Almost half of the buildings in this colony are in a state of complete disrepair. Years of neglect shows on the walls where huge cracks have appeared. Chunks of plaster fall off the ceiling regularly and every flat in building no 6 now has at least one room propped up with bamboo sticks. ``We had learnt to live with cracked walls and falling plaster. But the collapse last Sunday has really shaken us,'' said a resident as he gingerly stepped through a maze of bamboo sticks. Narayan Ghagre, a former municipal corporator, said Sunday's mishap wasn't the first one. Only a year back the entire first floor of building no 18 had come crashing down. Also, parts of building no 4, 5, 15, 16, 20, 22 and 24 have collapsed in the past. More recently, twomonths back, a portion of building no 16 collapsed leaving a gaping hole in the terrace.

Now, 85 families (five have already vacated their houses) of building no 6, which probably represents all that is wrong with the colony, are faced with two equally difficult choices - they can either demolish the building and build a new one in its place or undertake extensive repairs. The first option, demolition that is, is fraught with complications. For one, the residents own only the flats and not the land on which the building stands.

While MHADA in 1989 had transferred all the flats to the occupants on ownership basis, it continues to own the land. MHADA, thus, would not take the responsibility of rebuilding the structure. If the residents decide to reconstruct the building on their own, they would have to raise a huge sum required to first demolish the building and then rebuild it. And not only that. They would first be required to acquire the land from MHADA, which they can't do till they form a co-operativesociety.

Now, there are complications in forming a co-operative society too. P A Pandurkar, a resident of building no 5, said despite MHADA's clear instruction that none of the flats could be sold for eight years from the date of transfer, quite a few have done so with the connivance of MHADA employees. Obviously, the papers of these clandestine deals are not in order. In some cases, where the original tenant has died, title deeds have not been transferred in the name of the inheritors. All this would delay the process of formation of a society. And the residents of building no 6 do not have time on their side. According to a private engineer who surveyed the building, repairs which comprise jacketing of the 25-30 columns and re-plastering of the facade would give the residents, at best, another year.

The third scenario, the one everybody is dreading, is a collapse. While it will cause a huge damage to life and property, the residents would not even be covered under provisions of the Bombay Repairs andReconstruction Board, because for all practical purposes they are living in a private building for which they are not paying any repair cess.