Flying in the Sky

If you stood atop any hillock in the evening and looked towards the tiny houses in the labour zone on the left of the Chillipattu canal, you would think a local train had halted there. All the houses had five-inch masonry walls and corrugated tin sheet roofs. Twenty or twenty-five such huts, all lined up like the wagons of a train, one after the other, along a straight line spanning east-west. And once evening descended, lights came on in the houses, one by one.

This place in Kerala was two-and-a-half or three kilometres away from Chitatara town. A tidal channel flowed beside it, which people called Chillipattu. The noise of the town did not reach this far. When evening descended here, it trickled down the leaves of the coconut and areca palms. And then came pitch black darkness, blacker even than the sludge that remained when the water in the Chillipattu dried up with the ebb tide.

The entire area of this labour zone belonged to a padre. The elder son of the padre looked after it now. He lived near the areca grove, in a blue-coloured, two-storeyed house. Migrant labourers from various parts of the country had come there to work. The contractors paid him the rent for every room in order to house the workers.

The name of the contractor under whom Yunus and other youths from his village had come to work was Jalil. A Malayali contractor. Quite a few masons and labourers from the districts of Purulia, Bankura and Murshidabad in West Bengal had been working for him for a long time. He paid the wages every week. And until now, no one had faced any difficulty regarding wage payments. There were also instances here of a contractor saying that he would pay the wages at the end of the month, getting a month’s work done, and then simply refusing to pay.

There were thirteen people in all from Yunus’s village, six masons and seven labourers. Jalil had given them two rooms to stay in. All of them ate together. The masons themselves saw to it that the one whose turn it was to cook on any day was let off work a bit early. After all, buying provisions from the market in Chitatara, washing the pots and pans clean, and then cooking for thirteen people, was no small matter.

The duty hours were from eight in the morning to five in the evening. There was overtime for an hour or two on some days. If work was available, no one let go of the opportunity. They had come from far away, leaving behind wife-son-daughter-Ma-Baba-brother-sister, and so recovering some part of their expense here on food by working overtime was no small thing.

Yunus walked back to his room after finishing work in the evening. The sun was sharp here even in the evening. There was daylight for a long time. Yunus removed his work clothes, put on a gamchha, and hung his clothes on the wire outside. And then he took out the big cooking pot and carried it to the water tap. The tap was on a paved terrace and beside that were a few bathing stalls without roofs behind shoulder-high walls, and next to that were the five or so common toilets. The workers from each room whose turn it was to cook had returned. Everyone’s work site was not in the same place. One had to go wherever one’s contractor was getting construction work done. If it was a faraway site, the company bus picked them up and dropped them off.

Yunus washed the large pot well and filled it with the amount of water that he estimated would be required to cook rice, lifted the pot up with its two handgrips, and waddled back to the room. After that there was another round, of picking up the wok, ladles, pans and utensils, and taking them to be washed. The Bihari worker, Rangan, was bathing nearby.

As Yunus was washing a wok, he became kind of absent-minded. He was remembering home. He thought about his younger sister, his Ma, and his grandmother. Who knows what his little sister was doing now! She had wept a lot, crying, ‘Bhaiya! Bhaiya’, when he was leaving home. She couldn’t be restrained.

His Ma had held Hasina on her lap and consoled her. ‘Hush, you crazy girl! Your bhaiya is going for work, he’ll be back after a few days. You’ll see what all he’ll get you when he returns!’

Yunus had pinched her cheek affectionately, ‘Don’t cry, darling sister, don’t cry. Here, take this, buy something to eat from the shop.’ And saying so, he had stuffed a twenty-rupee note into her hand.

His old grandmother too had come along with his Ma and Baba to the vehicle, knocking her stick on the ground. She had said, ‘Hey dear, there’s still time, think about it. Will you be able to go so far away for work and stay there, leaving everyone behind? You’re able-bodied, it’s better if you stay home and work in the village.’

