Chetan Pawar lived in Dharavi for seven years before moving away. But most people choose to stay. (Melissah Yang/Neon Tommy)

It wasn’t the powder blue button-up or the effortless sway he had while he walked that made him stand out in the crowded station.

It was the air around the slender 25-year-old. He felt calm and educated. He spoke great English with a quiet studied tone. 

Having worked at Reality Tours & Travel for the past three years, Pawar was the perfect tour guide to put Westerners at ease. And he knew what he was talking about when it came to Dharavi, the slum we were about to see.

Pawar lived in Dharavi for seven years but left when he was 13. His father decided to move the family so Pawar could get a better education. And it worked. He’s now studying to get his master’s in business at Mumbai University.

When I asked Pawar how often people leave Dharavi, he shook his head.

“People generally don’t move because this is their community,” he said.

It was such a foreign thought, that people wouldn’t leave the slum even if they could. Or was I the foreigner for assuming that.

Indian migrants have been moving from rural areas to urban cities to find good work, but nearly 70 percent of Mumbai’s migrants are coming from within the state of Maharashtra itself, according to India's National Sample Survey Organisation. When people move, they don’t look very far.

With a population over one million and an economic sector that outputs an estimated $600 million, Dharavi is a destination, not a point of exit. 

Pawar took us on a nearly three-hour tour of the slum’s winding labyrinth of alleys and concrete shanties, his voice steady and deliberate as he pointed out places of interest and where not to bang your head. During the stops, he chatted up locals. Some were friends, others strangers.

He might live somewhere else now, but Pawar never really left Dharavi either.

Reach Editor-at-Large Melissah Yang here. Follow her on Twitter @MelissahYang.