In truth, he doesn’t know how they got a truck this far from 90 Feet Road. Sections of Dharavi Main Road carry box lorries, but nothing so large as this. Yellow and black, colors of a Padmini cab, a diesel lorry with a flatbed trailer, common on the highways and the infinite construction sites of Bombay, unheard of here.“Is that it, Raj?”David presses against his back, his voice raised to be heard over the rattle of the rain falling on thousands of corrugated tin roofs, the two of them sandwiched into a rare gap where the outer walls of two shanties do not lean against one another. They are drenched by the rain, as close to submerged as one can be without drowning. Their feet are ankle deep in the muck that funnels from the alley into the space between the homes. But when are their feet not ankle deep in muck?Raj squeezes his ball to his chest.“Yes.”David worms closer to the mouth of the gap. If someone inside one of the two shanties leans against the inner wall the boys will either be crushed or spat into the alley like melon seeds pinched from between finger and thumb.David is breathless.“Bhenchod super cool.”It is super cool, of that there is no doubt.
