I wait among the cacophony of the railway station platform, the afternoon monsoon setting forth its inimitable drizzle. Forbidden by my surgeon to travel by air for a few weeks following ear surgery, I take to train travel after quite some time.
In front of me is a serpentine queue, spanning the entire stretch of the platform, orderly and patient. They too are waiting for the arrival of the train, the Coromandel Express. The youths are job seekers from West Bengal.
The crowds of job seekers are as thick in every train that heads south, to Chennai or Kerala
I approach a few to engage in banter with them. They all are from Murshidabad district of West Bengal. Everyone is holding a ticket outstretched for the vigilant patrolling policemen to check. For the lads, the tickets are passports to heaven. Loss of the prized chit of paper could dash their hopes and also expose them to harassment by one and all.
This youths are assigned for construction projects, and each one will get Rs.5000 as salary per month. Ten per cent that goes into the pockets of the agents. “We have to shell out monies back home too, which though we are ready there aren’t any jobs,” they rued.
Earlier it used to be lads from Howrah district who thronged the diamond units of Surat, as cutters and setters. That market has crashed. The Howrah boys too line up to head for the southern states.
All have minimal baggage as a backpack, which is all that is permitted. Very few sport basic mobile phones and most are in their flip flops, immortalised in West Bengal.
The train enters the platform and the long queue inches forward with no jostling, pushing or jumping the queue. They know the price of being disorderly at their villages and do not believe their political masters anymore. The discipline was akin to the army cadets.
They head towards a different land, forsaking their culture, food and language ear as economic immigrants.
Successive governments have merely disregarded the plight of providing a decent living closer to their homes.
The flip flop and the repeated lies of investments are glaring. What will the rulers do now, wake up to the reality or read the almanac and invoke the gods?
Jai Hind
Sampath Kumar
Intrèpide Voix
