Have The Migrant Workers Returned To Their Homes?

They are still walking. Can’t you see? Sometimes it takes a heart to see, not eyes. 

During Covid-induced lockdown, they were palpable as we were glued to the screens, not busy enough with the drudgery we call work. The fear of imminent death and cocooned grief of losing near and dear ones made people a bit susceptible to the surroundings of our existence. And the long walks, the migrant workers, India's often forgotten underbelly, made them discernible to us. 

The hitherto unfelt presence of countless people who remain nameless as we don’t bother to know their names —jalwala (waterman), dudhwala (milkman), raaj mistri (mason)— who make our life easy every day suddenly become poignant. The fear, agony, and uncertainty of catching the virus and dying alone without even a decent, respectful burial were thick in the air and it brought out many aspects of humanity — both humane and inhumane, but mostly the latter. 

The unplanned lockdown that began on March 24, 2020 hit the most vulnerable, the fragile mass of India, as badly as any thoughtless plan hits them. But this time, it could be seen, though neither felt by the state nor by the indifferent well-to-do classes. They could not undo the seeing. Thousands were walking silently, without being violent, without demanding justice, without demanding a respite, as if they knew the blatant truth that democracy is a thing to celebrate one day — the day of the election. They were so absent from the imagination of the state an policymakers that they did not even think about how these people would return before announcing the lockdown.

Have they returned yet? Have they returned home? We all long to return. Have they crossed the rail track safely or are they still dying leaving behind the rotis, the reason they are forced to work a thousand miles away from home? Rotis are not merely food, but a symbol of the only dream this ‘bheed’ —crowd— or mass strives to achieve. 

We are at peace that we —the indifferent India— don't see them on the road now. Again, they are just ‘bheed’, a faceless, voiceless existence. The unsettling images of India's obscene poverty and ruthless inequality that were visible during the lockdown have gone into the shrunken, esoteric fold of India's willful act of unseeing project of false development narrative. The development narrative where these people don’t fit into. It’s a killing too, a killing by throttling voices, a death by willfully not hearing their voices. 

We don’t have any clear data on the exact number of people who work as migrant workers. It shows the sorry state of affairs. What about their medical insurance, their living conditions, and their families whom they leave behind? We don’t have an answer. No one is ready to listen to their man ki baat.

They have not reached home yet. Most of the time, they cannot make it. On the rail tracks, in the jhopris, in the buses, they breathe their last. We don’t see them. Sometimes, they find a space in the corner of the newspapers. But they can never make the distance between ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’, ‘presence’ and ‘absence’. They have never been abandoned because no one has ever owned them, neither the government nor the society. They are failed every day.

So when Russel, 19, told me he is again going to return to work as migrant labourer in Bhutan, it didn't surprise me. Last month, he returned from Kerala where he worked as a migrant worker and sent money home for potato cultivation. His family has faced huge losses in potato cultivation. Now he is going to Bhutan to work as a construction worker. This circle will go on and on. In my village of Bakali in the northern part of West Bengal, most of the young people work as migrant labourers in Kerala or Bhutan. Minor boys go to Kerala as it does not need ID cards. But entering Bhutan requires an ID card.

Nayan, a mother of four children, met her husband while working as a migrant worker in Mumbai. Nayan is from Murshidabad from where 1.4 million people reportedly work in other states as migrant workers. After her marriage, she came back to her village in Murshidabad. Her husband had a dream to educate their children. They got their children enrolled in schools. Her husband went back to work in a hotel, but this time to Kerala. He was sending money from there and Nayan was working as domestic help in her village. She had a broad smile every time I met her. And she had a dream: “Didi, meye ke porabo (will make my daughter educated).” But a few months ago, her husband died. And again, she had no choice but to go back to the ‘bheed’ of Mumbai, leaving her two elder sons behind to her mother. Some are not allowed to dream!

