Anvar Dayal and Aslah Kayyalakkath
By early Saturday morning, when most of Bengaluru was still asleep, Fakir Colony and Waseem Layout in Kogilu village were already losing everything that made them home.
Sitting out in the open, wrapped in thin shawls against the winter cold, an elderly Muslim woman kept repeating the same words, slowly, deliberately, as if saying them out loud might make someone finally listen.
“We are fakir. We have been here for thirty years. We have voter ID cards, Aadhaar cards, PAN cards. We have all the documents that are required. And today they did this to me,” she told Maktoob.
She had been sitting there since morning. There had been no food, no water, no shelter.
“We haven’t eaten anything since morning. We have little children here with us. Look at us in the winter. We have been voting for this government for so many years. We have ten votes at home,” she said.
She pointed to where her house once stood. “They did not let us even take one item from the house. Our carts were crushed by bulldozers.”
For decades, this is how life had worked for many families here. They begged. Some children performed on the roads to bring back a little money.
Most days were spent asking strangers for survival.
“We go to beg. Our children go out to perform on the road and bring money. But mostly we go to beg,” she said.
There had been no warning. “We had no idea this would happen. If we had some idea, we would have taken some stuff. The children were out. I was all alone at home.”
Her voice dropped when she spoke about what came next. “For the sake of Allah, tell us where shall we live or give us a place to live.”
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
