The project manager, too, was delighted with the arrival of new pavement-dwellers. The scheme allowed him great liberties in manipulating the payroll. What the free labour lacked in efficiency, it made up in numbers. The expanding irrigation project no longer needed to hire extra paid workers.
In fact, a few were laid off; and the remaining day-labourers began to feel threatened. In their view, this influx of starving, shrivelled, skeletal beings was turning into an enemy army. Regarded at first with pity or amusement as they struggled with puny little tasks, the beggars and pavement-dwellers now seemed like invaders bent on taking away their livelihood. The paid workers began directing their resentment at them.
Harassment of the newcomers was constant. Abuse, pushing, shoving became commonplace. A spade handle would emerge out of a ditch to trip somebody. From scaffoldings and raised platforms, spit descended like bird droppings but with greater accuracy. At mealtimes a flurry of suddenly clumsy elbows overturned their plates, and since the rules denied a second serving, the beggars and pavement-dwellers often ate off the ground. Most of them were used to foraging in garbage, but the water-thin dal soaked quickly into dry earth. Only solids like chapati or bits of vegetable could be salvaged.
Their supplications to the foreman were ignored. The view from the top showed a smooth, economical operation with little need for managerial intervention.
By the end of the first week, Ishvar and Om felt they had spent an eternity in this hell. They were barely able to rise for the dawn whistle. Dizzy spells made the world dance around them when they got out of bed. Their morning steadied somewhat after their glass of strong, overboiled tea. They staggered through the day, listening to the bewildering threats and insults of overseers and paid workers. They fell asleep early in the evening, cradled in the scrawny lap of exhaustion.
One night their chappals were stolen while they slept. They wondered if it was one of the men who shared the tin hut with them. They went barefoot to complain to the foreman, hoping he would issue replacements for them.
“You should have been more careful,” said the foreman, stooping to buckle his sandals. “How can I guard everybody’s chappals? Anyway, it’s not a big problem. Sadhus and fakirs all travel with naked feet. And so does M.F. Husain.”
“Who is M. F. Husain, sahab?” asked Ishvar humbly. “Government minister?”
“He is a very famous artist in our country. He never covers his feet because he does not want to lose contact with Mother Earth. So why do you need chappals?”
There was no footwear available in the camp supplies. The tailors looked inside their hut one more time in case someone had taken the chappals by mistake. Then they walked carefully to the worksite, trying to avoid sharp stones.
“I will soon get back the feet of my childhood,” said Ishvar. “You know, your grandfather Dukhi never wore chappals. And your father and I could not afford our first pair till we had finished apprenticing with Ashraf Chacha. By then our feet had become like leather — as though the Chamaars had tanned them, tough as cowhide.”
In the evening Ishvar claimed that his soles were already hardening. He examined the dust-caked skin with satisfaction, enjoying the roughness under his fingers. But it was excruciating for Om. He had never gone with unprotected feet.
At the start of the second week, Ishvar’s dizziness persisted past the morning glass of tea, getting worse under the burgeoning dome of heat. The sun battered his head like a giant fist. Towards noon, he stumbled and fell into a ditch with his load of gravel.
“Take him to Doctor sahab,” the overseer ordered two men. Ishvar put his arms over their shoulders and hopped on one foot to the work camp’s dispensary.
Before Ishvar could tell Doctor sahab what had happened, the white-coated man turned away towards an array of tubes and bottles. Most were empty; nevertheless, the display looked impressive. He selected an ointment while Ishvar, balancing on one leg, held up his injured ankle to encourage an examination. “Doctor sahab, it’s paining over there.”
He was told to put his foot down. “Nothing broken, don’t worry. This ointment will cure your pain.”
The white-coated man gave him permission to rest for the remainder of the day. Shankar spent a lot of time with Ishvar in the hut, leaving at intervals on his rolling platform to fetch food and tea. “No, babu, don’t get up, tell me what you want.”
“But I have to make water.”
Shankar slipped off his platform and motioned to him to get on. “You shouldn’t put weight upon your injured foot,” he said.
Ishvar was touched that he who had no feet should care so much about another’s. He seated himself gingerly on the platform, crossed his legs, and began rolling, using his hands the way Shankar did. It was not as easy as it looked, he discovered. The trip to the latrine and back exhausted his arms.
“Did you like my gaadi?” asked Shankar.
“Very comfortable.”
The next day Ishvar had to leave his bedding and hobble to the gravel area, though his ankle was swollen and painful. The overseer told him to fill baskets with the women instead of transporting them. “You can do that job sitting down,” he said.
There were other accidents too, more severe than Ishvar’s. A blind woman, set to crushing rocks, had, after several successful days, smashed her fingers with the hammer. A child fell from a scaffolding and broke both legs. An armless man, carrying sand in panniers on a shoulder yoke, suffered neck injuries when he lost his balance and the yoke slipped.
By week’s end, scores of newcomers were classified as useless by the foreman. Doctor sahab treated them with his favourite ointment. In his more inspired moments he even used splints and bandages. Shankar was assigned to ferrying the patients’ meals. He enjoyed the task, looking forward eagerly to mealtimes, paddling his platform from the hot kitchen to the groaning huts with a newfound sense of purpose. At every stop he was showered with the invalids’ grateful thanks and blessings.
What he really wanted, though, was to nurse their injuries and alleviate their pain, which Doctor sahab seemed unable to do. “I don’t think he is a very clever doctor,” he confided to Ishvar and Om. “He keeps using the same medicine for everyone.”
The patients cried out for help through the long, hot days, and Shankar talked to them, moistened their brows with water, gave them assurances of better times to come. When the workers returned in the evening, hungry and exhausted, the ceaseless moaning irritated them. It continued deep into the night, and they could not sleep. After a few nights, someone finally went to complain.
Annoyed at being awakened, the foreman admonished the injured. “Doctor sahab is looking after you so well. What more do you people want? If we took you to a hospital, you think you’d be better off than here? Hospitals are so overcrowded, so badly run, the nurses will throw you in filthy corridors and leave you to rot. Here at least you have a clean place to rest.”
Over the next few days, the foreman, shorthanded, was forced to rehire the laid-off paid workers. They quickly realized this was the answer to their problem: incapacitate the free labour, and the jobs would return.
Animosity towards the beggars and pavement-dwellers reached dangerous proportions. The day-labourers began pushing them off ledges and scaffoldings, swung carelessly with pickaxes, let boulders accidentally roll down hillsides. The number of casualties increased sharply. Shankar welcomed his new charges. He poured his entire soul into the added responsibility.
Now the project manager took a different view of the victims’ complaints. Security staff was increased, and ordered to patrol the worksite at all times, not just at night. Day-labourers were warned that negligence on the job would be punished by dismissal. The attacks decreased, but the irrigation project began to look like an armed camp.