MIGRANT MUSINGS
This is a country for the rich whose work we willingly do
The summers are so hot
We inhale the Sun with the dust and drown it in us with hot black tea
The rains wash and rewash us
Yet we never get cleaned
Mould grows in our clothes
One of our pair of footwear floated away like a rubber dinghy with a destination to nowhere
We climbed storeys to live in
And were helped by the water which cooperated to create small rivers over the roads that had baked our feet
Last week came sudden sheets of water that last year was absent
Longing for the outside we stared at the liquid curtain enclosing us inside
There will be no work, no pay today
The contractor wants to protect
His cement stock, he is indifferent
To our getting wet, that too we learned
The old man we call “Tau” sighed
His eyes were wet thinking of dry fields
Of the growing despair in his village
Three years of drought carried off the old
Killed the cattle and drove the youth away
To cities where slums are built with dreams still intact
Somewhere between the Sun and
The water, we learned to build a frail world, fresh fish curry with rice made us happy Semi-safe hooch made us happier,as did news of the birth of a second son, whose picture was shown to all, passing around
The mobile phone made us all feel that there was a family waiting back home for us
We wanted to show our mothers and
Wives, the sea, as soon as the kids were grown up enough for such a long train journey
Maybe our thekedar would let us use
The servants quarters or the garage that we ourselves built last, with leftover materials but excellent labour
As we toiled at our last project
We had a life, harsh, no doubt
But still it was money sent to our village
Despite failing crops, mounting debts
Most of all the hope that tomorrow would somehow be better
No one knew that some virus
Was sure to kill, we did not believe it
Many things came, grew and left
In the relentless winds of our village
Some died, some fell sick
The village God and the village vaid
Cured them on the invisible
Prescription of Providence
Our contractors came, told us to go
And left quickly, thrusting a soiled
Five hundred rupee note at each of us
The ones quicker on the uptake
“Borrowed” that from our pliant fingers
Where do we go, how do we leave?
Who will stay back to watch over our
Meagre belongings, which would
Certainly disappear
If left unguarded even in the tenth floor
We sat around in a daze
Then spoke to each other, all of us clueless, the mobile phones Of our contractors were switched off
The various leaders never ventured out
Except to appear behind microphones
To spout their concern about
The wellbeing of people, who we realized much later was us!
The local population which was always Suspicious of us, now denounced us
To be carriers of the deadly virus
As if poverty and displacement
Was the womb that bred it quickly
We saw numbers on our TV screens We first called, then sent messages
Finally took to sending one message
From one phone to one village
To tell all that we were okay, undead yet We walked due north, with no maps No food, no water on the pitiless
Summer days, no transport
No choice, no option but to leave
To a home which grew more distant
With our dying hope
Some kind people gave us water
The plastic bottles they gave us
Were more precious as we filled
Them with ditch water, sometimes the odd common tap which still gave water not just rust and gurgles
Hunger grew and grew and finally
Died in us, we passed vehicles
Of officials with tinted windows We stopped looking up with hope
At the sound of motors not meant for us We carried the most tired ones,
Put them down and encouraged them With words and finally left them to die We remembered their names
To tell their families to say a prayer
That elusive hope who had camped with us in our makeshift rooms
Had left suddenly, without a word
Now who do we pray to and why?
Step by step we trusted our feet that moved us from nothingness to that highway of the country
Whereon long vaunted Progress
Will finally ride in, arm in arm
With prosperity reaching even us
— Lakshmi Bayi