CLOSE QUARTERS IN BYCULLA, JULY 2012

Sameena Hanif Khan has lived on Jhulla Maidan Road in Byculla since childhood.   Her home is made of a mixture of cement, brick, and tin sheets, a single room 3.5 square meters in area with a smaller loft accessible only by an outside ladder.  Her home recently obtained access to a legal electricity connection, but her water still comes from an illegal pipe that runs beneath her floor.  Sameena knows every centimeter of her home.  Her family has been living here for 57 years; she’s been here for 50 of them.  But she cannot recall with certainty the number of people who currently reside in her abode.

This seems to be a common phenomenon among families living on the pavements in Byculla.  Jaitun, who lives just down the street from Sameena, also has a slew of family members who call her 3.5 square meter room and loft home.  Jaitun tentatively says that eight people live with her, then goes on to list at least ten people who stay in her single room and loft on a regular basis.  She explains how two people sleep on a wooden table outside the house, three on a wire bed that pulls out from underneath the table, and three in the loft.  The rest sleep on the floor of Jaitun’s main room, but she does not give details about how many people that might be.

Sameena has slightly more exact figures.  She is married and has six children, many of whom have their own children.  Her four daughters, two sons, and three grandchildren all call her roofed space on the pavement home.  Her sons are both married, so she’s not even including her two daughters-in-law in the tally even though they also stay at her place.  Sameena has a husband and the two of them sleep outside beside a small inlet in her front wall that doubles as the family general shop during the day.  One son sleeps in the loft with his family, while the other son sleeps on the floor of the main room with his wife and children.  She doesn’t say how she squeezes in the daughters.

A home of any size is a luxury.  When considering viable designs and living scenarios for the urban poor, flexibility lies at the core of everyone’s needs. As families grow larger and available property becomes ever-more limited, there’s no telling how many people each home will need to accommodate.

At left, Sameena and her family stand outside of their home and family shop. At right, Jaitun and some of her family members pose outside her home on Jhulla Maidan