At 29, Abeer Khan's lens has captured everything from the dingy lanes of Dharavi to the quaint, yet vibrant spirit of Kolkata, and the pallid gloom of Kashmir. But, the Mumbai-based photographer and filmmaker's most challenging project came earlier this year, when she was approached by the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) to make a documentary on the 12-year-old resettlement colony of Lallubhai Compound in suburban Mankhurd, where incidents of tuberculosis have become commonplace. "When I first visited the site [February this year], I had to wear plastic shoe covers and a mask," she recalled. But what shocked Khan was the contiguity of the 65-odd buildings in the colony. "The structures were only a few metres apart. I had to be careful that I don't catch an infection."

Khan's four-minute film, Free Housing — Free TB, now available on UDRI's YouTube page, leads us through the narrow maze of this diseased colony, offering us glimpses of the dark and poorly-ventilated rooms from the inside, where residents put the lights on as early as 9 am, due to lack of sunlight. The film, which took two weeks to make, features several residents, who were diagnosed with TB after moving here, including Raosaheb Deshmukh Kamble of building number 43, who suffered a relapse after treatment, and the family of Bholanath Pal. The Pals moved to Lallubhai seven years ago. A year later, Bholanath's daughter was diagnosed with TB; after she was declared TB-free, Bholanath got the infection.