‘You don’t have to worry, Dadi. I’m going with boys from the village, we’ll all stay together. The days will go by before one knows it.’

The mason Niyamul’s mother, Loitun, had consoled his Dadi from nearby, ‘Hey Chachi, don’t call him back when he’s about to leave. Take the name of Allah so that the boys reach safely. How many days’ work does one get in the village, tell me? He’s a man, let him see the world outside for some time. That’s how he can become smart and fleet-footed.’

They had hired Laden Sheikh’s vehicle, the one with a damaged hood, to go to the station. All the departing youths’ family members had gathered near the vehicle to bid them goodbye. Someone was leaving his wife behind, with a baby in her arms. The wife was wiping her tears on the anchal of her sari, while someone else’s mother was unable to hold back her tears and wept inconsolably for her son. A few people from the neighbourhood had also gathered there. The vehicle started and took a turn as the boys gazed at their weeping sisters and the moist eyes of their mothers. And then they hung on for dear life for forty-three hours in the general compartment of the express train.

‘Arrey, pani khatam ho gaya! Saala buddha, har roj tanki khali rakhta hai! Yunus, tu ekbaar ja, chillake buddha ko bol har roj aisa kyun hota hai. Hey, there’s no water! The fucking old man leaves the tank empty everyday. Yunus, go and shout at the old man and ask him why this happens everyday!’

Rangan and his fellow-workers stayed two rooms away from the one Yunus was in; they had arrived from Chhapra, in Bihar. The water had stopped as Rangan was bathing. There was foamy soap on his face. He was mumbling in rage. Yunus went with his oil- and soot-stained hands to the areca grove. Standing in front of the blue-coloured two-storeyed house, he shouted at the top of his voice and called out, ‘Chetaaa! Cheta …!’

The padre’s paunchy son opened a window and thrust his face out. He was over sixty, and although Rangan angrily referred to him as an old man, the padre’s son could not really be called that.

‘Vellam illa, cheta. Switch on kar do!’ There is no water, he said in Malayalam, and asked, in Hindi, for the pump to be turned on.

The window shut. The sound of the motor was audible a little while later.

Two

Every Sunday, they purchased fish and meat from the market. Yunus set out with the shopping bag. Swapan, who stayed in their room, had returned from work a while earlier. He did not do overtime. He was feeling a bit unwell, said he was feeling feverish. He too was going to the market to buy medicine. The person whose turn it was to cook did not have to fetch the provisions all by himself. All those who stayed in a room were like a family. Whoever went to the market fetched whatever they had run out of.

Swapan’s house was in the blacksmiths’ hamlet, Loharpara. There were two more people from Loharpara in Yunus’s room, Badu and Shutke, and there was Tufan, the son of Neule, from the hamlet of the Bagdi folk. Tufan had come to work earlier, he was at another site. There had been a problem with his employer regarding wages, and then he had contacted the mason, Jahir, over the phone and pleaded with him tearfully to get him work here. After all, a boy from the village had fallen into difficulty, so he wasn’t turned down.

The market in Chitatara came alive only after dusk. The area nearby was a labour zone, and so everyone went for a stroll to the marketplace after work. They went there and blew up their cash. No one could keep their morale up if there wasn’t a bit of entertainment after working all day long. There was a beer bar, a single-screen cinema hall, a shopping mall, and a red-light area. However, it was the pavements rather than the fancy stores that were crowded. From cheap shirts, trousers and shoes to various kinds of street food. A lot of Bengali youths too had set up shops.

Swapan described his condition at a pharmacy and bought the medicine. And then they stood near a pushcart and had something to eat. On the way back, they entered a meat shop. The vendor was a Bengali youth who had arrived from Murshidabad. He had also employed two youths to butcher the chickens. There were large crowds on Sundays. Most of the shops sold meat that was halal, slaughtered according to Islamic custom, so if one wanted to buy meat that was what was available. Those who didn’t want to have butchered meat bought a whole chicken and took it back to their rooms, and then they butchered it in their own way. It was only in this shop that both kinds of meat were available. Which was why people belonging to both the Hindu and Muslim communities gathered there.

