The Cart-Puller

As he stood watch in front of the factory in the Wazirpur district of Delhi, the images of the past constantly came into his mind, especially those of his hometown. He remembered the moment he left his hometown of Siwan in Bihar for the bright lights in the city of Delhi. Like the rest of the villagers who had left Siwan to find a job in the city of Delhi to send home some money to their wives or families, his dreams were not ambitious. He knew his limits and abided by it. He recollected that moment when his wife stood at the doorstep of his humble mud house along with his thinly hunchbacked mother. His wife was dressed in a shabby red sari that had become almost transparent due to overuse and wearing off. It had developed a familiar stench of its own, familiar to him. The look on the face of the wife was also worn off but her eyes were filled with a sense of hope and longing along with the desolation of their parting. His mother stood bent like a bow dressed in a white sari and four of her teeth missing from her mouth. She wore a huge smile on her face partly to ease his pain of separation from his family and partly because of the hopes she had from him. He remembered that he had not seen his twelve year-old daughter that day because she had gone off to a nearby government school. His daughter, though a twelve year-old, still had not yet learned to read and write. Shyamal, the factory watchman, still had hopes that her daughter would learn things gradually and grow to become a doctor. On the day of his parting, his mother had caressed him pressing him to her fragile body and patting his back and his head with her meek arthritic hands showing deep and gentle love. Shyamal then began to shrug off the clouds of the past from his mind and set his sights around the industrial area.

The nature in which the factories were organized was one of a kind. A single factory consisted of many independent units each owned by a different owner. At a time in a single unit, there were no more than twenty workers. The unit was divided into different stages of production and Shyamal worked in a unit where sheets of metal were processed and made out of raw metal for utensils. The utensils were made out of those sheets in a different unit which was owned by a different master and hence Shyamal had nothing to do with it. The factory in which Shyamal worked had no more than eight workers including his brother-in-law Birju. He was the one who had helped Shyamal in getting a job in the factory as a watchman.

The two were very close. Birju had to work seven hours a day as a sheet-maker and his job was to load the heavy processed iron onto the burning hot roller and make it into sheets. For this hard work, Birju got a meager payment of three thousand rupees and had to work six days a week. Form the earnings Birju made, and after paying the rent of his jhuggi , he would be left with just about a thousand rupees to fend for food, clothing and other expenses on a monthly basis.

Shyamal, since his work was not that of labor inside the factory, got paid even less. He got about twenty five hundred rupees which sometimes got cut down to two thousand based on the profits made by the owner. Seeing his state, Birju had managed to get him a much cheaper jhuggi but still what was left to Shyamal after paying his rent and other expenses, was not enough to send back any money. From whatever Shyamal got, he saved a little to build up a considerably amount of money, a thousand or two, to send home. Three months had passed and still Shyamal was able to send nothing back to his wife and children.

Added to that, the conditions of the factory were bad; dangerous and gloomy. The factory owner was the master and the workers were his slaves. The factory owner lashed at any worker, even Shyamal when they called him by his name even with the respectable suffix ‘ji’. He was to be called ‘master’ or ‘malik’ and nothing else. He demanded absolute submission from the workers. If a worker got injured in his factory, which a case most often, he was scolded, ridiculed and humiliated for slowing down the production in his unit. Health benefits and medical supervision were out of the question for the master.

After their shift which ended after eight in the evening, Shyamal and Birju walked together towards the nearest alcohol shop, and Birju treated Shyamal to the cheapest whisky Delhi could eke out. This whisky had no qualities of a regular or even and imitation whisky, and was sold in polythene pouches. It tasted more like petrol mixed with ether than whisky but it was an elixir of revival after a long day’s work. Shyamal and Birju did this almost every day as a routine and the days that they did not, was an exception wherein one or the other either had personal work. One fine day, Birju and Shyamal were having a conversation with their drink when Shyamal revealed that he had not gotten his payment yet and twenty four days had already gone by since the month started.

“Are you thinking of asking ‘malik’ for the payment?” Birju asked inquisitively with raised eyebrows, after burping loudly as the foul drink hissed through his throat like a snake and left its stench behind.

“Why must I not? It’s my money and I deserve it. Apart from that, twenty days is long enough. Five or ten days, you can put up, but not twenty days. I am eating into what I saved to send back home, and I have not saved much. I have not given the rent…” Shyamal went on complaining about his state but Birju interjected.

