Slum Golf

"Anil Bajrang Mane grew up in a slum in Chembur, a suburb of Mumbai. His home – a single 10ft x 10ft room – was right over the wall from the 10th hole of the members-only Bombay Presidency Golf Club, which sprawls across 100 acres of land: prime real estate in a city where the average population density is 31,700 people per sq km.

When Mane was just 14, he dropped out of school to become a caddie on the other side of the wall. But it wasn’t until three years later, when he was 17, that he took his first swing, when a club member handed him a 7 iron and told him to have a go. The 150-yard shot changed his life, he says: he realised golf was his shot at fame and glory, the chance of a better life.

There was only one problem: the club didn’t allow caddies to play on the course, insisting it would detract from its “exclusivity”. Mane earned his livelihood in a world that wouldn’t allow him to participate. Every night, he would cross back from the verdant, genteel club into his own world of single-room tenements, corrugated tin rooftops and poverty.

'My mother’s health was frail and my father had suffered burns when a kerosene stove burst in our kitchen,” he says. “I had no option but to give up school and take up work.' " The Guardian