There is a river in our village. Officially it has a name “River Hooghly” but we generally call it Ganga. The sanctioned name doesn’t matter since we have accepted it as our Ganga. The banks of this river are wide enough and a number of brickfields are seen there one after another. Most of the villagers are very poor with a very meagre expanse of land. They cannot afford to earn their livelihood based on those slight range of lands. Therefore, they are compelled to engage themselves in those brickfields.
Our family is also not an exception. Just like other villagers we are also impoverished since my father worked as a daily wager. But he didn’t like to work in these brickfields since the owners tried to earn our livelihood from some other works. But I started working there and just like me many more young people from our village got themselves engaged there. But not only the native villagers like us, plenty of migratory labourers also used to come there from some other states. The young women, mainly from Jharkhand, used to come to work there with their husbands and toddlers. Actually, they were hired by the brokers and were compelled to work with a very minimum salary. The male workers had to prepare the bricks and the female employees were given the charge to carry these bricks to the furnace and take them back after the bricks were ready to sell. It was also their duty to load these bricks in trucks or boats. It was a very painstaking task and they had to toil hard from sunrise to sunset.
The name of our brickfield was Mahamaya Brickfield and it was also located on the bank of our river. On its banks lots of temporary tile-roofed shelters with brick walls were positioned in an array for the migrant workers. Kamli didi was one of them and she was given the shack at the end of the queue. All the people, irrespective of their ages used to call her Kamli and even the younger ones aged around twelve to thirteen didn’t address her as ‘didi’. They also preferred to call her as Kamli. She was around thirty but she appeared much older than her actual age. She looked like a lady of forty. She appeared lean due to the heavy drudgery and so her husband Shantilal.
They had a son of around five. Since there was no one to look after him other than his parents so Kamli didi used to keep him boxed up inside the hut and locked the gate from outside before coming to her work. The gates of the huts were made of bamboo sticks hence it was quite possible for the boy to observe the outside world through the slits of those bamboo sticks. He was bewildered of his confinement and loneliness. But it appeared that he got habituated to this imprisonment and never ever cried to make him free. We had never seen him crying. Probably he forgot to cry anymore. It seemed he got to know his fate. Being a son of brickfield workers, he was well aware of his destiny at that tender age. Probably he understood that he will have to grow up inside that incarceration of a small hut. He hoped to get his release after a year or two to play on the dusty roads with the other fellow slum toddlers.
Kamli didi and her husband used to get up early to attend their work. But before that they used to prepare a couple of breads for themselves and fed their child with sattoo and water.  Their poverty-stricken life didn’t allow them to enjoy a better meal than that. Even the dresses they had were worn out. No one knows when they started using those clothes. We were indigent but their condition was more pathetic than even ours. They used to toil hard from day to night but their condition was not improved. They had to lead a poverty-stricken life. Later I got to know the real reason behind their misery. There was actually a sad story. Two years back when they came there their son Krishna suddenly fell ill. He was three years old then. And he was suffering from a strange disease, he had high fever with strong headache. The helpless mother Kamli didi tried to cure her son using local herbs. Even she called gunin to heal the child’s pain but everything went in futile. Nothing happened actually. Finally, the manager of the field advised Kamli didi to visit a qualified doctor.
Kamli didi was astounded to hear this advice since she didn’t know any such doctors in their locality and she heard that those doctors had chambers in the city. So, to think of visiting such doctors was beyond their imagination. First of all, she didn’t know anything in the city and she had no money to visit such doctors. Besides she had never heard of her forefathers visiting a doctor in town. They used to rely on local herbs to cure their diseases and they had great faith on that treatment. And they were accustomed to that kind of treatment but Kamli didi also knew that many members from her family and community had to die early due to the lack of proper scientific treatment.
Even few years back before their joining this brickfield Kamli didi had to lose her daughter Ramiya due to some unknown disease while they were staying at their native place Ramgar in Jharkhand. They called gunin who tried to cure the girl using his magical fit but the girl left them. That gloomy memory is still afresh in her mind. Kamli didi believed that the girl might be alive if she was treated by a good qualified doctor in Ranchi. But at that moment they were helpless due to their miserable condition. They were from a landless destitute Dalit family. Hiralal had no work then and it was troublesome to manage their livelihood even. Every day he went out in search of some work and each day he had to return with empty hands and empty stomach being extremely exhausted. He couldn’t manage a job.
