Couple struggling to save home

Couple struggling to save home

Swathi Shivanand



UNCERTAIN FUTURE: Liza's Home for the mentally challenged. — Photo: Bhagyaprakash K.

BANGALORE: There is nothing aesthetic about the building, just a regular structure located amidst swathes of barren land, far away from the city centre.

But for the 15 mentally challenged residents of Liza's Home, this is their world. Soon, it will come crashing down so that Bangalore can become less congested, traffic wise. The work of an entire lifetime of 71-year-old K.C. Abraham and 65-year-old Aleyamma Abraham, Liza's Home, will be acquired by the Bangalore Development Authority to construct the 118-km Peripheral Ring Road.

The BDA had on December 16 issued a preliminary notification which included survey no. 24/3 at Doddagubbi village in Bidarahalli hobli in Bangalore East taluk. The BDA gave them a hearing in March and noted their objections, but it seems to have had no effect.

"A few days ago, some people came to survey the land and they put up numbers on our building and other sites around. I did not want to allow them inside. Why should I when they have come to take it away," asks Dr. Aleyamma.

The doctor couple, in their written objection to the Land Acquisition Officer, had asked that their property not be acquired as "the charitable activities of the trust would suffer irreparable loss and injury which cannot be compensated in terms of money".

"Compensation is not the answer. We are old and do not have the energy to start all over again," says Dr. Aleyamma. What rankles the couple is that when the BDA issued a preliminary notification the first time, their site was not marked for acquisition. It is only when the BDA changed the alignment, supposedly to bypass certain lakes and other areas of the green belt, was their site included.

Describing how they had spent all their energy in making the place habitable, Dr. Abraham says they started first in 2000 by planting trees around to force greenery into the arid landscape.

Music plays faintly as the doctor couple introduce their daughter Liza, afflicted by meningitis soon after her birth. She strolls past, but the other women crowd around and introduce themselves, smiling. Savithri, who is 60 years old, hugs this reporter. Hazel offers to play music on her keyboard. Most do not know that they will probably lose their home, and those who do have resigned themselves to their fate. "God is there. He will take care," says 84-year-old Ms. Sahu, the only senior citizen at the home.

But the Abrahams are trying all possible means. They have even approached the Office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, which has asked the BDA to change the alignment accordingly. They have also called for a meeting with representatives of the BDA on May 19.