“Whoever owns the factory owns the money and it is at his dispense. The ‘malik’ is not someone who takes to respects kindly, let alone demands.” Birju stated.

“But what about our labor that runs like blood through the veins of the factory and keeps it alive. Without the blood, the body cannot function; blood is as important to the body as life is. All I am saying is that we underestimate our potential. We will become prostitutes if we let the ‘malik’ own us like this. I cannot take this anymore.” Shyamal’s head fell between his hands that were laid on the table. Whether it was the alcohol, the loneliness of the city or the misery of poverty, Shyamal did not know but it drove him to the brink of desperation. His stomach was growling with fiery famishing hunger, made more intense by the strong alcohol.

“You are not even a permanent worker in the factory.” Birju stated.

“No worker is a permanent worker in the factory. The ‘malik’ fires anyone according to his wish and will. Just two days ago, he fired Ranga from my wife’s village just because he found him reading a pamphlet from one of the trade unions.” Shyamal retorted.

“What I mean to say is you are a watchman with no professional industrial experience. Watchmen come and watchmen go. You think the ‘malik’ fires the workers as a whim; I am surprised you are not fired yet. There are a hundred others who can do your job and same goes for me. Our kind spawns around like cockroaches and that is why we are treated like one.  Forget about it. Say, you say Ranga was fired from the factory, right? Now, how sure are you of that?” Birju changed the topic and finally asked about Ranga but not in a sympathetic tone.

“Just two days ago when I met him near B-Block and he said he was going to the union waalas for help. I am not so sure if they can help him on this though. If it were an injury matter….” Shyamal went ranting on again, and again he was stopped by Birju halfway.

“You can take his job as the sheet-cutter. There are not many people willing to take that job as it requires a lot of heavy work around the mechanical saws and fire torches and most people think it dangerous. You are obviously not trained to do the job so you will have to apprentice without payment till you learn the trade.”Birju cast a light on Shyamal’s emerging darkness but it was not enough. The thought of going another month without pay as an apprentice was a bad idea for him. 

But it was the perfect opportunity as the factory owner would be looking for someone and would not hesitate to take someone from the inside. Besides, if he let this go by, he knew that there were others who would jump on the job despite the risks involved for after all they were cockroaches living in a big dustbin and Shyamal understood that fact now.

The next day he went to the factory owner and asked him if he could apprentice for Ranga’s job. The factory owner seized him from top to bottom with his swollen big white eyes and his hard torturing look, as if he was a colonialist measuring the merit of a Negro slave.

“But you don’t have any experience.” The master concluded.

“I am willing to learn.” Shyamal replied.

“And are you willing to work without payment till you learn.” The stout factory owner asked, tightening the belt around his taut belly.

“Yes.” Shyamal replied, killing a part of him that was hungry for food. Hearing his reply, the factory owner smiled his crooked smile as he made a profit of free labor for at least a month or two.

“What caste do you belong to?” the stately master asked, still smiling.

“I am a Chamar.” The watchman turned laborer replied.

“Okay, leave and get rid of your uniform. Burn it.” Replied the master, for if Shyamal had not been a Chamar, he would asked for his uniform back and give to the next person he would appoint as the new watchman.

Shyamal left his small office with a small prospect to look forward to. He walked limply as he had eaten little for days. He was out of dal to make so he boiled rice in water and made ganji out of it to eat but ate less since the quantity of rice that he had left was also scarce. He was limited to a one-course meal a day. His apprenticeship began the next day and lasted for two months during which he had to put in a lot of hard work and the factory owner simply made a huge amount of profit out of his free labor no matter how untrained it was. Shyamal was directed and trained in his work by the workers of his factory, his brother-in-law and Raju, another cutter who took charge at the other end of the machine. Raju, the fast-talking, pan-chewing, long haired person was thin but firmly built with tight musculature. His was a work that demanded more manpower and less technique which was a waste of his talent as he was quite intelligent and witty, especially when it came to the technology of machinery. Raju often had long interesting talks with Shyamal and he came to know that Raju was also from the same village in Bihar as Shyamal, but since he was from a different caste, but still an untouchable, he belonged to a different ‘tola’ or segment of the village that was close to the highway and therefore the town. Raju always talked about things that fascinated Shyamal, about machinery, about safety precautions one can take on his own as no safety precaution was provided by the factory. Raju seemed to Shyamal awfully clean for a worker in the factory. Sometimes, Raju would talk to him about a government made by the working-class population that would work for the benefit of the society from the bottom up. All in all, Raju became a reason for Shyamal to keep working in the factory and not go back to his village with a sense of defeat, because of his general personality but primarily because he would invite him over to his jhuggi, for meals whenever Raju’s intuition told him that Shyamal did not have enough food for his sustenance.