The first day Yunus was sent to purchase meat, he had hesitantly asked, ‘Which kind shall I buy? Butchered, or …?’

Everyone understood what Yunus’s question meant. Badu Lohar said, ‘Come on, dear nephew! However it might be slaughtered, chicken tastes like chicken. We have come here to work, we should try to avoid any division among ourselves. We are all workers here, and that’s our identity. Buy whatever you like. No one has any objections.’

The mason, Jahir, had said, ‘Look Badu-da, there’s no compulsion of any kind. Just because there are more of us here, that doesn’t mean we have to eat halal meat.’

‘Why do you say that, Jahire! In case anyone has the slightest quibble—do  something, nephew. Get half of each kind of meat and mix it together. Does that settle it?’

Everyone laughed when Badu said that. Such a simple solution had not occurred to anyone. And that had been the rule ever since.

Three

Yunus was woken up suddenly at dawn by a shove from Swapan. Because it had been his turn to cook yesterday, he had been terribly busy. He had been tired. He responded sleepily, in a slightly annoyed tone, ‘What happened?’

Swapan said, ‘Please get up, bhai. I want to show you something. Can you see what’s erupted on my body?’ There was fear in Swapan’s voice.

Yunus sat up drowsily. It was Swapan’s turn to cook today. So he had woken up to attend to the cooking. There was water boiling on the gas cooker.

If the light in the room was turned on, it disturbed those sleeping, and so everyone had been instructed to use the chargeable lamp while doing the cooking at dawn, and to not be noisy. If anyone’s sleep was disturbed, profanities would emit his mouth at once.

Swapan turned the lamp on and showed his chest and limbs to Yunus. Red, blister-like pustules had appeared all over his body. ‘Chicken pox!’ Yunus exclaimed. ‘When did these first appear?’

‘My limbs were aching badly yesterday. And I was feeling feverish. The blisters probably erupted at night. I tottered somehow and fetched two buckets of water. I’m feeling terribly weak, bhai. My head is spinning, I can’t even stand up.’ Swapan paused, and then continued, ‘Will you do the cooking today, bhai? I give you my word, once I’m okay I’ll take your turn one day.’

Yunus gazed at the other youths in the room. Their exhausted bodies lay like corpses. Some snored. If anyone was woken up now from their deep slumber, they would be terribly annoyed. Yunus could not turn down the plea Swapan made in a helpless voice. He said, ‘Go and lie down, Swapan. I’ll do the cooking. Go.’

The morning’s cooking had to be completed by seven. Everyone would eat and then set out to work. They would all carry lunch too in tiffin boxes. They had to show their gate passes and enter the work site by eight. The gate would not open if one was even a minute late.

All of them were waking up one by one. They had to stand in a queue in the bathroom after this. That was indeed a battle!

Observing Yunus cooking, Saddam asked, ‘Hey, you cooked yesterday, so why are you doing it again today?’

‘Swapan has come down with chicken pox. I’m doing it on his behalf.’

‘What? Chicken pox?’ Hearing mention of chicken pox, everybody looked fearfully at Swapan. Because the ailment was such that if one person in the room got it, many others came down with it one after another.

Badu Lohar said, ‘Look, dear Swapan, I’ll tell you something, don’t get angry. Don’t roam around now. Don’t go out until the pustules dry up, unless it’s very urgent.’

The mason, Jahir, said, ‘No! You must not go out at all. Except for going to the bathroom. Put your plate away, we will do the washing up. And you don’t have to go to work either. I’ll tell Jalil sir to mark you present until you get well.’

The others in the room too expressed their agreement with what Jahir said. ‘Yes, yes, you’re right. We are poor folk who have left our wives and kids behind and come so far away to work. If we fall ill, it’s the contractor who ought to look after us. We’ll tell him too. Even if he doesn’t mark him present, he should at least give the money for the mess allowance. Or else how will he survive?’

