A Flashback ...
A phone call from the village friends. Subbiah, maybe 55, who was working as a casual worker in Tirumala, "We are back in the village . Simply sitting. What can we do."
Very difficult thing to hear. Worse is to try to answer ... I have learnt to listen in silence. When I have no answer.
When daily wage people need to simply sit it means no food for the day. Same story, village after village. Next step is malnourishment. In some unluckier places, starvation.
What the government is giving, a one time help of a Kg of dal and 5kg of rice, means very little.
The End. A year later.
Now dead. The funeral is today.
Subbiah, Paalaguttapalle Dalitwada.
Agricultural labourer.
Worked hard thro life, on a pittance. Feeding us all, himself staying underpaid and undernourished.
He had gone for coolie work with a team to harvest tamarind. Work is less these days, and has to be grabbed when it comes.
He fell from the tree.
He was taken to the hospital, but sustained internal injuries and succumbed in hours.
Yesterday he fell from a tamarind tree and died. The country which he sustained with his sweat, does not even know.
These are the realities. Peoples on the margin. Work hard for a pittance to survive that day. They make nothing to put aside for a bad day. They risk their lives for us. Sometimes they lose their lives.
Nobody stands up for them that day.
I have seen this too closely, too long. The foundations of this land. The foundations of our lives.
Our lives are built atop such lives. Such deaths. Our country is sustained by such stories. Our glittering growth in built over such truths.
The cremation is today.
Yesterday I was watching some people working at a construction site and no harness or safety net. It made me think of how callous we are. Safety isn’t even an issue when lives are many and work isn’t available for everyone. Lives are cut short simply because we do not care enough.
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