She can recall the forceful evacuation of 2012 when more than 250 huts along the Bagmati River banks were destroyed and hundreds of families were displaced as if the incident took place just a day before. Looking at least a decade older than just 57, Kamala tells the horrifying tale to anybody who is willing to listen.
"They [the bulldozers] came at seven in the morning, and by 10 am had wiped out our entire existence," she says. She speaks of children weeping and wailing, protesters being dragged through the mud by the Nepal Police, and people flinging their belongings across the river to salvage what little they could despite panicking and their fingers turning to knots.
"We were informed about the evacuation but we didn't think they would actually come," says Aruna Chaudhary who has been operating a small store within the basti selling noodles, biscuits, and marbles, and whipping up chatpate for hungry kids returning from school. Aruna confesses that she still has nightmares about that day when four bulldozers came from both sides of the squatters' settlement, and within minutes reduced their houses to rubble.
Flattened utensils and broken beds were all they had left after the bulldozers and the Police were gone. With nowhere else to go, the squatters started rebuilding their homes no sooner had the authorities turned their backs. This was nothing new. The area had been evacuated many times before but almost always people resettled there.
"Tell us what we are to do? Where are we supposed to go?" wails Kamala throwing up her soap suds covered hands in exasperation. "I came here because I was unable to pay rent. When I first settled in Kathmandu the rent was Rs 200. Somehow I used to manage. Then my husband left me, the rent went up to Rs 1000, and I could no longer afford the prices of living in the city," she adds.
Similar is 56 years old Rita Magar's story. She came to Kathmandu when she was 25 years old and worked as a daily wage laborer. But she and her husband would often be out of work for days on end and were soon unable to afford the rent of the single room they shared with her in-laws and two kids. They moved to the basti ten years ago, carrying what little they had in the name of possessions in ripped luggage bags.
Like BK and Magar, a lot of people have settled along the banks of Bagmati after being unable to afford the soaring prices of rent. These people came to the capital city from all parts of Nepal in hopes of securing a better future for themselves and their children. However, fate hasn't been kind and they have ended up illegally inhabiting the riverbanks, doing odd jobs to sustain a hand to mouth existence.
"The government tries to get rid of us time and again and comes up with brilliant excuses for the same. This time around they want to place a sewage system that is to be dug right underneath our homes," says Rita adding that the fear that they will once again be left to rebuild from scratch looms large among the basti inhabitants.
Though a few families took the compensation of Rs 15,000 from the government during the previous evacuation, not many were interested in the offer and didn't claim it because the options for relocation weren't permanent solutions. Merging squatters' settlements was out of question as the local leaders of each settlement refused to take in newcomers, and the apartment the government was building for them would come at a steep rent, the very thing that drove them to the riverbanks in the first place.
In Nepal, there are over four million squatters and over 50,000 live in Kathmandu. The squatter settlements have risen from 17 in 1985 to 66 in the previous year. In a city where house rents are ever increasing, these settlements provide a cheap option to those who move to Kathmandu to earn their living and build a secure future but are unable to do so.
People living in these settlements are vulnerable to communicable diseases and the mortality rates here are high as their living conditions are precarious. At the basti in Thapathali, some women are pregnant, and many of these women will go on to deliver their babies there without any medical assistance. Kamala says that there's a death every two weeks or so because someone or the other is always ill and dying. Even Kamala can't afford the medications she has been prescribed. She has asthma and thyroid problems. Of late, she has even been suffering from high fever and severe cough.
"We aren't Nepalis, it seems. The government doesn't care about us. Why would we otherwise be in such a sad, sorry condition?" exclaims Kamala before abandoning her washing and rushing over to help her brother haggle over how much they should charge for five kilos of cardboard. She says Rs 20 should be enough. He wants to be paid at least Rs 100 before he parts with the bits of cardboard he's taken great pains to collect in the past week in hopes of earning some money.
The squatters are quick to blame the government for all their woes, but what's also true is that not all squatters are homeless and unable to afford rent in the city. Take a walk down the riverbanks and you'll see that many have created quite a tidy looking place for themselves. A few families have invested in small solar panels because the basti doesn't have electricity supply. The kids have to study, they say. Some women wear thick silver anklets while there are a few who can be seen wearing gold jewelry.
According to Benjamin Subba, who has been helping kids of the basti with their homework since 2010, around 10% of the population here earns a decent living, while some are even quite well off, at least by slum standards. And it is these well to do ones that cast a shadow of apprehension and doubt over the real squatters who actually can't afford to go anywhere else. Their miserable financial conditions force them to live on the fetid Bagmati River banks.
"It's not that we want to live here but we have no choice," says Rita adding that there are people who are better off financially living in the basti but majority of the squatters are in dire need of help. Kamala confesses that her family of three – her brother, 15 year old son, and Kamala herself – have to manage to sustain themselves on less than Rs 100 a day. On the rare occasions they eat meat, the expenses can go up to Rs 250.
"A kind foreigner has taken to distributing milk so that the children can at least have something nutritious and people can enjoy a cup of tea," says Kamala who doesn't see a way out of this mess of a life she is in. Her eldest son hasn't been in touch with her for years. Another runs a store at Old Buspark in Kathmandu but has a wife and kids to look after. All her three daughters are married and live with their husbands. The ailing mother has been conveniently sidelined.
What was supposed to be a transitory phase till they found a better solution or a job has become a way of life for many. The government, it seems, is quite unwilling to do anything concrete besides make halfhearted attempts to rehabilitate them. However, the failure is because the problems are aplenty – from the squatters own reluctance to move to the outskirts of the Valley to the authorities' lack of plan and policies. But at some point, the government will have to do something. The problem is too large to be ignored forever. Maybe it could start by identifying the real squatters and then take it from there.
"If you [the government authorities] say we make the capital look poorer and dreadful, think of how it might be to actually live here [in the slums on the riverbanks] and help us keep what's left of our dignity intact by at least treating us kindly, if you can't find a solution to our problems," concludes Kamala.
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