At the end of his two months, he became a paid laborer. However, there was no remark or gradation to prove that he was. It was just a word out of the pehelwan of the factory owner that at the end of the week, he would get his first pay. The hot months of the summer gradually changed to mild winter and autumn and spring was nowhere to be seen or felt. Festivals came and went. 

They were celebrated in the district of Wazirpur in a manner most befitting to any locality regardless of the low station of the workers. At the end of two months’ paid labor, Shyamal had gathered enough money to send to his home. He kept only the most humble amount for himself and sent the rest to his family in Bihar.

The first pay that the mother and the wife got from Shyamal was like a fountain of water sprouting up from a well that had long been dried up. Tears rolled down from the eyes of the old mother as she sat down on the floor and saw her daughter-in-law count the money that Shyamal had sent via Raju who had gone off to the village as his wife was pregnant with a child. He reached the village only to find out that the mother had died giving birth to his son. The procedure was conducted by an old and experienced midwife as there were no hospitals in that part of the village where Raju the worker lived.  Shyamal’s mother closed her eyes and the wrinkled old eyelids of hers were like a tapestry of a long forgotten ancient civilization with much folklore embedded upon them and the death of Raju’s wife was the most recent one as Raju began narrating the story after handing Shyamal’s wife the cash. For the mother as well as the wife, their son and husband was no different from any other city dweller be it a movie star or a millionaire because he had succeeded in providing for the family and keeping their hopes intact.  Raju further narrated to the old lady that he would take his son to Delhi as there was no one else to look after the kid left in the village.

“But where will the boy study?” the old lady, though it was a farfetched problem as the kid had just been born. Still, the importance of education was gradually being realized and thus a concern for education became a common concern among the villagers and hence a common question in their dialogues, especially those who sent their kids to school.

“I don’t know. I guess the boy will have to do without it.” A broken and disheartened Raju answered. This Raju was not the same Raju who talked of workers ruling the government and discussed with Shyamal the intricate mechanics of machinery. This was the Raju upon which nihilism and the paralysis due to circumstances reigned high. This was the Raju who, in his depressive state had already made the rash decision of taking the child to Delhi.

Raju reached Delhi and took quite some time to cope with his distress about the death of her wife. 

His labor continued for he knew that if he did not work, that gnawing howl of a hungry empty stomach would inevitably kill him and his little baby. Fortunately for him, during the work the womenfolk residing in the area of the jhuggi cared for his child, whom he named Bheem and some among them, who were pregnant- contraception was never a thing in the jhuggi where even a laborer had more than three children- selflessly breastfed Bheem so that he would grow up to be the mighty one. The dark thoroughfares of the city life and its monotony had an even and ample effect on Raju as he regained his joie de vivre and gradually became his old gregarious and witty self again. Sadness and despotism was so immanent in the lives of the wretched workers living in the areas of Delhi that would never pass for a metropolitan that they treated these measures of negativity with stark indifference.

Meanwhile, Shyamal gradually got hold of his work and became more adept and skilled as a factory laborer. Since his was now a job that needed precision and attention, he gave up drinking which did not strongly improve his economic conditions but gave him the promises of saving up. The winters grew chilly and made itself a foe of the poor as the dwellers of the jhuggi did not have ample materials to keep themselves warm and unharmed from the deadly mandibles of the raging monster that is the winter. The dwellers lit fires before their doorways and sat with each other collectively partaking in lively warm conversations and sometimes equally warm cups of tea. The striving force inside them made even the dreary winters an event wherein the people gathered together in a collaboration of will and protested against it with an undying spirit and deep human connection amongst their kind.