In the village schools of the rural parts of Bengal, particularly in the districts of Malda, Murshidabad, or Coochbehar, in every classroom when enquired students often say they stay with their grandparents because their parents work as migrant workers. This is another reason for child marriage. The parents can’t take their grown-up daughters with them, so they feel it safe to get them married as early as possible to get rid of the ‘problem’. Yes, daughters are still a ‘burden’ in this society. In these schools and madrassas, the number of students who are enrolled but not attending classes is increasing. 

So this ‘bheed’, this voiceless mass, is still wandering. Maybe not on foot now but in the crumpled general compartment or buses. Now as we have enough noise, and enough visuals of the so-called development, we can’t hear their voices anymore.

Maybe Still, the 18 labourers —whose names we never want to know— who hid in a cement mixture tank to return home during Covid-induced lockdown are on the road with different names or in different ways. As a poet I can only give them my poems, a poet's helpless witness to the darkest time.

Dharmveer — A migrant in his own country

Dharmveer was cycling
He was cycling from the land of big buildings
and sumptuous food that
he tasted the smell many times
but he didn’t have any.
He built those heartless buildings.
He used to have a sound sleep
on the graveyard.

In big cities, the makers live in graveyards
And the lumpen dead souls
have big buildings.

Dharmveer was cycling.
He could see the bubbles of the rice gruel
about to fall from his mother's dixie
on the hearth.
He was following the path of
the smell of boiling rice.
He had to cross two thousand kilometres 
and fell many times
But followed his dream of
white rice and garlic chutney.

Suddenly at twelve hundred kilometres
His dream of one gulp of boiled rice
got blurred with indistinct vision.
He looked upwards
not for the last blessings of God
but for the noise of the powerful blades
of a helicopter.
His hungry vision saw
the white dream of rice fell from the sky.
He opened his mouth for a fist of boiled rice.
A petal kissed his dead lips.
The dream of steamed rice
Was slipping from memory.
He fell from cycle for the last time
On twelve hundred kilometres
Petals are cheaper than rice.

(This poem is inspired by the story of Dharamveer, a migrant worker who died while cycling back to his home during lockdown. This poem is from the collection, The Musings of the Dark, published in 2020.)

Thoda Distance Maintain Karo (Maintain Little Distance)

One by one
They are coming out
not from your 3BHK
not from Antilla.

They are coming out from a single hole
A hole
So black, so deep, so hell
that you don't dare to peep into.
It’s the hole of the entire world
that you have made and completely disowned.
Who wants darkness?
Who wants to see the mirror of their sin?

You packed this other world
In an airtight container.
You ensure always
No voice comes out.
Voices do come
But the throats are slit.

Strange lives they are!

They are coming out
From the hole in the breast
Of a cement mixture tank
One by one.

Your police are shouting
“This Distance Maintain Karo!
Carona spreads fast!”

(The poem is inspired by the news of a few migrant workers trying to travel from Maharashtra to Lucknow hiding in a cement mixture truck. This poem is from the collection, The Musings of the Dark)

Mangoo Ram

Mangoo Ram is walking.
He is walking with his moving home —
three daughters,
A half-dead wife
one tarpaulin and a forsaken stove
of his master,
three steel plates — all put in a sack
and no documents.
Neither does he have one.

He is walking from
Delhi to Munger.
He doesn't know how and
How many kilometres it will take
He knows it's two days by train.
He is walking from three meals
of chapati and pickle
to starvation.
He may reach
Or may not reach his destination.

Like the carcass of the cows
he may be found by 
roadside wearing the mask
on his face given by some holy men.
The mask will be the only thing intact
In his otherwise rotten body.
His existence will be acknowledged
when it will be stinking
to the babus.

What will be written
as the cause of the death?
Died of chronic dehydration and starvation
with surprisingly sanitised hands
Or
Murdered for just being poor?

(This poem is taken from the collection, The Musings of the Dark)

(Views expressed are personal opinions of the author.)