No one told him anything, nonetheless Swapan himself dragged the polythene sheet under his bedding and moved it to one end of the room. He put up the mosquito net. No one stopped him. Everyone expressed their support in silence. Let the chicken pox patient be far away.

Four

The path was a sloping one, winding up and down. The workers were walking in single file to the work site. People from the states of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, as well as from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab—it was a mixed group, with people from all over India. There were wooded plantations of rubber, coconut and areca on the two sides. In some places, there were pineapple fields on plots surrounded by walls. There were very few settlements in these parts. A mother was standing at the gate of a house and waving her hand after her child was picked by the van of the nursery school. Almost every room in the labour zone was empty now.

This highway ran from Kudikatta, via Chitatara, towards Kakkanad. Although the main town was quite far away, there were large office buildings on both sides housing IT and telecom services companies. Large car parks flanked the highway with rows of neatly parked private vehicles. Once it was past ten, the two sides of the road were no longer vacant. Before eight, the group of workers walking like a line of ants arrived at the highway, crossed the road and then got divided and scattered. Each one headed towards the building they were working on. There were tile-setters, painters, masons and carpenters.

Yunus and his group showed their gate passes and entered. It was a thirteen-storeyed building project, which had been completed till the seventh floor, with offices that were already operational. It lay incomplete from the eighth floor upwards. Many of the inside walls had not been plastered yet. The doors and windows were being fitted. Masonry work was also going on in some places. There was scaffolding on the outside and painting work was being done.

Each mason had a labourer to assist him. The supervisors of the building company decided on where work was to be undertaken each day. Jalil was a major contractor, he provided labour to ten or twelve such building projects. He made a visit to the sites every day, arriving in an airconditioned car. After that he said various things to the supervisors in Malayalam and then left to visit the next site.

Yunus worked on most days with the mason, Surul, who taught him masonry work first-hand. Yunus had almost become half a mason by now, and when there was masonry work to be done, he too could lay the bricks in place. He took out a bag of cement from the warehouse, loaded it in on a handcart, pushed that and arrived at the lift. The lintel of a door was to be completed today. The masons carried their respective tools to the rooms, and brought those back when they returned. But there were plenty of troughs, shovels and levelling-rods in the company’s store room. They were taken from there when required.

Yunus got into the lift with the handcart and pressed the button for the ninth floor. He was accompanied by Surul. Yunus had initially been in a quandary every time he had to go up or down the lift by himself. It also took him a few days to figure out that the lifts for masons and labourers and that for the office employees were different. He used to get confused.

Yunus had once got into the VIP lift by mistake to get down to the ground floor. As the lift descended, it stopped at the fifth floor, where two women with files in their hands got in. Seeing him inside, they turned up their noses. Yunus shrank in fear and moved away to one side. The shirt and trousers he had on were soiled. He was going down in the midst of work to fetch something. Two office employees got in on the third floor. Yunus was sticking to the wall in apprehension. When he got off the lift on the ground floor, he saw a gleaming marble floor. There were two security guards sitting on chairs near the entrance. He had never come to this spot. Which direction would he go in now!

Yunus stood there in a state of bewilderment as office employees walked this way and that all around him. It was a ‘No Entry’ zone for masons and labourers! When he mustered up courage, trusting in fate, and sought to go past the entrance, the two security guards held his arms firmly.

‘Kahan jayega, where do you want to go?’

Yunus muttered, ‘Mistri ne bheja gajpata laane ke liye, is liye ground floor mein aana para. The mason sent me to get the levelling-rod. That’s why I had to come to the ground floor.’

‘Kachra sala, tu jaanta nahi ye VIP lift saab logon ke liye? Is mein kyu chada re tu? You fucking piece of garbage, don’t you know this VIP lift is for sahibs? Why did you get into this?’

