On Love

Rajan Kumar and Sanjana

From the book An Open Market for Informal Workers: The Precarious Labour Chowks of Delhi

Rajan Kumar Valmiki and his partner Sanjana⁵ have been on the run for the past few years. Their choice to work in the construction sector in Delhi NCR has a backstory of love. Rajan is from the district of Jhansi and Sanjana is from the district of Jalaun, both in UP. When we met them, they were about to share a few chapatis with each other for dinner.

‘We have been starving since yesterday. Today, we met a thekedar we used to work with and asked him for Rs. 50. We bought these chapatis with that money.’

Like most of the migrant workers, they also carry a small gas stove attached with a cylinder wherever they go. If they do not find work for a few days and must stay and wait at the labour chowk, they cook on this stove. It is compact and is easy to carry wherever they travel for work. The couple was planning to sell it for some food before they met the thekedar.

Rajan owns 50 bighas of land back in his village. Because there is an acute shortage of water in the village and agriculture is no longer profitable, he had to lease out the land to someone else for an annual rent of Rs. 2,000 per bigha. When we asked him about the people who have migrated out of his village looking for work, he told us that most of the ‘Harijans’ in his village migrate to the city for work. The Yadav community owns most of the land and cattle in the village, so they stay back. They are also the money lenders in his village. In addition to the income he receives from leasing out the land, Rajan also used to sell gutka (chewing tobacco) and cigarettes on a motorbike.

He was married to another woman before meeting Sanjana. His ex-wife had filed a complaint against him at the police station, and he was in police custody for a few days. After he was released, he moved to Jhansi and found work in a pay-and-use toilet. It was owned by a Thakur who would give him a share of the daily collection as his wage. It was during this time that he met Sanjana, who was on her way back from a pilgrimage. After using the toilet, she used Rajan’s phone to call her husband. They had a small chat and she left for her village. They kept in touch with each other for months. ‘She used to go to the terrace and talk whenever I rang her.’ Sanjana could not stop giggling when he said this. When Rajan could not get through to her on the phone for several days, he decided to go to her village to see her. He knew that she was a Yadav and her husband a Verma. He befriended a tractor driver who showed him the settlement of the Vermas. He walked around their land until Sanjana saw him. They both decided to meet at a templethe next day. When they met at the temple, they decided to elope.

‘I lied to my husband that I had a headache and took Rs. 13 with me when I left. I did not take anything else from that house,’

said Sanjana. She had a 15-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter when she decided to elope with Rajan. It was a lot of emotional turmoil for her, since she had to leave her family behind. She recalled, ‘I did not know he was a Valmiki. I abused him a lot when I found out. I wouldn’t have talked to him had I known that he belonged to a lower caste’.

When they took a bus to Jhansi from her village, Rajan did not know where to take her. They stayed inside the public toilet for two days. When someone from Sanjana’s village found out that they were staying in Jhansi, her son and husband came to take her back. She hid under the toilet slab for a while, but they found her eventually. When her son reassured her that her husband would not beat her up, and begged her to return, she had no choice but to go back.

For several months, Sanjana stayed with her husband. But Rajan was persistent. He started making regular visits to her village. He used to wait for her outside her house to get her attention. She would pretend to go to the terrace to dry clothes just to see him from a distance. They were caught doing this by her son and husband, and Rajan was chased away from the village. Sanjana knew where Rajan’s sister stayed, so one day, she lied to her family about going to the market to buy vegetables and reached his sister’s house. They have been together ever since.

Both of them came to Delhi in search of work. Initially, a thekedar took them to a farm in Dehradun. The farm was the size of approximately 20 bighas and was owned by a colonel. Though they were hired as agricultural workers to grow cauliflowers, apart from farming, Sanjana also had to do the housework and Rajan had to run errands in the house. They worked there for three months, after which they left because the owner refused to pay them. They went back to Rajan’s sister’s house and set out for Delhi again with Rs. 5,000 that they had borrowed from Rajan’s sister. Since then, they have been working at various construction sites in Delhi.

They had recently been spotted by one of Sanjana’s relatives at their last workplace. A terrified Sanjana grabbed her valuables, and they both ran for their lives.

‘One of them saw me there, came up to me and said Namaste. The next day, they came on two motorbikes. I was sure that they were going to take me back home. So I ran with my belongings. I was wearing a green saree, and thankfully it matched with the colour of the bushes where I was hiding. They looked around and went back. We were scared to go back to that place and collect our wages.’

Once again, Sanjana and Rajan ended up at the labour chowk with no money to buy food, and with no work.

⁵ Interview taken in October 2019