Every monsoon when the rain lashes against her cardboard-covered window, N.P. Pathumayi watches the drops drip from the wet walls of her one-room flat at Vellayil, hardly a kilometre from the sea.
Inside the damp flat, beams protrude from the ceiling where concrete has peeled off. Years of soot have permanently blackened a small enclosure used for cooking by her family of 11. Outside, a broken septic tank gurgles human waste while a leaking corporation tap gushes out drinking water 24x7. Pathumayi’s young neighbour, Apreena Banoo A., a Class 1 student at St. Angela AUP School, is just back after a month at the Government General Hospital battling cholera. The interiors are identical in all the 24 one-room flats that the Kozhikode Corporation built in 1983 under the Vellayil Slum Eradication Scheme.
Fights are common
The families, like that of Pathumayi and Apreena, live below poverty line - fishermen and daily-wage labourers. They live thickly packed into two multi-storeyed buildings that form the flat complex. Tempers get frayed at the drop of a hat and loud fights among the inhabitants are commonplace.
A mud-splattered marble slab proclaims that the complex was inaugurated by the then Mayor K.N. Narayanan Nair amidst much fanfare, only to be forgotten just as easily.
Today, the buildings are on the verge of collapse. The residents live in the grip of fear, dreading the day the roof would come down on them.
Grabbing a child roughly by the hand, Aisha Bi says “death hangs on the heads of these children”.
“ Jeevikkan pediyanu, ushirilu oru kaattadichal ellavarum odum purathu (I am scared, we run out of the complex if there is a strong wind). I am not well, can’t run down the stairs,” says Khadeeza P.
Death of a child
The staircase is wet, narrow, and slippery. Ms. Khadeeza recalls how her sister’s four-year-old daughter slipped and fell to her death 18 years ago one such monsoon.
“Thirty-five years ago, the Corporation authorities approached these families with a promise that they would build pucca concrete flats for them.
The families were then living in small thatched houses. The concept of flats was yet to catch up in Kozhikode then.
None of the families knew what a ‘flat’ meant. The Corporation authorities convinced them, saying the flats would be built on the ‘Madras model’ with parks and posh facilities,” said Basheer N.P., the local ward convener.
Zainaba P. says: “They destroyed our lives, our homes and left us in this dump. Now we want to get out and cannot.”
“None of the families has title deeds to the flats. The corporation said pattayams would cost Rs.10,000 each. That is too expensive for these families. The families got electricity connections only in 2011 as part of the Sampoorna Vidyuthi scheme of the government,” Mr. Basheer said.
“The situation in the flats is pathetic. Without proper title deeds, there is confusion whether maintenance should be done by residents or the Corporation. In 2010-2011, I had requested the then District Collector P.B. Salim to intervene on behalf of the residents. As of now, the flats have been included in the Rajiv Awas Yojana for slum dwellers and the urban poor,” K. Mohammedali, Vellayil councillor and Deputy Opposition Leader of the Kozhikode Corporation, said.