Yunus begged and pleaded, but they did not let him off. They called the head of security, who rushed there. He whacked him on his cheek. ‘Tell your mason to come here.’

Yunus called Surul on the phone. Surul said, ‘I won’t go, bhai, you were the one who made the mistake, so you handle it now. If I go, they’ll threaten to lay me off. They might snatch my gate pass and keep it with them.’

‘Tell me what I should do? They’re not listening to anything. I apologised, but still …’

‘Don’t worry. They’ll surely let you go after scolding you.’

Yunus disconnected the phone and gazed at them with a dejected look. ‘The mason is busy at work, sir, please let me go, I’ll never make such a mistake again.’

The head of security gripped his arm and dragged him. There was a canteen nearby. Some gentlemen and women were standing and sipping coffee. All of them stared too. Executives who were walking by came to a halt with a start. The head of security said, ‘You have to hold your ears and do twenty sit-ups.’

Yunus’s eyes brimmed with tears. He held his ears slowly. And then he began to count, ‘One … two … three …’ Once he had done the sit-ups, he wiped his tears with his gamchha. Yunus was unable to look in any direction, he just walked straight ahead and exited.

Five

After working till twelve-thirty or one, there was a lunch break. A tap had been provided on the top floor, which was convenient for washing one’s hands and feet, and washing the tiffin box after eating. Which was why no matter where the masons and their assistants were working, everyone was present at the top floor in the afternoon. After resting awhile, they had to be back by two or two-thirty.

The top floor was completely vacant. There was a waist-high wall, but there would be no further masonry work. It was left blank for now and glass would be fitted later.

The workers dusted themselves with their gamchhas and sat in a circle to eat their lunch. There were Biharis, Tamils, Jharkhandis, and carpenters from Rajasthan. It was as if the whole of India had sheltered under one roof. All of them had left home, hearth and village, and come here to wipe away their penury by being able to afford two handfuls of grain to feed each family member’s belly. All of them chatted among themselves as they ate. Those who had finished eating were on the phone with their wives, finding out about family matters. And some were listening to songs with the mobile phone on maximum volume.

Once Yunus had finished eating, he picked up the fallen bits of food around him, washed his tiffin box and put it away in his cloth bag. After that, he leaned against the waist-high wall and gazed at the world outside. Jahir came and stood beside him, kneading tobacco in his  palm. A few others came to take a pinch of tobacco from him. Many workers had spread out their gamchhas after lunch and were lazing around. Some were sitting and watching a video on their mobile phones and laughing among themselves.

Tufan suddenly pointed his finger, ‘Look there, just see how the men are hanging!’

No one had noticed yet that there were a few men hanging on safety belts from the metal scaffolding along the wall on the northern side and applying paint on the wall. The very sight made Yunus feel giddy. He said, ‘What risky work! If you fall …’

‘God forbid! Don’t ever say such things, nephew. They leave home and family and then hang on for life from a thin belt, all for a few rupees.’ Badu Lohar heaved a deep sigh.

Shutke said, ‘People at home think you get money simply by arriving in Kerala. As if there’s money lying on the earth. But if something untoward happens, by the time the dead body reaches home, there’ll only be rot and stench.’

Jahir said, ‘Don’t say such things, bhai, I get scared when I hear that. When I stand on a platform and work, my hands and legs tremble. The faces of my wife and children flash before my eyes.’

Tufan said, ‘I saw a man’s death with my own eyes on a site where I used to work. Someone dropped a concrete block and it fell on a labourer’s head. The boy clutched his head and lay down, and never rose again. I heard that both his parents were dead and he had been raised by his uncles. He was from Murshidabad. No one made any arrangements for the body to be sent. He had to be buried in Kerala itself.’

‘Alas! Only Almighty Allah knows where one’s death is destined.’

‘We have left home and come so far away, if something happens our families will be on the street.’

‘If you don’t leave home, what will you eat, bhai? Have we come here for fun? We are like grazing birds. I was married for just six months, my wife was pregnant, but I had to leave her and come away.’ Tufan’s voice sounded faraway.

