Shivam Tyagi
From the book An Open Market for Informal Workers: The Precarious Labour Chowks of Delhi
It was under a flyover near the Shahdara labour chowk that we first met Shivam⁶. He was not alone. A couple of rickshaw pullers were taking a nap under the flyover, a middle-aged woman was boiling milk, and some were eating chapatis in a corner. Shivam had a bag full of medical documents which he kept under his head for support. He was being taken to the recovery shelter run by Hausla for medical assistance. When he was leaving, he held the medical certificate in one hand and a blanket in another. His friends were gathering around him to say goodbye. A well-dressed man who was walking through the road suddenly started shouting at one of the rickshaw pullers for tossing the newspaper in which his chapati was wrapped. ‘These guys dirty this place so much,’ he said, looking at us. Everybody quietly dispersed; Shivam sat in the auto. The next time we met him, he was watching a cricket match with others at the shelter. He was reluctant to leave the match and talk to us. Playing cricket was one of the things he missed while he was working in Delhi.
A young man of 24 years at the time of the interview, Shivam belongs to Hapur village in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh. His mother died young and his father remarried when Shivam was a child. His father had two more children from his second marriage and then passed away. Thereafter, Shivam was raised by his stepmother, who had her own two very young children to care for. She worked as an agricultural labourer and took care of Shivam till he was 13 years old. Shivam describes his childhood as difficult. He received little attention from his stepmother while growing up. Though there was a school in their village, she did not have the means to send him to school.
He still remembers the day he reached Delhi. He took a train and reached Shahdara station. He wandered around for a bit and fell asleep on the platform. When he woke up the next morning, he saw a couple of workers walking towards the labour chowk and decided to follow them to the chowk. A rajmistri (chief mason) took him to a construction site as a helper.
He was paid Rs. 150 that day. Hungry and tired, he went to a dhaba and ate a lot of food with some of the money he had made. He kept the rest of it in his pocket and went back to the railway platform to sleep. The next morning, he woke up to realize his money had been stolen. He went back to the labour chowk again. Someone who later became his friend took him along to work as a headload worker and paid him Rs. 400 for four hours of work. That is when he realized that working as a headload worker is better paid than construction work. To befriend him, he began to get this person gutka, and their friendship eventually grew.
According to Shivam, usually workers at the labour chowk keep a distance from one another. But when his friend asked him to move in with him, that was a big gesture of friendship for Shivam. From the platform, he moved into a rented room with others. The Rs. 3,000 rent was shared equally between them. Finding work also became easier for all of them as they would call and inform one another when they found contractors at the chowk. They started getting work regularly.
However, they had to move out of the room within a few days because of an untoward incident. Most of Shivam’s friends used to get drunk after work. Sometimes, when the contractor was happy with the workers, he would throw a party for them. One of his roommates was an alcoholic who, in the throes of his intoxication, picked a fight with the owner of the house. They were asked to vacate that place, after which they moved to a new place, leaving the alcoholic roommate to fend for himself. They bought utensils and a gas cylinder to cook. Since Shivam used to cook for all of them, he did not have to pay for the groceries. After six months, they moved to a cheaper place in Loni, a place on the border of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. The rent was Rs. 1,500, split equally by three of them.
All the roommates started to commute to the labour chowk every day from their room. By then, Shivam had become skilled at handling heavy goods. He then came to know about ‘chain kuppi’ (chain pulley). It involves carrying heavy goods using a crane and moving the crane and other machinery manually. It would take 2-3 hours each day, and the pay was higher than construction work. When Shivam started to move away from construction work to chain kuppi, there was a period of stability in his life. He managed to save around Rs. 1,45,000. He moved into a rented room by himself and made friends at work. He became close to a person named Raju with whom he started to drink occasionally. Eventually, he started visiting Raju’s room regularly, where he would drink with Raju and his girlfriend. One day, when all three of them were drunk, Shivam expressed his interest to get married to the girlfriend’s sister. The only thing he knew about her was that she was from Bengal. They asked him to come back to their house when sober, so he went the next day after work. Raju’s girlfriend asked him about his family and income. They tried to reject his proposal by saying that the room he lived in was not good enough to start a family. Shivam promised that he would move to a better room, or even move back to his house in the village if necessary. He was in love. When he got work in Goa, they would go to Goa together. But things started getting a little sinister when Raju demanded money from Shivam. Initially, he asked to borrow Rs. 5,000, but later asked Shivam to arrange money for the wedding. According to Shivam, once Raju had taken all his savings, he started delaying the wedding.
A year passed by. It was around the time of Chhat Puja that the talks around the wedding resurfaced. Raju asked Shivam to accompany him to Bengal so that the marriage ceremony could be conducted in the girl’s village. However, on the day they were supposed to leave for Bengal, Shivam was told of a change of plans and asked to stay back in Delhi. Shivam waited for months, but no one returned.
Having lost all his savings by then, Shivam had to work very hard in the coming days. He found different kinds of work which could fetch him more money within fewer working hours. He was engaged to carry Malaysian wood from trucks, where he was paid around Rs. 5,000–6,000 for shifting an entire truckful of wood. This money was divided among 5-6 workers the contractor had picked up from the labour chowk. Additionally, he also worked with what he described as ‘Avo light ka kaam’. This work involved fixing fancy lights for stage shows based in Rithala. He enjoyed it because he got to see celebrities at these shows. For an entire event, which sometimes lasted for three nights, he was paid Rs. 1,800. During this period, Shivam worked as a headload worker during the day, and worked the stage shows at night.
The work schedule was hectic, but Shivam wanted to save money and go back to his village. One day after three consecutive nights without sleep, he finally went back to his room to sleep and suddenly, the power went off. It was summer and the room was very hot. Frustrated and tired, he went up to the terrace to get some sleep. That night changed his life. The terrace of his building did not have walls; he fell down from the third floor when he was asleep. His friends immediately took him to GTB Hospital. He was screaming in pain, but the doctors refused to treat him, asking his friends to take him to the government hospital in Safdarjung instead.
At Safdarjung Hospital, they informed him that the treatment would cost around Rs. 30,000. For Shivam, that was a huge amount to manage within such a short period of time. He had managed to save just Rs. 10,000 from all the sleepless nights he spent working.
The only choice for him then was to return to his room. Climbing up the stairs to reach his room was in itself a hellish task for Shivam. The toilets on the ground floor were inaccessible. He could not get up to fetch himself food. He was dependent on his friends even to be able to turn around in sleep. His friends were also dependent on the labour chowks for work, and so Shivam could not bother them for very long. The only place to which he could think of moving was the flyover near Shahdara station. His priority was an accessible toilet, so chose a spot which was close to it. He was also familiar with the people around the station since the labour chowk was close by. The flower seller would safekeep his savings for him. He was also friends with the caretaker of the toilet. A woman who shared the space under the flyover with him cooked for him, and the security guard of the ATM also brought him food when he was hungry. He did not care about the flies or the dirt; being able to access a toilet was more important to him than anything else.
When we met Shivam for the first time, it had been 40 days since the accident. Someone had stolen the bag that had his clothes. He was broke and completely dependent on the familiar people around for food. After going to the shelter, he had surgery and could walk without the help of others. He wishes to go back to work but is unsure if he would be able to carry heavy goods as he used to.
⁶ Interview taken in July 2017
Jenny Sulfath 