the road and doze off.

Now everyone is stuck here. Motorcycles, taxis, handcarts, and pedestrians are squeezed together, and the deafening horns are honking even louder.

To prevent a repeat of the last incident, Ron simply took Luca out to walk, as it wasn't far anyway.

As mentioned before, Mumbai's development is rich in the south and poor in the north. In the central part, the dilapidated streets are so narrow that they can't accommodate people.

The pharmaceutical market is hidden somewhere within, but before arriving, they need to pass through the side of Dharavi.

This was also Ron's first time here. The distant slum looked like dark brown dunes, undulating from the roadside into the distance, eventually meeting the horizon in a vision conjured by the dirty, hot smoke.

When you get closer, you will find that the houses there are extremely simple. They are simply built with rags, broken plastic sheets, cardboard scraps, reed mats, and bamboo.

They are tightly packed together, and narrow, winding alleys run through them. In the vast and chaotic slum, there is nothing taller than a person.

Luca opened his mouth wide, shocked by the scene before him. He had been to the countryside, but he had never seen a slum.

Looking closely at the residents, there were women squatting by the river combing their dark hair, children playing in the river, and men shaving in front of cracked mirrors.

Then, upstream in the same river, someone was leading three goats, grooming their fur, while goat droppings fell into the water one by one.

"Not all the people in the slums are poor. Look, they even have their own livestock," Luca said.

Ron glanced over. The necks of the goats were tied with red ribbons. "If a man in the slum doesn't have a wife, he will raise a few goats."

"God, I don't understand what you're saying! Don't say anymore!" Luca exclaimed.

His prank successful, Ron smiled and continued to lead him through the edge of this wasteland.

He was just a fake Indian; other Brahmins would never come to this kind of place.

In the teachings of Hinduism, untouchables, also known as Dalits, are considered to carry impurity that can be contagious.

The caste system has been diluted a lot in open cities like Mumbai, but it is still an insurmountable gap.

"Ron, what are they doing?" Luca discovered another strange thing.

Following his gaze, Ron saw an Indian woman wearing a headscarf, plastering something on the wall.

"Those are cow dung cakes."

"Cow dung? Cakes?" Luca racked his brains but couldn't figure out how these two words could be put together.

"See those round things on the wall? These are all processed cow dung."

On the mud walls of the slum, densely packed, hand-slapped cow dung cakes were plastered.

It has been processed, roughly meaning collecting scattered cow dung, mixing it with soil, and then stirring in chopped wheat stalks.

These cow dung cakes are all kneaded by hand, first pinched into a ball the size of a pill, and then slapped on the wall to flatten them into a cake shape.

Standing where they were, they could clearly see the fingerprints of the women on the round cow dung cakes.

"What is this thing used for?" Luca asked, suppressing his disgust.

"Fuel or for sale."

"Sell?"

"That's right, poor people can't afford gas and electricity, and cow dung cakes are the best alternative. See the bamboo basket on the child's head?

The cow dung cakes inside are 1 paisa each, oh, maybe the price has gone up now. But 1 rupee is enough to use for a long time, which is very cost-effective for the people here."

"No wonder… no wonder…" Luca muttered to himself.

He had seen all kinds of garbage along the way, pig feces, dog feces, all kinds of excrement, but no cow dung, because it had already been collected.

"Okay, stop looking. If you are interested, I will buy you two later."

"I will never be interested in this kind of thing!" Luca protested loudly.

"Really? Remember the milk tea I treated you to earlier?"

"What… what's wrong?"

"The hot water for boiling the milk tea was burned with cow dung cakes."

"Ugh~"

After walking for more than ten minutes on the edge of Mumbai's largest slum, Ron led Luca to their destination, Valmiki Street.

Because the name is a bit awkward and there are many drug dealers from all over the world, everyone simply calls it Pharmacy Street.

Like other dilapidated streets, Pharmacy Street has nothing to do with high-end.

Haphazard billboards stretch out on both sides of the street, and they are surrounded by dense wires, making people's scalps tingle like spider nests.

Looking around, there are at least dozens of pharmacies on the street, and the sanitary conditions are generally worrying.

"Where should we go? I don't recognize any of the words above." Those earthworm-like Hindi characters were completely chaotic lines to Luca.

"Don't worry, let me check out the situation first." Ron casually found a store and walked in.

He actually had other candidates introduced by Johnny, but before that, it was best to understand the market himself.

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