‘Every time I return home, I think I won’t leave again, I’ll do something locally, but there’s no fucking thing I can do. Neither is there work, nor good wages … yet the prices of things keep increasing. Sustaining a family is not a simple matter!’

Jamir felt strangely crestfallen. He left the wall and went away. Following him, Shutke and Badu too went to lie down.

Tufan and Yunus were standing side by side. Both of them were silent.

Breaking the silence, Yunus said, ‘Everything seems so tiny from up here, isn’t it, Tufan?’

Tufan replied, ‘Come, do you want to go even higher? To the roof?’

‘Really! I’ve always wanted to go very high. But going up is forbidden, my dear!’

‘Don’t tell anyone then. Come let’s make a trip.’

There were a few people lying near the staircase as well. They raised their heads, gave an annoyed look and put their heads down again as Yunus and Tufan went past them. The two of them began climbing up the stairs on tiptoe. There was a door at the top of the stairs which was shut.

Tufan said, ‘It’s not locked, open the bolt.’

Yunus’s heart beat faster in an unknown fear. A man had fallen from the roof and died about six months ago, and it had not yet been established whether that was a suicide or a murder. The roof was declared out-of-bounds after that.

As soon as the door was opened, they saw there was bright sunshine outside. Because of this afternoon sun, everything around them appeared smoky. The sun was enough to scorch one’s face. There were a few empty beer bottles, plastic glasses, used condoms and some discarded plastic food wrappers.

Tufan swore, ‘Fuck! Do people come here with women, or what?’

‘They can surely do that. If someone gets into a lift after office hours and comes here, who’s to see them?’

‘But why do they have to come to the roof, my dear? They all have cars. When you leave in the evening to go back to your quarters, haven’t you seen how intimately they behave?’

‘Yes, bhai. I saw a scene once through the window glass of a parked car …’

Yunus kicked a beer bottle hard and walked towards the edge of the terrace. The bottle spun around. The whizzing wind made a kind of sound that was like a mute’s moan. It was so desolate that one would feel scared to be here alone. The entire city looked like a map from up here. The functioning world lay below. Cars racing by, people running, everyone was running—where were they going? Yunus wondered about that. The faraway buildings, the roads, rubber plantations, and coconut and areca groves looked like a picture drawn by an artist. The world looked so small when one was high up!

Tufan took out a biri from the packet and lit it. He offered one to Yunus too.

Yunus looked skywards and blew out a mouthful of smoke. And then he said, ‘Do you know what I think of myself when I’m here, Tufan?’

‘What?’

‘I think of myself as a king, bhai!’

Tufan stared at Yunus.

‘The tall buildings that you see there, who built them? It was masons like us who built them. Look at the roads there on which cars are racing, who built them? It was workers like you and me who built them. But fuck, tell me, who remembers us once the job is done?’

Tufan said, ‘Don’t stand so close to the edge, bhai, move away a bit.’ Tufan sat down.

Yunus was still standing. He shut his eyes gently. He was slipping away into a reverie. He felt as if two wings had grown in place of his arms. Back in their village, once it was winter, a flock of birds came flying to the Jionala marsh from faraway places to feed on snails. Once the food sources were depleted, they flew away to another marsh. Everyone called them grazing birds.

Yunus’s wings had carried him very high. The houses below, the tall buildings, the people in cars, the contractor, Jalil, the padre’s son, the two hazy naked bodies spotted behind the window glass of a vehicle, the security guard who made him hold his ears and do sit-ups, the two women inside the lift who turned up their noses and moved away—everything looked so tiny, the higher Yunus ascended, the tinier everyone became for him. He looked to his side and saw that he was not alone. Like grazing birds, Swapan, Jahir, Badu, Shutke and Tufan were all flying beside him with their wings spread, going from one marsh to another, searching, but none of them knew where their exact destination was.