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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Workin' Man Blues -Sarah Hafeez
-The Indian Express

In the industrial areas of the National Capital Region, life is tied to the assembly line. But even if rarely, workers clear a space for that which seems impossible: thought and contemplation, and even the artistic life.

When the whir of engines and the clang of metal against obstinate metal die down, when the neon lights go down in hundreds of sooty factory buildings in Haiderpur, Ashish Kumar opens his notebook. A lanky, dark-skinned, 16-year-old factory worker, Ashish sits down to write at night, “mood banake, aaste aaste”.

In the cramped tenements housing thousands of workers in northwest Delhi’s factories, there is little time or energy or the “heart” to think about life beyond.

But Ashish, who lives in one such tenement cluster in the urban village of Haiderpur with his parents, has not reconciled himself to the mind-numbing tedium of work on the assembly line. He pursues his education through a distance-learning programme offered by the CBSE for students of Class IX and X, plays cricket for a team in the HPL (Haiderpur Premier League), a hyper-local version of 20-20 cricket, and writes at night.

“I love writing at night when there is no studying to do and my parents are not bothering me,” says Ashish, who has changed three factory jobs in the last three weeks, the last one entailing an acid wash of metal containers. He was fired when he refused to dip his hands into a diluted acidic solution. While he makes roughly Rs 250 a day, he resents the bullying of factory owners. Often, he talks back.

His parents, Scheduled Caste Paswans from UP’s Unnao district, moved to Delhi five years ago in search of regular wage labour. Ashish’s mother is a housewife and his father now sells ice-cream off a push-cart. His parent could not afford to spend Rs 1,500 on his tuition classes and books, forcing him to discontinue school and join a correspondence course this year. Ashish’s relationship with his parents has not been smooth, especially since he began “reading a lot” out of a small library run by a trade union nearby. They do not know Ashish writes.

“I have been reading comics, joke books and stories since the age of eight, spending my pocket money to buy books. But now I read serious things like the fact that every human being is equal. And when I say that to my parents, they get angry. My father was bent on taking me to a godman to get me exorcised. I refused,” he says.

He opens his notebook, gloved in a starry blue cellophane wrap, and begins reading some of the couplets he has composed. “Har subah ki dhoop kuch yaad dilati hai/Har phool ki khushboo ek jadoo jagati hai/Chaho na chaho kitna bhi yaad/ Har mor par aap ki yaad aa hi jati hai (Every morn’s sunshine reminds me of something/ Every flower’s fragrance ignites a magic/ Regardless of my will and mind/ Every bend in the road reminds me of you”. The young man seems to be in love.

He then begins reading Dharam kaisa hai?, a story he wrote a few months back. A mother is angry at her son for having supped at the house of a bhangi, a community of sweepers and beggars from the so-called lower castes. The son asks: “Agar maine ek bhangi ke ghar se khana khaaya to kya mai bhangi ho gaya? (If I eat at a bhangi’s house, do I become one?)”. His mother says, yes. He retorts: “Jo bhangi pichle paach saal se hamare ghar se khana kha raha hai, woh Brahmin kyun nahi hua? (Then why has the bhangi, who has been eating at our house for five years, not become a Brahmin?)”

For the thousands of workers in the industrial areas of the National Capital Region, life is tied to the shift, beginning in the morning at 8 and ending 12 hours later. It is an arduous life, with little financial or job security. Away from the demands of the assembly line and squalid housing, leisure is in short supply. But even if rarely, workers clear a space for that which seems impossible: for thought and contemplation, and even the artistic life.

On a Sunday afternoon in west Delhi’s Mayapuri industrial area, Lal Vachan, 45, and fellow workers rest at the MCD park, a small island of green in the grey matrix of factory buildings. Lal Vachan has been working as a factory hand in Mayapuri since 1985. For him, escape from the drudgery of work at an auto-parts factory comes from writing and composing songs. His songs, in Bhojpuri, are about the factory shopfloor and home, the bookends of his life.

“Din bhar bhaiya kare majoori/ Tap tap chooe pasinva ho/ Tap tap chooe pasinva/ Ghar aile bhar pet na mile bhojanwa larka rowe/ Ghar anganwa sukh sapanwa bhaiya na (All day long, brother, I toil/ Drop by drop, I sweat it out oh/ Drop by drop I sweat it out/ Yet when I go back home, my boy weeps over a half-empty stomach/ My home is devoid of happiness and dreams),” he sings in his full-throated voice.

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