Mumbai, India — At 7 a.m., Rupali Rao Kilare starts getting ready for the day in the cramped home she shares with five family members.
Though the sun has long risen, some alleys remain pitch dark as she weaves through the slum where she lives in Mumbai’s Goregaon West neighborhood, its narrow walls wedged between tightly packed buildings that block the light.
Kilare, 22, must hurry to beat the crowds at the slum’s communal toilets, before taking a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw to her boss’ home for her cleaning shift.
Just 3 miles (about 5 kilometers) away in Goregaon East, Shreya Verma, 26, stirs awake in her air-conditioned bedroom, pulls back the curtains of her large windows and takes in the view of greenery and high-rise buildings.
Throwing on a blazer and stylish heels, she hops in an Uber to her office at an international tech firm, decorated with marble flooring and hanging plants.
Though the two women are separated by only a few years in age and a 20-minute drive, their starkly different lives illustrate India’s deepening wealth divide – and the inequality that has empowered some to reach new heights alongside the country’s fast-growing economy, while others are left behind.
Shreya Verma poses for a portrait at her office in Mumbai.
Rupali Rao Kilare poses for a portrait along an alley at the Bhagat Singh Nagar slum where she lives in Mumbai.
That inequality has come under particular scrutiny during India's ongoing nationwide election, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to add another term to his 10-year rule.
Though his far-right, Hindu-nationalist policies have courted controversy, Modi has also been credited with advancing India’s $3.7 trillion economy and bringing the country closer to becoming a global superpower.
But India remains a largely impoverished nation and the country’s wealth gap, according to a recent study, is more unequal than it was during British rule. That disparity is clearly visible in Mumbai, where the mansions of billionaire tycoons and Bollywood stars exist alongside vast slums and street beggars.
The financial hub is often described as “the City of Dreams,” attracting millions of migrants from across India hoping for their own success stories.
Verma is among them — and believes in Mumbai’s mythical potential to transform lives.
“Everybody here has a dream to do something in life,” Verma said. “This is the Bollywood city, right? So you see celebrities everywhere, you see people doing well for themselves — even an auto-rickshaw (driver) would want to do something for himself.”
Kilare has ambitions too. But the grueling, never-ending demands of her daily life highlight how much less accessible those dreams can be for some. “I wanted to be a teacher after completing my studies,” she said. "But life had different plans.”
Divergent childhoods
The two women were born in the country’s two biggest cities — Verma in the frenetic capital New Delhi and Kilare in Mumbai.
From the outset, their lives were poles apart.
Verma, an only child, regularly moved cities due to her father’s banking job, while her mother, a homemaker, cared for her. They would take weekend getaways and short trips around the country, enjoying the lush hills of northern India — then, as her father’s career advanced, taking international holidays.
She keenly remembers the first time they went to Europe when she was about 14 — the sights of Switzerland and France, including Paris Disneyland. It was especially significant because her father brought his parents, she said. They hadn’t grown up with money and it was their first time on a plane.
The family’s travels have shaped Verma’s personality and interests, she said — evident in her Instagram travel page. “If today somebody asked me, ‘What is it that you would want to do post-retirement' ... I would love to just travel around the globe,” she told CNN, sitting on cushions by her room’s bay window.
Verma shows family pictures at her family’s apartment.
Verma plays the ukulele inside her bedroom.
Kilare, meanwhile, has never moved from the slum where she was born and raised with her sister and two brothers. Her life was turbulent from the start, she said, as her father struggled with alcoholism — forcing his family to support themselves.
Kilare’s mother, a housekeeper, brought her to work sometimes, leaving the young girl to do her homework while she cleaned the houses of Mumbai’s wealthy. When she was just 8 years old, Kilare began working to help her out, she said, so small she had to stand on a stool to reach the sink to wash dishes.
Even now, she is still slight and petite at roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, with round cheeks and a high, almost childlike voice that make her seem younger than her age.
At age 14, she was forced to drop out of school in the ninth grade, when her mother fell sick. “I had to take care of the home and take on her work to support the family,” Kilare said.
Adding to the weight on her young shoulders was a $250 loan she took out to care for her mother’s health — which took two years to pay back.
Indian law guarantees free education for children aged 6 to 14, which has helped significantly raise literacy rates across the country. In slums across western Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is the capital, literacy had reached more than 84% according to the latest census in 2011.
A courtyard in Verma’s sprawling apartment complex, which includes multiple residential towers, a pool and gym.
Kilare walks along a crowded alley as she goes back home after her daytime cleaning shift — with more shifts later in the evening.
But researchers and non-profit organizations say it’s far from enough, with many children who live in slums dropping out or never enrolling at all — sometimes because they must help care for their siblings while their parents work, or often when they start working at a young age themselves.
The problem is particularly acute for girls, who are encouraged to help out at home or marry young.
‘Vicious cycle’
As they entered adulthood, the differences between Verma and Kilare deepened.
After attending a renowned private school, Verma studied engineering at a top college in the southern city of Bangalore, also known as “India’s Silicon Valley.” The Covid-19 pandemic prompted her to visit her parents in Mumbai, where she ended up staying and finding her sales job at the tech firm.
