Geetanjali Krishna: Face to face with Nandgi

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

They came one night, in menacing bulldozers with sticks in hand. The terrified slum dwellers, even though they'd had more than ample notice that this would happen, stared at them in mute terror, unable to leave what had been their homes for so long.

In front of their eyes, the slum was reduced to rubble. The men went away, their job done, and the crowd dispersed quietly. Sleeping on the pavement outside the place that had been her home for the past 16 years, Nandgi reflected that this had probably been the worst day of her life.

At 60, she was no stranger to adversity. Married before she was 20 to a man who didn't have the use of his legs, she had struggled in the early years to make ends meet.

"I worked as a daily wage labourer in Mathura for many painful years before we decided to move to Delhi," she said. In Delhi, she and her elder son took on whatever work they could find, and managed to save Rs 16,000 to buy a little jhuggi near the drain in Safdarjung Enclave.

Her daughter began working as well, adding to the family coffers, and the son, when he married moved into a neighbouring jhuggi. "There was no water problem, and even though our electricity was unauthorised, nobody came to bother us," said Nandgi, "and being so close to the drain, we didn't even need to use the dirty public toilets!"

Life after the demolition was not so comfortable. "It's been more than one year since our home was demolished, but we haven't received the Rs 8,000 that we were promised in compensation," said she ruefully, "we were willing to accept a lower amount than what we'd paid as they said that our slum wasn't authorised in the first place."

Nandgi and her family moved to a slum near Hauz Khas village, into a rented accommodation that was actually a glorified tin shed.

"For the past year since we've moved there, I've not had a full night's sleep," she said, the deep furrows on her face and her tired eyes telling their own story, "we get water only at two in the morning, and so my daughter-in-law and I wake up then to wash the utensils and clothes, as well as store as much water as we can to last us through the day."

Their family of nine has to sleep in one room, and use the filthy public toilets a distance away. "I worry about my teenaged daughters' safety," she sighed, "and have told them never to go to the toilets alone."

The power supply, she said, is also erratic, and it's no longer as simple as it was in the earlier slum, to tap it from the main line. "Even for a place this bad, the rent is a thousand rupees!" she said.

Her son went to all the slums nearby to find out whether they could buy another jhuggi. But the going rates, especially in authorised colonies, are prohibitive. Since the family works in South Delhi, moving to the city's outskirts isn't a viable option either.

"Our life's savings turned to rubble with our old jhuggi "" even if we get compensated for having to leave it, we'll not be able to afford accommodation elsewhere!" said Nandgi.

Her gaunt and weary face lingered in my thoughts long after she'd gone. To me it seemed to embody the face of the sheer human tragedy of slum demolitions, a face that invariably gets shrouded and hidden behind the cold, unassailable logic of such "clean up" acts.