The outsider

 

Ashiq Dar is from Kashmir. An operator of heavy machines (Poclaine earthmovers), he works very hard, presently working for a contractor who is into legal sand mining from slightly high sandy plateaus of agricultural land in the plains of Haryana.

Ashiq earns 22000 rupees per month. We have a parcel of land on the elevated agricultural plateau called thali in local parlance. The surrounding farmers have removed many feet of sand to level the fields to make it more productive and arable with irrigation from the field channels. Our land thus stood as a tiny tableland, its margins caving in, the slopes falling.

It came to a point when it was no longer arable. So finally we are forced to remove a few feet of sand to level it up like the surrounding fields. And Dar’s heavy machine is shrieking with force, removing sand.

They work late into nights. ‘Isn’t it too much? The working hours?’ I ask. ‘Just doing my duty. The owner paid us full salary even during the two months of lay-off during the monsoon season,’ he says as a man of conscience. A hardworking man has certain compunctions by default.

Earlier he worked in a company where he operated the machines for 18 hours daily for three years.

This contractor provides food and shelter. He leads a sparse life, almost in isolation and exile. You can imagine the sparseness of his life by the fact that his monthly expenditure is just 2000 rupees including the phone bill.

He was married three years back. I ask him about his marital status. ‘Well, what to say? I’m married and unmarried both,’ he says resignedly. His wife quarreled and forced him to separate from his parents right after marriage. But things took still worse shape even after setting up a separate home and hearth. She left him to stay with her parents. There have been brawls, shoutings, beatings, police reports. Laws have changed in favor of the Muslim women. If he goes for a divorce, he will have to pay maintenance money to her. So the issue is painfully lingering on.

‘She is able to give me 24-hour headache. That’s her full time job. During the time when I’m not operating the machine, more and more updates keep pouring in. They lodged police complaint and got my father arrested. Then it’s about my public image as well. She is still my wife officially and imagine someone telling me that your wife was standing there in the market, talking to this man or woman, doing that,’ he looks in pain.

I understand his frustration, the grating cry of his loneliness. He takes cover behind non-stop work and douses himself with more work to forget the tension at home. I know I have heard only his side of the story. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, either this or that way of centre. But despite that I have a feeling that he is a wronged man. It shows from the way he works non-stop.

I give him sweets as Diwali gift. ‘Happy Diwali!’ he says. ‘Happy Eid in advance to you whenever it comes,’ I say. He is genuinely touched. I can see moisture in his eyes. Honesty has unaffected manners.

A hardworking Kashmiri man working day and night here in the plains in north India, saving every single penny, leading the life of an ascetic almost. Facing scores of domestic problems born of a marriage gone sour.

And then it’s only such people, working hard and innocent of any wrongdoing, who suffer on account of some communal flare-up.

There are scores of such little stories lost in the dust, confusion and oblivion of daily grind of life. The real traitors and betrayers go scot free despite their incendiary motives and vulgar desires.