Chapter 5 - Labour

 

5

 

            There are some afternoons that do not move.

 

            The road keeps stretching, vehicles keep passing, people keep speaking into phones, shops remain open, dust continues flying in the hot wind - yet time itself seems to sit down somewhere and refuse to walk further.

 

            That afternoon was one of them.

 

            The bus had left the town behind and entered a long half-constructed highway where civilization looked unfinished, as if the earth itself was still under repair. Broken milestones leaned sideways. Iron rods rose from incomplete buildings like exposed bones. Piles of sand slept beside the road. Cement dust floated in the air like tired fog.

 

            Inside the bus, people were drowning in their own small worlds.

 

            A young man near the front seat was watching short videos and laughing loudly without expression. Two women were discussing the rising prices of cooking oil. Someone behind me snored with complete honesty. The conductor sat silently near the door, counting folded notes again and again as if numbers gave stability to life.

 

            And outside the window, the Sun burned without mercy.

 

            The fields looked thirsty. The road shimmered in heat. Even the trees appeared exhausted.

 

            Then I saw him.

 

            Under a lonely neem tree beside a construction site, a labourer was sleeping on the bare ground. 

Around him were stacks of red bricks, grey cement sacks, rusted pans used for carrying concrete, and a half-built wall that would one day become part of somebody’s dream home.

 

            But the man building that dream was sleeping without even a proper bed.  One arm rested over his eyes to block the sunlight filtering through the leaves. His shirt was stained with cement powder. His slippers lay a little distance away. His feet were cracked like dry land waiting for rain.

 

            He had folded his body inward, as if trying to occupy less space in the world.

 

            The bus moved slowly because of road repairs, and for a few moments that sleeping labourer remained beside my window like a still photograph.  I kept looking at him.  There was something painfully pure about the scene.  No complaint.  No audience.  No speech about struggle.  Just a tired man borrowing shade from a tree before returning to lift the weight of other people’s futures.

 

            The strange thing about cities is this: The tallest buildings often stand upon invisible backs.  We praise architects. We celebrate owners. We admire design, paint, lighting, marble flooring, imported furniture.  But nobody asks who carried the cement bags in June heat.  Nobody remembers the hands that mixed concrete while coughing dust into their lungs.  Nobody frames the photograph of the man who slept hungry beside the same wall he built.  Perhaps modern civilization is built upon selective blindness.

 

            We see comfort.  We ignore the cost. 

 

            The bus crossed the construction site slowly, but my thoughts remained behind beneath that neem tree.

 

            I began wondering where he came from.  Maybe from a small village where farming no longer fed families.  Maybe from a flood-damaged town.  Maybe from a house where old parents waited every month for money that always arrived late and incomplete.  Maybe he had children who believed their father worked in a “big city,” not knowing he slept beside bricks under open skies.

 

            Cities are strange creatures.  They attract the poor with promises and then slowly consume their names.  A migrant worker arrives carrying identity, language, memories, songs, relationships.  Years later he becomes only “labour.”  No surname.  No history.  No place in memory.  Only labour.

 

            And yet entire cities stand because of him.

 

            A fly buzzed near the bus window and suddenly I remembered another afternoon many years ago - from my days in the Army.

 

            Some memories do not arrive loudly.  They walk softly into your mind and sit down beside you.  That memory came like that.

 

            It was during the rainy season.

 

            I was posted far from home then. The barracks were under expansion, and construction work continued day and night. Labourers from distant villages had been hired for the work. They lived temporarily near the site in makeshift shelters made of plastic sheets and torn cloth.

 

            That evening rain had fallen heavily.

 

            Cold wind swept through the camp long after midnight. The rainwater had left the earth damp and icy. I had returned late from office duty, exhausted and sleepy, carrying files under my arm.

 

            Most of the camp was silent. 

 

            Only the distant sound of dripping water remained awake.

 

            As I walked past the construction area, I noticed two labourers sleeping in the open.  Not even properly sleeping.  Enduring the night.   They had curled themselves tightly, knees pressed against their chests, trying to preserve warmth inside their own bodies. Their thin clothes were damp. One of them shivered in sleep.

 

            For a moment I simply stood there.  Even today I do not know why that moment pierced me so deeply.  Perhaps because suffering looks different when nobody is watching it.

 

            Daytime poverty still carries some movement, some dignity, some distraction.  But night-time poverty is naked.  It has no defence.  Cold exposes truth very honestly.

 

            I returned quietly to my room, picked up my two blankets, and walked back.  The rainwater still dripped from nearby tin sheets. The wind felt sharper now.  I gently covered both men with the blankets.