After Ramiya’s death, out of dire poverty Hiralal left their homeland with Kamli and settled here in this far-off land to work in this brickfield. Actually, they were brought here by Babulal, a broker, who used to supply migrant workers to these brickfields. He was a Rajput from Ranchi. He had enough lands and besides he took up this business of supplying workers to these fields. This appeared to him as highly profitable business with no investments. He used to deliver low waged workers to these fields and in return he received an amount from the proprietors of these fields. Apart from that he used to collect a part of the workers’ income regularly as his commission. Usually, the workers get eight months' work in their fields and during the monsoon these remained shut down. The workers return to their native land during this period and come back again after the monsoon.
This is how Kamli didi came here for two consecutive years with her husband, Hiralal. But suddenly there was a gap, both of them didn’t turn up. Then they came back again with a little toddler in their lap. When the manager of the field Ram Mandal wanted to know the reason of their absence for a year, Kamli, showing him the baby, answered, “How could I babu? My baby was in my womb then.”
--- “But would you be able to continue with your work now?  The baby is an infant one…”
---“No way. We have no other options but to work to keep us alive.”
Then she joined her work again and we noticed Kamli didi to attend her duty regularly leaving her baby lying inside the room. Occasionally she used to come back to her room to look after the baby and to feed him. And after the day’s work returning to her room, she used to finish her household works. Even on Saturdays she used to carry her son to the local market. In this way the boy had grown up and turned three years old. He had fallen sick never before. Definitely he suffered from regular diseases like cold and cough or fever but that time this strange disease seemed serious and not curable.
Manager Ram Mandal told Kamli didi to take the baby immediately to a qualified doctor and that made her totally bewildered. In her utter bewilderment she became speechless and felt extremely helpless because she had no clue to visit such doctors. She said, “We don’t know the locality well and besides we can’t afford to visit a doctor.” Manager assured her to manage something from the landlord. But Kamli was not convinced, she felt curious and suspicious about him. Because she had seen no such kind hearted person who really felt for them or tried to do something good; rather everyone tried to exploit their situation. Even she had to lose her chastity to them. But finally convinced by the manager’s words and for the sake of her son’s life she came to the owner of the field Satish babu taking her husband Hiralal with her and said, “Babu if you could provide us with some money, we can visit a doctor for the treatment of our son. We work in your field so you can easily deduct the money from our salary every month”.
Then Satish babu passed them two hundred rupees and they fell victim to this trap. The amount proved unrepayable and brought their utmost misery. They couldn’t repay the amount even after two years of regular daylong drudgery. The boy received his treatment and got cured with that money and that was their only satisfaction.
That was winter again. The chillness of December was well felt in the winding air from the north. A gaggle of geese were seen floating with the flow of the river. The sky looked extremely beautiful with the soft cottonlike clouds scattered here and there. All the men and women were busy in loading the boats with the bricks from the field. Suddenly Kamli didi was seen seating in exhaustion. She appeared completely drained and wearied. I put an enquiry, “What happened to you didi?”
--- “Nothing to be worried, brother! Actually, I am in dire need of rest now.”
For next two days Kamli didi remained absent. Then one day I found manager Ram Mandal screaming loudly standing in front of Kamli didi’s temporary shack, “I told you a number of times to go for an operation but you didn’t pay heed to my words. Now again a problem! Who will resolve the issue now? The owner will surely be irritated and I’m certain that he won’t allow you to stay here anymore. The brickfields here don’t allow any female workers only for this reason. It is a great loss for the owners if their workers get pregnant. And for this reason, they have decided to recruit only male workers who have no chance to get pregnant. Therefore, there will be no problem and also no loss for work.”
Kamli cried out, “Don’t tell me to kill my baby in womb, I can’t. And please don’t expel me from the job, I will surely manage to work here. I beg you Manager babu, please….”
But definitely she was given no chance, she was shown no pity. Kamli didi’s heartrending lamentation didn’t move the authority much. The owner Satish Samanta didn’t show any sympathy to her and she was expelled right away from her job. That day Kamli didi went away with her husband and her son Krishna forever and never came back. Don’t know why the memory of Kamli didi is still afresh on my mind. Looking at the stretch of the elongated path while working, I feel the land barren surrounding us through this dry dun life of brickfields.