About 350 people living dangerously in a 3-storey structure; pay Tk 1,200 a month for each room
From the middle of a three-storey bamboo structure, Shoma looks out across the road at a wide view of the flowing Buriganga. Newly wed to a rickshaw-puller from Manikganj, she has just moved into her home. Her “window”, cut out from the corrugated metal wall, makes the Tk 1,200-a-month room more prized than those of her fellow tenants.
The young couple’s eight-by-six-foot room has only a double cot, a tiny cupboard and a small ceiling fan. It is part of a three-storey warren-like complex shared by nearly other 350 people. Hundreds of solid Borak-type bamboo poles support the structure; its walls are made of sheets of salvaged corrugated tins.
The homemade structure stands on around 2,500 square feet of land in Kamalbagh in the capital. Built following the deluge of 1998, it is allegedly on Dhaka Wasa land, yet as stood ever since, providing shelter for the poor and cash for the self-proclaimed owner Hafiz Kamal and his manager Shanu Begum.
“For years the landlord is happy to keep the complex as it is, he does not have to worry about tenants. There is such a shortage of accommodation in the area for the poor; a room is rented within hours after someone vacates it,” said Ayesha, a tenant on the ground floor.
It “accommodates” up to 50 families and about 100 single workingmen. Within every cell, where a family lives, a small part is segregated for the single men’s sleep. Not an inch of space is wasted.
It exposes its occupants to great risks of fire, including a stampede or asphyxiation. There is no door from the main road. One enters via a dark, humid corridor so narrow it looks like a tunnel with rows of cells on each side. Each floor has eight rooms per side and ends in iron stairs that lead to the next floor. The higher it goes, the weaker it gets.
Ethics, norms and fear, all surrender at this ghastly complex. It is one of many structures in the vicinity that are tolerated because legally built apartment blocks are unaffordable to the poor. Rickshaw-pullers, welders, Kulis, maids, scooter drivers and street vendors make home here.
Mahfuza, a part-time domestic help, lives with her four children and husband in a ground-floor cell barely accommodating a double-size bed. A small ceiling fan’s blades whir near this reporter’s scalp. A single un-shaded light bulb hangs from the six-foot-high ceiling.
“Over the last 10 years my children have grown up here, in this room,” says Mahfuza showing her bed and damp earthen floor. “We somehow survive. When the electricity goes away it is really hot,” she muttered.
Along the corridor, women and their children, half-naked covered in dirt, curiously look on. In one of the rooms a colour television play a popular Hindi dance sequence at full volume.
At the other end of the corridor, the steep staircase is held by tying it to the bamboo column overhead. A small opening on the left houses the sole kitchen, with its four gas burners, two latrines and two water taps under which several women and children wash and bathe.
Anwar Boyati of Barisal has lived here for nearly 10 years with his four children. He holds his grandson in his lap and recounts how arguments break out among tenants over sharing the toilet, water and gas cooker.
“In the morning, tenants queue up for the toilet, water taps and cookers, and rows are frequent,” he says. “Years ago there was a fire that destroyed most houses in the area. The burnt corrugated panels you see were recovered from the ashes.”
The temperature in the corridor keeps anyone here sweating at the best of times; during load shedding it is infernal. The strong pressure of the gas is rare in Dhaka. As two women cook rice over a fierce flame, the burners whoosh like a lit welding torch.
The uneven floor upstairs is made of old and squeaky pieces of wood amateurishly nailed into the bamboo columns. Gaps and larger holes allow the planks to move from left to right as people walk or children play.
“The house needs urgent repairs,” says Boyati, “The landlord has promised to do it soon.”
Banu, a tenant and mother of three, works as a maid in the neighbourhood. Two of her sons left this home years ago. Her daughter, Smriti, 13, is the only child in the complex who attends school.
“I am used to living here, although it is very difficult,” Smrity says. “My goal is to study and be successful in life to give my hard-working mum a long holiday,” says the Grade-7 student of Islamia High School.
Gazing through her window, Shoma takes a little solace looking at the most polluted river in the country, the Buriganga. When she shuts the window, darkness engulfs her room, hiding every stain, and allowing the newlywed’s mind to fly back to her village by the cleaner Padma river.
