There is one toilet here for every 150 people

Sore throat, he says, bowing his head and picking at his fingernails.

Ragged children drop their street games and rush over to poke their faces into ours. Behind them, a group of older women, squatting in their saris, strain to eavesdrop and dissolve into occasional cackles.

The living conditions are very basic

Dinkar's wife is the only one not laughing. A tired, thin-faced young woman, she has already disappeared up the metal ladder which leads to the small tin loft, barely the size of a cupboard, which is now their home.

She sighs when I asked her later about Dinkar's dreams. This is a filthy place, she tells me. She strokes the faces of her two young children, asleep beside her with flung limbs.

"I'm worried about the children's health," she says. "We need to get out of here as fast as we can."

On camera

The vast urban sprawl of Dharavi in Bombay is often described as Asia's biggest slum. It is home to more than a million people and still growing.

A labyrinth of dingy alleyways, open sewers and stinking rubbish heaps, black with decomposition

It has a fearsome reputation. To many outside it, Dharavi is synonymous with crime and appalling living conditions.

When we tell Dinkar we would like to film him, he can hardly believe his luck. His chest swells as he jumps up and happily goes through his paces for the camera.

The cackling women readjust their saris and fall silent. After laughing at Dinkar's ambitions, they are suddenly uncertain. Maybe he was right. When we finally make to leave, Dinkar's mood becomes desperate.

Can't we give him an introduction, he begs. Just one name. A film director, an agent - anyone. The one contact he has, has so far refused to see him.

Dinkar is the latest in a torrent of new arrivals who come to Bombay with dreams of a better life. Most of them end up in the vast slum of Dharavi.

It is a squalid place. A labyrinth of dingy alleyways, open sewers and stinking rubbish heaps, black with decomposition. Goats and dogs pick their way through the debris alongside the children, searching for scraps.

There is one toilet here for every 150 people - but with little running water, even these are usually blocked. In the heat, the stench is overpowering.

Hopes and dreams

Dharavi was never designed for people. It started as a swamp. Then a tannery was built - and finally clusters of illegal shacks, an overspill of the city's poor. Today it is bursting - more than a million people squashed into makeshift housing.

Redevelopment has started. Here and there, a few four and five storey buildings stick out above the shacks, their concrete already starting to decay.

Some people do make it. Take Paul, the head of a family of seven, who came to the slum 35 years ago with nothing. His dream was to make a living through painting.

Today he is a commercial artist, painting vast colour banners to advertise weddings and films. Sitting cross-legged in the family's one room, paintbrush in hand, he has the contented air of someone who has found what he wanted from life.

Conditions now are not as bad as awful as they used to be, he tells me. Dharavi is not so bad. Yes, he would be happy for his children to spend their lives here, especially if the area is developed further.

His son, a handsome young man of 24, sits in the opposite corner, bent over a computer keyboard. The family has gone into debt to buy the computer for him. To him, as to many here, it is a way out of poverty.

"Someday I'll have my own advertising agency," he tells me. "With four people working for me."

He proudly shows off his latest trick - taking an old black and white photograph of his father and turning it into a colour graphic. He has just finished a course in computers and design - admitting only later that he did not actually pass the final exams.

He is indignant when I ask him if he will move out of Dharavi when he makes money.

"This is my birthplace," he says. "It's a great area - so many different kinds of people, so much energy.

"Why would I live anywhere else?"