They scour through rubble in search of building blocks

CHENNAI: Dhinesh and his sister

Kalaiselvi

sit patiently in the sun as their father Selvaraj rummages through a pile of debris of what was once a bustling settlement, albeit illegal, by the banks of the Cooum at

Mogappair

. Once Selvaraj finds bricks good enough to be used for construction, he shouts out to his children who, unlike their well-off neighbours living in gated communities, spend their spare time foraging among the ruins to help their father build a safer house.

“We want to construct a wall,” says Dhinesh, a Class VII student, as he watches a bulldozer bring down a building that housed a portion of a dental college in the locality. “We have been collecting bricks ever since the buildings were demolished in September,” he says.

Kalaiselvi can barely lift a brick, but she treads on, her small steps taking a long time to reach her father’s moped where the collected bricks have been carefully kept on the pillion seat. After an hour under the sun, a triumphant Selvaraj calls out again. He has collected enough bricks to fill a sack and needs a helping hand to carry them across the sun-baked rubble.

On his way home, Selvaraj greets Kutty, his neighbour and a tempo driver. Kutty has come across unused concrete rings which, like two small temples, have escaped the wrath of the bulldozers. The original owners, while vacating their home, may have found transporting the rings cumbersome, but not Kutty. He rolls them up slowly to his vehicle. “These are new. The owner must have bought them to build a safety tank, now I will do it,” he says with a grin.

On this forsaken floodplain of the Cooum -- the river’s other bank adjoining the

Poonamallee High Road

has been left untouched -- where earthmovers demolish buildings by the day and dumpers ferry away their rubble at night, a fleeting moment separates the haves and the have-nots. Whatever one stumbles upon can be owned, but lost if not secured. And young Venkatesh, busy bludgeoning a pillar with a 10kg grinding stone, doesn’t want ‘scavengers’ around.

“I am chipping the concrete off the iron bars. Once it comes out, I will file them and sell them to a scrap dealer,” he says. The Class IX boy will earn Rs 18 per kilogram of iron sold, and he visits the site daily. A group of children sit around watching the spectacle; moments ago Venkatesh has fought them off bravely.

At lunchtime the earthmovers fall silent but contractor Rajesh Kumar could be heard shouting. A few children have ventured inside the block of the dental college being demolished. “It’s dangerous to wander about this place. These kids risk their lives for so little,” says Kumar who hails from Balasore in Odisha.

But for those rummaging here, leftovers make the main course. Like the proverbial Phoenix, they too want to build a future, albeit fickle, from the pasts that have been destroyed. Perhaps Rajesh, like most of us, is unaware of it.