“I was never one of those kids who came first in class ... but I think with luck and the kind of personality I developed over the years, I was able to crack the interview and I was able to get into (my job),” she said, pointing to the networking skills she’d learned from her father.
She never thought she’d be hired at such a big company — but "it was all about grabbing those opportunities,” she said. “You know, opportunity is like a balloon, it's going to come to everybody, you just have to hold it and make use of it.”
Kilare, however, was never able to return to school. Instead, her parents arranged for her to marry an auto-rickshaw driver; her grandmother even threatened not to see Kilare on her deathbed if she didn’t go ahead with the union.
Kilare agreed. She was 19.
Kilare hangs clothes on a line in front of her home.
Kilare’s mother wrings a cloth while doing laundry with her daughter.
Her marriage began with — and remains haunted by — endless loans, she said. They’d borrowed $300 for the wedding celebrations, which are culturally significant and often extravagant in India. But after moving to Pune, her husband’s home city in Maharashtra, the couple was dogged by loan sharks demanding repayment at sky-high interest rates that pushed their debt to $2,000.
With little choice, they moved back to Mumbai, where Kilare’s former employers hired her back as a cleaner while her husband got a job as a school clerk. “Still, the money we earn is not enough,” Kilare said. Together, they make about $200 a month – which goes toward supporting family members and repaying the loan.
To appease the loan sharks, “my husband kept taking loans to repay one loan,” Kilare said. “To pay that loan, he took another loan ... It’s a vicious cycle of loans.”
Not long ago, Kilare’s family was dealt another blow. She fell while getting off the bus, injuring her leg so badly she couldn’t work for two months. Her mother took out another loan for her treatment, landing them in even greater debt.
“We did ask our relatives to help us (with the loan), but no one helped us,” she said.
Kilare and her mother pose for a picture in front of their house after doing the laundry.
Dishes dry on a rack in Kilare’s small apartment.
‘I must also try hard’
Verma’s days now are a colorful tapestry of hobbies and events, which she says is key to balancing out her strenuous work hours.
After coming home in the evenings, she attends dance or boxing classes; on weekends she explores new cafes, does volunteer work, and goes out with friends to brunch or the movies.
On quieter days she plays ukulele at home, or drinks tea with her parents on their small balcony overlooking the park. They’re a tight-knit family; her parents poke gentle fun at each other, and the household is often filled with laughter.
In many ways, Verma represents the millions of young, upwardly mobile Indians across the country — educated, English-speaking and cosmopolitan; her family propelled forward in just two generations by the nation’s rapid economic growth.
Part of that, she says, is thanks to Prime Minister Modi and “the kind of image he has created for the country abroad,” attracting foreign businesses and tourists. Another reason, she says, is Mumbai’s unique hustle culture — the fact that everybody, from people living in slums to aspiring actors and middle-class workers, wants more for themselves.
Verma recalled one time her Uber driver glimpsed the towers of her apartment complex on the horizon. Not realizing she lived there, the driver said: “Man, someday I’m going to get my house there. Someday I wish to stay there.” When the car pulled up at her home, “he looked at me like, wow,” Verma said.
Pictures and decorations adorn a wall in Verma’s bedroom, including photos of her travels.
After work, Verma participates in a variety of hobbies including boxing classes.
To her, his declaration embodied the dreamers’ spirit and determination that sets Mumbai apart — and highlights the privileges of the fortunate.
“Even when you're walking on the street, you see this sort of disparity, but at the same time you appreciate the kind of effort these people are putting in day in, day out,” she said. “I have to come to an air-conditioned office every day. But at the same time, I do realize that the Uber guy who's dropping me off is somebody who has to do at least 20 trips to make ends meet.”
Kilare’s days are packed, too — she works seven days a week, cleaning multiple homes. She takes an afternoon break to run home and prepare food for the family, and do other chores, before going back to work until as late as 11 p.m.
“I have no ‘me time’ as I am working constantly,” she said. But, she added, her life didn’t strike her as particularly hard. “I started working at a very young age so now I enjoy working and am used to working,” she told CNN in a small public square outside her home, where water dripped from drying laundry.
Her leg still hurts if she stands on it too long, and she sometimes gets dizzy spells, she said. Despite her health and financial problems, she is now thinking about having children — under pressure from her mother-in-law, and keen for a family herself.
“I have waited four years (since marriage) to have one, so whenever I get pregnant I will have a child,” she said.
And as she plans for the future, she thinks of the homes she’s cleaned since she was a young girl; the wealthy employers and their privileged children, some about her age, who attended good schools before pursuing successful careers.
“When I go to work at different places, good homes, I also feel that I should work hard to reach a stage where I can have a better life,” she said. “My thinking has changed. I wonder, if these people can work hard and study and lead a good life, I must also try hard.”
She would like to become a teacher, learn English, and how to use computers, which “will give me better opportunities,” she said. But when asked how she plans to pay off her loans, go back to school, or raise a child while in debt, she wavers.
“I am capable of working and studying if given the chance,” she said. “But I keep thinking, if I fulfill my wish of studying, how will I run my life and household? ... Right now, my financial conditions don’t let me do that.”
She glances at her mother behind her on the doorstep of their home; time is running out; she has to make dinner and her next cleaning shift begins in a few short hours. Ducking beneath the crisscrossing maze of hanging clothes, she turns away and goes back to work.
