Pause for a while on the Mulund-Goregaon Link Road and you will have sleek highrises sharply contrast miles of slums. While on your right is Mulund, the left is what forms the heart of Bhandup (West). People have been living here for over three decades under plastic and tin-sheet roofs. No water, no electricity.These are the Khindipada and Srirampada slums with 20,000 people living in 4,000 hutments built on different levels of the hilly terrain without any strong base. As if the load isn't enough, every four months 50 new hutments come up here. As a result, strong winds and heavy monsoons often result in mini landslides which has the houses coming down like a pack of cards. But it's just a matter of habit. The residents have got used to living without several other basic amenities. While women have to walk miles for drinking water, to wash clothes they carry bucket-loads of clothes to a local tap or a small stagnant pond on Rajaram Estate. People here have also become oblivious to a perennial foul smellthat hangs in the air. The smell of life rotting.While men here depend on labour-oriented jobs, women assist with odd jobs like making beaded jewellery which finds its way to small shops and locals. Or they gather wood from the hills, earning around Rs 20 a day. More often than not there is absolutely no income coming in. For the last 30 years, it's been them against all odds, the ray of hope being the urge to give their children a decent education. But where's the money? "When we can't pay the fees, we plead with teachers, scrape through the month, but send our children to school," says Brindadevi, a resident.All's not well here, too. There's just one toilet for 3,000 students of the only five-storeyed municipal school here. And it's not surprising that they use the school's backyard for the purpose. But that's also the case with the slums which have few public conveniences - that too without doors or latches. Sulabh toilets around Bhandup have been rendered useless as the doors and the tiles havebeen stolen and there's no water also. "On an average one toilet was used by around 2,000 people, now where do they go?" asks Suresh Koparkar, Corporator of Ward No 214. Of course, the concept of underground drainage system has never been heard of in Bhandup.One of the most appaling sights is the passage leading to the Municipal Dispensary which stinks of urine and spit of beetle leaves. Even the store room has not been cleaned for ages. Also, the polio dose section, till around two years back, operated without electricity and water. So it all boils down to acute shortage of water, which can easily come from the revenue that 15,000 illegal workshops of plastic and metal scraps generate. "It's just the matter of regularising them," suggests Koparkar.Apart from this, the other problem is that of the approach roads. While the only approach road to Srirampada is a dusty one (flanked by huge water pipelines leading away from Link Road), the road to Tembipada is quite an uphill drive and is in a terriblestate. It can accommodate only one vehicle at a time and any HTV, like a truck, can end up causing severe traffic jams. "Roads here are terrible. And the corporator is of absolutely no use," complains resident Dayanand Sawant.The situation is no different in Kulshetpada through which huge pipelines pass through but the area itself faces severe water scarcity. while chawls here are almost 40 years old, the residents have lost hope. Gutters here run right across the doorsteps and no amount of cleaning helps. "Only last week we paid some men to clean up. All they did was complain that the corporation didn't pay them enough and kept taking time off for lunch and tea breaks. And all four were young and healthy," says a mortified senior resident Narayan Shekhar Mukadam. They cleaned up only around two inches of dirt, when the gutter is actually knee-deep high. If the residents had coughed up some extra money, it might have helped.On the other hand, there's Sonapur which is notorious as a red-light area.Sections where prostitution is rampant has people breaking street lights as it helps soliciting. Obviously, no complaints are made here. However, further up the street, some middle-class families had no electricity for four years because they couldn't prove they had been living here for 16 years. "Mumbai is ironical. Isn't it!" says social worker Vijay Tawde, with a touch of sarcasm.Living on the edgeOne has to mount innumerable flights of steps and weave one's way through haphazardly built chawls to reach 30-year-old Gavdevi, built on a higher plain. Every narrow passage between two houses is lined with drains - thick with slush - through which the water pipelines of the area pass. Of these, over 15-20 two-inch-thick water pipes are bunched together, with most of them broken at various ends, tied down with a plastic bag or a cloth or joined to other pipes with rubber or plastic joints. It is not surprising that stomach ailments are very common here.Three decades down the line, thesehaphazardly constructed chawls are facing the most obvious of problems. The walls of houses comprising Gavkar Chawl and Ashok Bhavan - built on the highest level of this hilly terrain - have developed major cracks and collapse quite often. As a temporary solution, the residents pad and `strengthen' the cracks with cement. Of late, the ground right outside their doorstep has also become unsteady and is slowly giving way."We really dread the monsoons. Just the thought of fast approaching June brings our hearts to our mouths. We are perennially stressed out," laments Jayshree M, who has been living here for the last 30 years. "Last year the entire front portion of Ashok chawl gave way. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but some children got trapped inside the house. We had to rescue them from the back," moans another resident Jagdish Gajanan Amberkar.Besides, for a total of 22 families there are only two toilets here. "The doors of which are broken and there is no latch. It is practically impossible forwomen to use them," adds Malati Gaikwad.