One day when Shyamal was working on the machinery that cut metal into thick sheets to the perfect symmetry, something not unusual happened. As he was loading the raw metal with the help of Raju from the other side on to the belt, and bent down to make sure the sheet was seated along the right scale, a blade came almost in a flash of a moment like thunder down on Shaymal’s thumb. Feeling the sharp stinging pain, he retracted his hand from the machine and gave his arm a tight flick. What had happened inside the machine, that Shyamal did not see was that the machine had cut through Shyamal’s thumb almost severing it from his right hand, and the flick which he so involuntarily gave was just with enough force to sever his thumb completely from his right hand. The thumb fell on the ground noiselessly over which Shyamal stood watching his own piece of body dislocated from his complete form and lying in a puddle of thick red blood. The sight was enough to send his mind in a complete state of shock and render him unconscious.

All the workers gathered around the crumbled body of Shyamal and looked at his hacked thumb just a few inches away from his body. They hissed at the fate of his poor fellow and Birju was the first one to close in on Shyamal’s body followed by Raju and take him to the hospital.

When Shyamal came to, he found himself lying on a long bench and a pungent smell of medicinal alcohol struck his waking senses. The feeling in his right hand came back again and it was a feeling of immense pain. He was not able to think because of the pain but had he been able to give consideration to his future prospects, he would have been in a greater amount of pain as the job required him to come to the factory five days a week and an absence of even a day or two meant the confrontation of the factory owner’s wrath and a possible discharge from his job. A discharge was simply unaffordable for him especially when he found out that the cost of medicines was five hundred rupees alone. He knew that he would not be able to send money home this time and this pained him even more. He was taken from the hospital after dressing to his jhuggi. Though he could walk, he was aided to his home by Birju and Raju. Both of them sat with him and talked about what was to done from then on.

“The malik will probably fire you.” Raju said blatantly, offering no solace to his wounds.

“Why do you say that?” Birju asked something that Shyamal carried in his expression but was not in a position to ask given his state.

“Because you apparently ‘besmirched’ his factory with your blood, I think.” He replied and then added “I have seen it happen in the past. The malik is a heavily orthodox Hindu and hence an ardent casteist.

“I don’t want to work in the factory anyways.” Shyamal replied, his eyes filled with vengeance and demanding respite. Birju weighed both their sides, Shyamal’s and Raju’s and tried to act like the voice of reason. He said:

“Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions, okay. As it is, the malik is short on skilled workers in the factory and you show much promise in your work, Shymal. Agreed, the missing thub will cut some of that but you are still an indispensable worker.”

“No one is indispensable, at least in this world. Millions lose their jobs and billions are ready to take their places. We are just useless insects scavenging off a large dustbin full of rotten goodies. My will is the only thing that they cannot take away. And so, I will not work in the factory anymore, especially under that son of a b***h owner.” Shyamal replied to much amazement of the people around him. Raju shared a different kind of amazement from Birju who was astounded by the fact that the ‘master’ can indeed be called that and still survive without an act of God wiping out his entire existence. Raju saw in Shyamal the potential he had long been looking for in a worker but could not find until now. There was silence for a moment and then Birju spoke.

“Friends” he said in a manner parodying a formal speech for effect, and then added in his usual tone “I know a way where you can get rid of your job as a laborer in the factory and still get reimbursed for your injuries.” Both the others looked at him in complete disbelief but still had their glowing eyes fixed at him.

“How is that possible?” Birju asked, playing the role of the skeptic.

“We call a strike, and we have the perfect moment because the load to be taken out of the factory is due in two days which is enough to notify the union people and the workers for a strike big enough to put a fear into the factory owner of not being able to deliver the goods on time. We demand a full reimbursement for ten thousand in medical expenses and provident fund since he will no longer be able to do his job properly as a skilled worker. And from that money, you can do something else; buy a cart for example to take different kinds of industrial loads around the town.” Raju replied in complete comprehension.

And so it was decided and the union people were approached. With the help of Birju and Raju, the unionists were successfully able to spread the word around the workers without making the matter noticeable either to the malik or the pehelwans of the malik. They finally managed to call a strike on the day the factory products were to be moved the factory owner was really in tears since these petty and pathetic laborers, now with their red banners and their loud slogans being chanted out of their hungry stomachs had cost him close to a fortune. The day of the export of the product is usually the payday for the factory owner and this was the source of the insurmountable power that the ‘master’ wielded but now the ground was shifted from beneath his feet and he no longer remained the master.  Seeing no other way out of this, the factory owner agreed to the terms of the strike and ten thousand to Shyamal the next day as if it was chump change for him. It was actually chump change considering that the finished products would amount to lakhs of rupees while the labor cost was less than twenty thousand for his unit.

