00:00We are 70 years old. We are all in the corner. We have opened my house. We are all in the corner.
00:12This is Lachmi Bahadur. She is 82 and for over 70 of those years she has called the rooftop of Kolkata's Karnani estate home.
00:23Not an apartment, not even a room, a shanty perched on the top of a colonial-era building where she lived and worked with her husband.
00:33Both of them domestic workers for the very residence below.
00:37We will live in any way.
00:39If we come here, we will notice that 10 days before we come here that we have to clean our house.
00:44Then we will also clean our house.
00:47We will not make an apartment.
00:48If we come there and leave our house.
00:53Now we are in a shop.
00:55We'll lose all the bags in the corner.
00:56No matter what we have to do, we will lose all of the bags in the kitchen.
00:58Then we will do this.
00:59We will not even come here.
01:03We will come here.
01:04Today is this beautiful night.
01:07My mom and dad will have all over here.
01:10But today we will too.
01:12Karnani Estate, a historic structure on AJC Bosse Road.
01:18Beneath its ornate balconies and crumbling facades lies a contradiction.
01:24117 makeshift homes on its rooftop housing nearly a thousand people.
01:31They call them servant quarters.
01:33But for those who live here, these narrow, asbestos-roofed tenements are anything but temporary.
01:42117 makeshift homes on its rooftop housing.
01:48Their roots go deep, stretching back to the British Raj.
01:52When cooks, khan-sama's and drivers served colonial officers in these bungalows,
01:59their accommodation was arranged right above them.
02:03The officers left, but the workers stayed.
02:06This was a kitchen room.
02:08The officers left, but they made food here.
02:12They said, you don't have enough money.
02:14You take a quarter, then you make food here.
02:17Then the officers left, then they made food here.
02:20Their parents, their grandparents, never told them to leave here.
02:24They told them to leave here.
02:26They told them to leave here.
02:27They told them to leave here.
02:29They told them they were hungry.
02:30They told them to leave here.
02:31Where would they go?
02:32They used to leave here.
02:33They didn't save 80, 70, or 55 years.
02:37The soldiers left and lived here.
02:41New landlords came, but nobody asked them to leave.
02:50They just continued, quietly, invisibly.
02:55Today, their descendants go to school here.
02:58They work in houses and offices nearby.
03:00They vote, they pay bills.
03:03Their electricity meters bear the name of their residence association.
03:07We live here from 40 years old.
03:10My children took me a little and a little.
03:14My children have become a mother, father and grandmother.
03:18Children.
03:19We left the house.
03:21We became older and older.
03:22Now, where are we going?
03:24We are going to live in the country.
03:27Now, my husband worked here.
03:30He came here.
03:31We are staying here.
03:33Now, where are we going?
03:35Where are we going, sir?
03:36Now, the roof is collapsing.
03:39Not structurally, but socially.
03:42The current landlord wants them out without offering them anywhere else to go.
03:48Police say they are acting on a court order.
03:51They tore down homes.
03:53Residents say no papers were shown.
03:57They are being erased family by family, shanty by shanty.
04:03All they ask for is proper rehabilitation because how do you relocate a life built over three generations?
04:11How do you tell someone to leave the only place they have ever known without offering them anywhere else to go?
04:19Up here on the roof, Hindus, Muslims, Christians live side by side, more joint family than slum.
04:28United by survival, by struggle, and now by eviction.
04:34Everyذا got bounced onto the roof is prettyaudible.
04:37They came here to see how we came.
04:38The rent will have no room for class.
04:39It sweeps from all kinds of Philippians.
04:40The house is a house鰍 of Dubai.
04:43Somebody came here to live outside.
04:45For a tale inside, we have one more trapped in the??
04:46Live towards Chinatown.
04:47You will see what they are downforce.
04:49We have to meet, which at theो, NevAllen in the house reallyans areóstoles.
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