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\f0\fs30 \cf0 Lady talks about Kaveri and Gee and then recounts some of the incidents
that have happened till now - \ \'93Had they not been there yesterday, our
lives would have ended yesterday itself. It is only because of them that we are here today.\'94\
\'93Yesterday morning, everybody had gone to work. At 10-11 am, when people were at
office, when children were at school, they had come to see who was not there, and brought
the bulldozers. Yesterday they broke over 50 houses. There are a total of 42 blocks
and 1512 houses. All 1512 flats were occupied till the buildings started collapsing in 2003-04.
Then they went and demolished the whole thing. Since then we\'92ve been struggling here,
there\'92s a lot of difficulty here. Power, water and bathroom were provided for free.
Shed was constructed by Ashok. But MLA Harris is the one who is trying to get everybody
thrown out. \ \
\'93They\'92ve given us biometric cards, and asking us to go to Sulikunte after a year.
Where will we stay for a year? All of us do domestic work around here. We typically get
only Rs.1000 as pay, how can we be pay rent outside? How do we eat, get our kids educated?
If we fall sick, how can we afford medical treatment? What we earn is just enough to
feed ourselves, we cannot afford to pay rent outside. There are even beggars living here,
where will they go? At least if you show us this is where you are going to stay, we will
at least believe what you say and gamely try to rebuild our lives there. You just give
us the card and expect us to vacate. In the hope that we\'92ll get something after a year.
The card given to us by Ashok is still of no use and we don\'92t see what this card
will do.\'94\ \
Lady to left: \'93They are cheating us, Anybody who asks questions is being put into jail.\
Nobody is bothered about us, they don\'92t really care about the difficulties we face,
they are just concerned about their own lives. Yesterday ladies were lathicharged. They destroyed
the bathroom.\ \
Both the police and the local leaders from the slum are heartless. The latter are seeing
us, the troubles we face, but they don\'92t come forward to help us. They also seem intent
on just chasing us out.\ \
Karthik: The new houses that are going to be constructed- is everyone going to get a
house and who all have been promised houses?\ \
\'93There is no trust, sir\'94\ \
K: Will only the original allottees receive houses?\
\ The allottees (owners) have gone away after
letting their houses on rent. We are the ones who have beeen living and struggling here
for the last 18-20 years.\ \
And now the allottees, after all these years, have come back to claim their compensation,
they want us to leave this place.\ \
K: The 30,000 has been give to the\'85.\ Women: Allottees, sir. We are the ones who
have struggled with no water, no power, snakes, insects, rowdyism and even murders have happened
here. We\'92re the ones who\'92ve lived through all these fears, all these years, and now
the house and the compensation will go only to the owners.\
\ K: Are any of the owners staying here?\
W: Most of the people here live on rent. \ \
K: Where do most of you work?\ W: NGV, right opposite. Housekeeping work
in other places in Koramangala. None of us work in offices.\
\ K: And the men?\
W: As coolies, auto drivers, painters, electricians. Else they roam around here, but ladies are
the ones who leave the house and go out to work.\
\ \'93Right now, both the men and women are
all at home. We are\ Our lives are ruined, our jobs are ruined,
our houses our ruined. If we don\'92t go to work for 3 days in succession, we lose our
jobs. We don\'92t have a livelihood, even place to stand here. So if we go there, to
try and save our jobs, that\'92s when they come and demolish our houses. Is there light
at the end of this tunnel?\'94\ \
\'93The TV doesn\'92t report our story, sir. It doesn\'92t get published in any newspaper.
All the channels regularly come here, but no one writes about us. There is no publicity.
So they don\'92t let the general public know about our plight.\
\ We want people in other places to know about
our situation, understand and help us out, but no one reports our story.\'94\
\ Woman enters: They\'92re arresting the ladies.
Even when women question the cops, they\'92re being arrested. My husband has run away, I\'92ve
been thrown on the streets with my 3 children and all our belongings.\
\ See! They have started lathicharging for having
asked questions. Who can we go complain to?Tell me, when the police itself is beating us?\
\ We\'92ve been sitting here in
the cold without water, without food, with our babies in hand, without a job. Without
a job, we don\'92t have food, none of us have proper food. We didn\'92t go to work so we
won\'92t get money.\ \
This has been going on for a week.\ \
Some of the women have broken arms and legs because of being lathicharged.\
\ A kid comes running: I came running, they\'92re
taking them into a van.}