The Road Chronicles: An Ode to the Labourer

Posted on October 7, 2015 by anusabhlok

A PHOTO EXHIBITION

Galerie Romain Rolland, Alliance Francaise de Delhi

Exhibition on view: 11th-15th October, 2015, 11am – 8pm

This project tells a human story of the Hindustan-Tibet Road and the Manali-Leh Highway. It is envisaged as an alternative travelogue – that tells the stories of the 90,000 or so seasonal labourers who travel every year to build roads in the upper reaches of the Himalayas for India’s Border Roads Organization (BRO). Their life stories; seasonal journeys; meanings given to their temporary homes in the border areas; the dangers and perils they face; the attempts to create a sense of the community in an alien landscape; lifestyles and cultural idioms carried over (and back) from their villages; the lives of the children who travel each year with their parents, the recipes of the meals cooked……all of this and more forms the content of the travelogue.

View more event details here: http://delhi.afindia.org/events/exhibition-the-road-chronicles/

Tales of those left behind…

Posted on December 22, 2014 by anusabhlok

Her husband packed his bags and left for the GREF job in Himachal without even telling her. When asked whether she was furious at him or not, she sternly replied-

Theen bacche chodke jayenge toh datenge nahi kya? (Will I not scold if he leaves behind his 3 little kids with me?)

When one of her children fell sick in her husband’s absence, she asked her father to help and pay for the medical bills. She also added that she would leave him forever if he “runs away again”.

Ask her husband if he ever remembered his family while he was way, he reluctantly replies-

Ek baar ghar chod dhe, toh picche mudke nahi dekhte hum… (Once I leave home, I don’t turn around and see…)

This girl we met at Duggalpahadi was a ‘bright child’ of her doting father. She cheerfully recited the English alphabets for us and innocently recalled the ‘Pradhanmantri’ as “Hemant Soren”. And when she had finished, her father proudly proclaimed- “Yeh meri beti hai (she is my daughter)”.

She goes to private missionary school nearby that charges her 100 rupees a month. When asked what she wants to become when she grows up, she hesitantly replied- “Pata nahi (I don’t know)”. However, her father has high hopes for her and wants her to do well in school.

Unlike many others in his village, this man has never migrated outside his “Desh” in search of work. When we met him by the narrow mud road next to his house in Shikaripara of Dumka district, he was busy stocking his ‘dhan’ (rice harvest) for the year.

When we questioned him if he ever felt the need to migrate, he replied back in his loud and clear voice saying-

Mehanath kahi bhi karo toh paisa ban jata hai, toh phir bedesh kyon jana (if you work hard you can make money anywhere, then what is the need to go outside?)