"Parking! Oh, my God," he exclaimed. "I'm going to be up all night trying to figure that out."

But being a dreamer doesn't mean he is "unrealistic," Mehta says. He has been around the block of India's bruising bureaucracy. He has learned hard lessons along the way. One is that "sometimes the last thing people in power want is to get rid of slums." Much of what Mehta calls "slum perpetuation" has to do with the infamous "vote bank"—a political party, through a deep-rooted system of graft, lays claim to the vote of a particular neighborhood. As long as the slum keeps voting the right way, it's to the party's advantage to keep the community intact. A settlement can remain in the same place for years, shelters passing from makeshift plastic tarps to corrugated metal to concrete. But one day, as in the case of Dharavi, the slum might find itself suddenly in the "wrong" place. Once that happens, the bulldozer is always a potential final solution. A few years ago, the Maharashtra government, under the direction of Chief Minister Deshmukh, in a spasm of upgrading supposedly aimed at closing the "world-class" gap, demolished 60,000 hutments, some in place for decades. As many as 300,000 people were displaced.

This, Mehta says, is what his plan is devised to avoid. "No one wants to be that unhappy guy driving the bulldozer." Preferring "the talking cure," Mehta says if anyone, anywhere, doesn't think his plan is the best possible outcome for Dharavi, he will sit with them for as long as it takes, to convince them. A few days later, at Kumbharwada, he got his chance.

To many, the Kumbhar potters are the heart and soul of Dharavi. Their special status derives not only from their decades-long residence but also from the integrity of their work. While Dharavi is famous for making use of things everyone throws away, the Kumbhars create the new.

Savdas family members have been Dharavi potters for generations, but Tank Ranchhod Savdas once imagined another kind of life. "I had big dreams," he says. "I thought I would be a lawyer." But Tank's father died in 1986, and "as the oldest son I took up this business." Not that he has any regrets. "During busy times, I make hundreds of pots a day, and I get pleasure from each one," he says.

Recently, however, the fortyish "Mr. Tank" has begun to fear for the future of Kumbhars in Dharavi. Increasing numbers of the community's young men have become merchant seamen, or computer specialists at the Bandra-Kurla Complex. Kumbharwada is full of teenage boys who have never used a potter's wheel, unthinkable only a few years ago.