MUMBAI, Oct. 1 -- Four families of the idyllic P&T Colony in Sahar, Andheri, had a narrow escape on Tuesday morning when the protection slab over their balconies came crashing down and the debris showered down on the balconies, homes and in front of the building. The timing saved them all. "I was spared by sheer luck," said Seema Kale, a resident of one of the two top floor rooms in the ground-plus-one storey building numbered B-3. "When the protective slab started to break, I heard the crack of the glass window in our stairwell. Thinking that someone had thrown a rock at the building, I went to take a look from the terrace. If I had gone instead to our balcony, I would have been crushed by the downpour of debris I saw from above." The other three families residing in B-3 were all away at the time. The 33-acre Postal & Tar (P&T) Colony houses postal employees working for the Mumbai General Post Office (GPO). A prime location between the domestic and international airport and surrounded by five-star hotels, living in the colony is, on paper, a great boon. With around 150 buildings of mostly ground-plus-one-storeys, the colony is green and peaceful and has plenty of open space for children. But as evident from the residents' tales, their struggles are numerous, beginning with the condition of their homes. Two years ago, in August 2023, the Kale family first filed an application with the Mumbai GPO for home repairs that included fixing the bedroom and kitchen windows, plastering the ceiling and plugging the leaks everywhere. With no response from the GPO, they applied once again in January 2024, this time with photographs of parts of the ceiling and plaster that had fallen into the kitchen the previous October. This year in January, the application was sent yet again. To the GPO's credit, some internal repairs were done in Building B-3 a little before the monsoon, but they did not stop the balcony slab from raining down. Other protective slabs of the building too showed substantial cracks. "Our requests to the GPO officials for repairs go ignored," said Anand Nimangre, secretary of the Sahar P&T Residents Association, an elected body. "The response we get is that there are no funds-this, despite Rs.15,000 to Rs.30,000 House Rent Allowance being deducted from our salaries every month." After the slab collapse, repair work on a similar slab on the opposite building, B-5, began on Tuesday and on B-3 too. "Every monsoon, despite being on the ground floor, it rains in our house," said Siddhesh Posam, resident of a ground-floor home with a plastic-sheet roof strung up in the middle of the kitchen. "No cooking is possible, as water drips continuously from the ceiling, since the plastering on the outside has eroded completely." Other residents of P&T Colony have a litany of complaints: wall cracks, choked sewer lines, rain water collecting in their homes during heavy downpours, unkempt shrubs inviting snakes, potholes on internal roads, uncleaned drains, and cracks on the water tank at a height, which, they fear, will fall on the bridge leading to the airport and hasn't been cleaned in a decade. There has been a slight improvement, said Nimangre, from the time the elected body came into place after a hiatus in January. But even when their woes are responded to, the work done is unsatisfactory. This is why, he claims, of the 150 buildings, only 65 are inhabited. Despite the slab collapse, the residents of Building B-3 will continue to stay in their homes, keeping only the room adjacent to the balcony vacant till repairs are done. Repeated attempts to reach out to officials from GPO yielded no response....