The Worker

It was a cold winter night. He looked around the place, the place he was born, where as a kid he had amused himself in the mud, fed on cement, and threw bricks at his mates and now the same surroundings where he worked. He could see piles of concrete in the distance and the toxic waste in the corner where many a workers had died. He saw the chisels, the cement, huge cranes, big machines looking ominous in the silence of the night. There was so much that went unnoticed in the chaos of the morning, but now, with nothing to disturb him, he felt free. Finally he looked above him. The building was tall now, though still half built.


It was late in the night and no one was around. Only a few stray dogs could be heard in the distance breaking the chilly silence, fighting, may be over the little piece of bread constructor’s son had thrown out of his Mercedes.


Nothing much had changed in this building industry since his father’s days. They still used the same production material and equipments. Equipments which could easily take your life. The constructors were still mean and fat, and they still owned the most expensive of cars and the most disgruntled sons. The worker class hadn’t changed much either. They were still fighting to live, in poverty, in rags and in misery with little to survive or to look forward to.


Inspite the chill he felt very warm inside the old rags he was wearing. There, at the place where his past, present and destiny belonged, he sat and thought…


He could only think of one thing..home. He was already late and he knew that his wife must be dreading his return from work, fully drunk when he would beat her, hurl abuses at her and when she, finally exasperated would abuse him back. This was the story of their everyday household since the past 15 years and with no hopes for change. There was a time when he felt thrilled about changes, about exploring new potentials but not anymore. He was too tired for a difference now.


He wasn’t always like this. “No, I wasn’t”, he thought. Infact, he had been a totally different person all together. He had been, much unlike his father, a very compassionate and a loving person and more than anything else, he had loved his wife. He could still recall the day they were married, how he had blushed red, like the color of her sari. It was only after their fourth child was born that he had started drinking, though he couldn’t remember why. After their fifth child he had first beat her, still he couldn’t remember why (With a memory now fading with time, he could only summarize his life in ‘when’ and not ‘why’). Reasons had somehow betrayed him.


He loved his children but for the fact that there were too many to be loved. So he loved the first three, he decided. The three who would take care of him in his bad times (his father had similar thoughts about him, he remembered). The others just wailed and cried all the time, irritating him, making him hate them even more. But even this little thought about his children brought a smile on his face. After all they were his blood. “I must be getting home soon”, he thought.


The bell chimed once somewhere and he kept sitting absorbed in his memories. He thought of Raju, his neighbour, his child mate who had worked with him right here. He was a simple God fearing man of family. Infact, Raju was no different than him in any way. They both had grown up from naked children to tough men together. Poor guy had died in an accident when he fell from the 12th floor of the building. Raju’s family had moved to some another place, he didn’t knew where.


The ‘theka’ was just around the corner. He could go there. No, No… he had to go home today. Why would he even drink, he often thought. Well, he drank to forget his own failures He drank to forget the guilt. The guilt of going home with no money in hand, facing his children who would again ask him to go to the mela, guilt of looking into their innocent eyes and telling them to shut up and sleep, that they weren’t going to any mela. The guilt of beating his own wife every night. It went on till this guilt short lived his habit of drinking and violence. He drank, like million others, to forget.


In this state of daze and confusion he thought of his mother. Trying to sleep outside their hut looking above in the sky, she had often told him that their conditions would change, and that her children would work hard for their better times. He remembered the stories she used to whisper to him. The stories of fairies and princes, places where dreams were realized, a world where imagination ruled the hearts and nothing was impossible. He always used to sleep before the ending, so he had no stories to tell his own children. He remembered how she had died. In pain and agony of poverty with no one to take care of her.


By the time he was 17, both his parents were dead. His father had died of lung cancer while working with hazardous waste. He had always considered his father a loser and felt nothing when he died. He wondered if his own children would feel the same when he dies. Thrown into poverty and uneducation, alone, he began his life at the only place he had seen, the construction site.


Born poor, he lived poor. But he was a motivated person back then. Living life at a knife’s edge and with nothing to lose he was confident that one day, sooner or later, he would make his own stand in this cruel world, that he would not let his children grow up the way he had. But he was soon to learn that this world doesn’t play fair to just determined people.


The nightmares, the pain, hate, all came back to him. He looked at himself. His shriveled hands could no longer hold the bricks. In his early thirties, his hairs were already stark white. His eyes had started eluding him, showing him the ghosts of past and the mirages of present. His fragile frame could no longer carry the weight of both labor and his family. Only bones were left, hammered since decades of hard work.


Whose fault was it? Was it his mistake that he was born to poor parents? Or were his parents at fault to keep him uneducated? Would he be a different man if his parents hadn’t left him so soon? Or was it some pre-determined destiny playing games with him? It is the destiny, he said to himself. Destiny forced upon him not by the people, the society or the government but by God himself. He looked up at the starry sky, cloudless and clear. He wished that only if, like the stars, he could see the Gods, talk to them, complain and ask Him why life is so unfare only to a select few. But he knew he won’t get any answers. An equal world was probably not what God had in mind when he created humans. Could he defy God? Could he be a different person all together? Why does his self-conscious call him today?


But there was no time for God or self-conscious today. He could think of it later. Today, he will just go home where his wife and children waited for him. He may also stop at the ‘theka’ for a drink or two. “Today I will try to keep myself sober though”, he promised himself. He gave one final look at the building above him. It was almost a sky-scraper now. He smiled with-in. His blood and sweat flowed with-in these huge concrete blocks. He was proud of himself. He thought of Raju again and how he must have felt falling from such a height. Somehow, he thought he knew. It was time to go home. He stood up and walked home leaving his frail body behind, walked to his wife who waited for him forever…