It must be a disconcerting feeling, to walk to the window of one's home and watch as the land on which your building stands sink slowly before you. It must be worse when the home itself has cost everything you own and promises to swallow most of your savings for the next two decades as you pay back an EMI. It must be devastating when you consider that your building can suffer damage for no fault of your own and that there is nothing you can do about it because no one in the government of Maharashtra is interested in safeguarding your interests.

That is pretty much what a lot of residents in Wadala must have felt over the past couple of weeks though, following the landslide that traumatised them in the aftermath of heavy rain. The pictures were everywhere, of cars buried under mud and boundary walls slipping into space. I thought about what the residents living in the shadow of those expensive towers must have experienced when confronted with that slow tragedy unfolding before their eyes. 20 cars were taken down, after all, so this was anything but a minor hiccup. How did they sleep that night, as the rain continued to fall?