 

            One of them woke up suddenly in confusion. The other sat up halfway, startled.  For a few seconds they could not understand what was happening.  Then they realized.  Both folded their hands immediately.  No words.  Just folded hands.

 

            Their eyes carried that awkward gratitude poor people often carry - gratitude mixed with hesitation, as if kindness itself feels expensive to receive.

 

            I remember feeling uncomfortable at their thankfulness.  Because the blankets were ordinary.  But their suffering was not.

 

            That night I returned to my room, yet sleep came late.  Somewhere inside me, a question kept moving: Why does survival itself become such hard labour for some people?

 

            A rich man loses comfort.  A poor man loses sleep.  And perhaps there is a difference between the two that society never discusses honestly.

 

            The bus suddenly hit a pothole and my thoughts returned to the present.

 

            Outside, the labourer beneath the tree had disappeared behind the dust.  But his image remained inside me.

 

            I looked around the bus again.  Air-conditioned offices.  Online debates.  Political arguments. 

Religious slogans.  Luxury apartments.  Investment plans.  People discussing success as if it were entirely self-created.  Yet somewhere in every success story exists an unnamed worker who carried invisible weight.  Human civilization often behaves like a king who forgets the soldiers that protected the kingdom.  We admire polished floors but never the knees that bent to install them.

 

            Maybe this is why labourers sleep so deeply whenever they find shade.  Physical exhaustion has an honesty that mental exhaustion lacks.  A rich man lies on a soft mattress yet keeps changing sides all night.  A labourer sleeps beneath a tree and enters unconsciousness within minutes.  One carries burden in the body.  The other carries burden in the mind.  And strangely, the second burden often becomes heavier.

 

            The bus stopped near a roadside tea stall.

 

            A few passengers stepped down lazily. Hot wind entered through the open door. Somewhere nearby, a radio played an old song about journeys and separation.

 

            I remained seated.

 

            Near the stall, another construction worker washed his face using water from a plastic drum. The water turned muddy as it fell onto the ground. He wiped his face with a faded cloth and immediately began lifting bricks again.  No pause.  No drama.

 

            Life, for many people, is simply continuous carrying.  Perhaps that is why poor people understand silence better.  When life becomes too difficult, words slowly lose importance.

 

I have noticed something during my travels: The people closest to the earth often speak the least.  Farmers, Labourers, Drivers, Old villagers, Widows, etc. They do not explain life philosophically.  They survive it practically.  Maybe wisdom does not always arrive through education.  Sometimes it arrives through endurance.

 

            The bus started moving again.

 

            Clouds had begun gathering slowly in the distance. Their shadows moved over fields like tired thoughts.

 

            I rested my head against the window.

 

            And suddenly another realization came quietly:  A migrant worker may spend his entire life constructing permanent homes for others while never owning permanence himself.  He builds schools his children may never enter.  Hospitals he cannot afford.  Apartments where security guards stop him at the gate.  Roads on which expensive cars later insult poverty through tinted windows.

 

            Still he works.  Not because hope is strong.  But because hunger is stronger.  There is a tragic dignity in that.  Society often celebrates ambition, but survival deserves equal respect.  Not everybody dreams of greatness.  Some people merely dream of uninterrupted meals.  Some dream of medicine for parents.  Some dream of school uniforms.  Some dream of one room without leaking rainwater.  And some simply dream of sleeping one full night without fear.

 

            The world measures achievement unfairly.  A businessman earns applause for building towers.  A labourer receives daily wages for lifting the tower upon his spine.  Yet if one disappears, the city notices.  If the other disappears, construction stops.

 

            The bus entered another town.

 

            Shops returned. Noise returned. Human urgency returned.

 

            But inside me that silent labourer still slept beneath the tree.

 

            Perhaps he would wake after twenty minutes, wash his face, lift another cement sack, and continue building walls for strangers.  Perhaps years later the same building would be painted beautifully and advertised as “luxury living.”

 

            Nobody would know that one summer afternoon, before the roof existed, a tired man had slept there beside bricks under a neem tree.  Nobody would remember.  But maybe life remembers what society forgets.  Maybe the earth keeps account differently.  Maybe every bead of sweat fallen honestly onto soil becomes part of some invisible scripture.

 

            As the bus moved ahead, I looked once more through the dusty glass at the fading road behind us.

 

            And somewhere deep inside me, a quiet sentence formed without asking permission: Some people spend their entire lives carrying cities on their shoulders…yet leave this world without even leaving footprints inside those same cities.