Desert Living -18

Here is a narration of a spectacular scene. Three cars meet at a tri-sectional road. One car reaches first and on sighting an oncoming car from the opposite direction, stops before taking a turn. The oncoming car also stops at the junction. Then comes the third one from the third direction. That car too stops at the junction in order to facilitate the other cars to move on. There was no traffic signal at the junction, but still these men at the wheels showed tremendous patience to drive safely and above that, decently. That, all those drivers were Indians make the story so far an unbelievable one. It happened not in India but in a foreign country makes the rendition sensible anyway. In the countries, where strict rules are there, our countrymen are more than happy to follow them. In fact they are the first ones to stick to the rules

The above incident happened in Das Island, where only a few hundred vehicles run. One of the drivers signalled the other one to move ahead first and then the "log jam" has been cleared! This is just a normal scene on the roads where stringent laws are in place to deal with erring motorists. Not only rules exist there, but they are implemented with equal straightforwardness. Heavy penalties in terms of money and punching the licence act as deterrent to one and all who tempt to show there skills on roads. Law enforcement agencies do not simply pocket a few bucks to let off the wrong doers.

If you spot a non air conditioned Tata or Asok Leyland bus on the roads of the desert, just think that this bus is used for transporting labourers working in the construction field. In Qatar, Friday afternoon session is considered a holiday. At around four in the evening, the contractor arranges a bus to take people who are interested to go to the nearby town to buy some essential goods or to have some good food. It was a Tata bus, non air conditioned and above that, all the seats used to wear a thick layer of dust. These were the buses used for ferrying the workers at site. 
 

 Imagine wearing a coat with a thousand pins inserted in it. Stand in a hot sun, wield a pick axe and hit the hard soil continuously. The humidity is almost 100% and the temperature could be anything above 40 degree Celsius.  The entire cover-all, the uniform everyone wears in a construction site will be wet in the opening hours of the work itself. How irritating it is to wear fully drenched clothes and indulge in physical jobs! This is how the human beings work in a desert. 

Perhaps, more disgusting thing about the life in desert is that at the end of the month, the money they get in hand must be something like 15 to 20 thousand Indian rupees. For this, the miseries and hardships they endure is unimaginable. For several months together they do not get to see their near and dear ones at home. They are in a way condemned to lead a monotonous life in the labour camps in the deserts.

The facilities provided at their dwelling places is always minimal. Four men are squeezed into a small box type shelters, where two tier beds are provided. Bathrooms and toilets are provided outside their rooms, that are shared by everyone in the camp. Mediocre quality food is served in the 'C' mess. There will be long winding queue in the mess to get the food. In Qatar, I was mistakenly guided to the labour mess that was known as 'C' mess. I have been served rice and dhaal and then a side dish. Kuboos was stacked nearby. People could pick them as much as they needed. It was such a meagre food that I could not eat it properly. There were no tumblers to drink water. The workers were supposed to bring bottles and fill water to drink! I was surprised to see how shabbily the workforce is treated at a construction site camp. Even the 'A' mess for that matter was no better than the C. There, we got chapatis that resemled very close to rubber sheets!

The other day, a supervisor with a sub-contractor had articulated the plight of the workers. He said, there were labourers who take home a monthly salary of as low as ten thousand rupees and their tyrant boss combined with an indifferent Personnel and Administration department do everything to see that the men who do the real work at site get the remuneration as low as possible. There were not even a single penny given as increment for the past three years. They work for 12 hours everyday. This includes four hours of over time. On Friday the full working hours are considered as over time. Like that they earn something that need to be sent to the family back home. 12 hours on all the seven days of the week!

The subcontractor has only one non air conditioned bus to ferry nearly three hundred workers to and from the site. The entire process takes more than one hour to complete. By the time they reach the mess, half of their rest time would have passed. Then the queue in the mess and then back to work. By this time, the boss would be chilling out in his fully furnished single room. He takes food from the A mess where varieties of food is arranged to consume as much as he pleased. There are different kinds of fruits and sweets in addition to the rich food menu. If he still need something more, he can order ice cream or  a ginger tea.

Most of the workers come from India dreaming of big things. Many of them had since converted their dreams into reality and the process is continuing. The price they pay for this is a lot of unpleasant things in life. But still, good number of people, who earn so little, spend a major part of their earning for personal comforts like liquor and cigarette. Even if liquor is scarce in the desert countries, these people manage to get them as much as they need. This again eats into their earnings. At the end of the month, what could be the amount they send home?

 

The other day, a plumber's help was sought to fix two water taps and some minor repairs in the pipe line at my Pondicherry home. It was all over within three hours. The plumber took away thousand rupees for that. An electrician charged four hundred rupees to fix four fans on the ceiling. A labourer in Keralam is paid five hundred rupees for eight hours of work. Contrast these people with the sweat drenched helpless souls of the desert. The desi ones enjoy their life with their family everyday while the expat ones lead a miserable life in search of a better living standard. The irony is that, he burns away his life in the desert, braving every kind of adversity, to spread brightness in his family at home. What use the money serves to them when the "beakon of light" is like a visitor who can never share the load of running a family apart from sending money every month?