In weeks, Shyamal was a changed man. No one owned him and no one was the boss of him. For the work he did, he answered only to himself and sine he had an independent job after buying his cart, the factory owners themselves would call him and treat him with respect in order to render his services. The work even then was surely not easy. The load he pulled around in his cart weighed in tones but the blood that boiled provided him with energy and the vigor of life flowed through independent vein and in an independent body. His body was now free from the reigns of work hours and the prying eyes of the master.

The story of his personal victory became a folk tale in the jhugggis. When he passed through the roads that connected the different blocks of the area, people thought to themselves and even discussed among others. “There goes four-fingered Shyamal”, they said and then discussed how the workers came together and fought off the factory owner with bravery for their fellow workingman’s honor. The feeling of this recognition mused him and he owed it not just to Raju or to the unionists but to all the fellow laborers who came together to fight for Shyamal’s rights. Alas, there was not much he could do for them in return. He still kept touch with them as well as with the unionists for any upcoming events so that he could provide any kind of support to the workingman’s community. He still managed to maintain his friendly relationship with Birju and Raju. Often after their work, he would give them a lift to their homes in the cart and ask them about the happenings in the factory. Shyamal, the cart-puller was different from Shyamal the watchman or Shymal the laborer. He was bolder, more outspoken, more inquisitive about the things that, in the past, he was indifferent about and so he became more and more lively.

But this liveliness was short-lived and indeed had a tragic end. One evening when Shyamal was returning from C-Block after delivering a load, he decided to take the main road for a change and because it was connected to his jhuggi and gave him a much shorter route. Earlier, he used to take the long route which was through the different blocks in the industrial area and he would circle the whole area to reach his jhuggi. It was because he felt insecure and little about his self paddling a tattered wooden contraption that he bought in cheap through the main road which was for the cars and the bikes and where even the government DTC buses were fancy. But the gradual upsurge in his morale made him empowered to use the streets as he believed it was also for him.

As he made the turn that put him on the main road, he paddled proudly along the main road with a vibrant feeling bubbling inside him. When the main road was about to finish, he prepared to make the turn towards the unmade road that was close to his home and then he saw a lorry approaching him at full speed. The lorry did not break its speed and made its way towards the road not realizing the cart-puller making his way through. He reached for the ring attached to the handle of the cycle but realized that he had no thumb to press the ring.  At the turn, the cycle always allowed down because of the cart attached to it. Shyamal looked at the truck with frightened eyes and did not see the truck but death nearing towards him. He shouted from the depth of his lungs but it had no effect on the truck driver as the truck came tearing through wind and space. In the enhanced capability of his final moment, he gazed through the windshield of the truck and found the turbaned sardar rolling his eyes sleepily indicating that he was drunk.  Shyamal kept on rubbing the stub left after his thumb was severed off but it was not sufficient enough to make the bell ring.In the last moment, he abandoned all hope as the truck came crashing down upon the cart and the cart puller’s body along with the cart was leveled down by the force of the crash.

In the police report, the truck driver blamed it all on the cart puller and said that it was his fault that he had not rung the bell. When Birju and Raju got to know of the scene, they dashed to look at their dead friend but all they could manage to see was a pulpy lump of flush, blood, broken bones and clothes sagged with thick red blood. They cried as they imagined the face of their jolly friend Shyamal, riding his cart around the area. They recalled his trips around the various units of the factory where everyone talked about the cart puller as the four-fingered man. Their friend, the four-fingered Shyamal, was now dead. There is nothing noble about dying in the mud. There is nothing noble about dying altogether. And what’s more, there is nothing noble about living a dying life wherein each day one has to fight with death and disappointment simply in order to survive, in order to be happy. And yet Shyamal was condemned to such a life and many others like him, still are, hoping to find that one scanty beam of light coming from the end of the tunnel. The tragedy is, it never reaches them. 

Reviews

[richieb]

A well written story about the economic struggles of the common man only to end tragically. Your story is solid, dressed with ample description and real characters. You have a sound knowledge of the plight of the working man and union causes. The story's ending cleverly fits in with the factory accident. Your story is polished and flows easily for the reader.
Ironically I work for Arcellor-Mittal in the state of Ohio in the United States. I belong to United Steelworkers Union and have worked there for 35 years. I cannot complain, our working conditions and wages are competent and satisfying. I give all the credit to the constant vigilence of our union.
Thank you for your fine story.
Richie B.