A Broken Pipe Dream

The night they broke the water pipe, Safia lay on the mat in a stupor, barely conscious of her husband rushing out with an empty pitcher. Later on the authorities described the breakage as an act of gross sabotage. A local welfare organization protested this description with a statement to the press and tried to organize the slum dwellers for a morcha. But the will to unite was lost for they felt guilty; not over the broken pipe but because of an incident which went along with breaking it. Finally, the slum was bulldozed out of existence. What really happened in the Gandhi Nagar slum was this.