Homeward bound from Bombay to Baptail

Standing in front of the old building of Bagduar Primary School, he remembers his student days. As a little boy he never enjoyed studying. Like most of the other children in his village, it was the coveted midday meal that made him take the arduous 1.5 kilometre walk from his home in Baptail village to this school.

“I would pick up a fight with each and everyone in school and wouldn’t learn the lessons at all. I was thrashed by the teachers, day after day. I dropped out of school in Class 5. At that time, I was obsessed with thoughts of Bombay [Mumbai],” says Nabin Thakur, 24. At present (August, 2024) he has returned to the village in Tapan block from his dream city to attend a wedding in the family. For more than 11 years now Nabin has been working at construction sites in Mumbai as a daily wager.

“In those days, most children in the Kharipara neighbourhood, belonging largely to agricultural labourers and wage workers, would drop out during primary school and look for work,” he says. “But there was none. Whether they were boys of hardly eight or nine years old or elderly men in their fifties, all of them would move out for livelihood. What were our choices?” asks Nabin, more like a rhetorical counterquestion to – why migrate.

“Nabin has been very stubborn from childhood. We didn’t want him to go to a far-off place at that young age,” says his mother Shanti Thakur, 45. “But he was adamant about going to Mumbai. He had said that if we didn’t let him go, he would run away.” She is frying sugar palm (taal) fritters as we speak to her in the small kitchen of their bamboo and mud house.

In Bhadro, the season between mid-August to mid-September, palm trees in Kharipara are overladen with fruit. One doesn’t need to spend a paisa to buy taal here. You visit the fields in the morning and invariably get a taal or two rolling on the ground. The piping hot fritters coming out from the pan seem like an aside amidst the flurry of complaints Shanti has against ‘chhotka’, as she affectionately addresses Nabin, her younger one.

“Chhotka has got no brains even now. He will keep loitering in the village whenever he comes home. Won’t do a single thing that I ask him to,” she adds.

A meek-looking Nabin doesn’t intend to defend the charges laid by his mother as he speaks. “I do random chores like tending the two cows, switching on the water pump and watering the crop. But my days are mostly spent moving about here and there and chatting with guys.” This time his friends Munna (Manik Chaudhari) and Pakia (Prakash Chaudhari) are also back in the village in Dakshin Dinajpur district of West Bengal to attend the wedding.

Munna was 12 years old and Pakia was eight when they left the village for Mumbai. “With a poor family and a drunkard father at home, we were never sure if we would get two meals a day. What else were we to do?” asks Pakia. Nabin was 13 and had to throw quite a few tantrums at home before he left for Mumbai with an acquaintance from the village, already working at a construction site in the city. The group of young men are among the 3.64 per cent of people leaving Dakshin Dinajpur district in search of work (Census 2011).

Ironically, about eight decades ago, a similar quest for livelihood had brought Nabin's grandfather Mangal Thakur from Bihar to West Bengal. He had migrated from his native Banpura in Saran district to this village in the neighbouring state, some 500 kilometres away. The Thakurs belonged to the Nai caste, listed as Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) in Bihar, a sub-category under Other Backward Classes (OBC). In West Bengal the Nais (Napit) are recognised as OBC. Nabin’s family has not obtained a certificate yet. But grandfather Mangal Thakur, practiced his caste profession in Bengal, settled at Kharipara, building a house on a tiny plot of land. But a generation or two later things changed.

The village that relied largely on subsistence farming and some fishing activities on the river Punarbhaba had not much to offer to his grandchildren. “The yield [from farming] was minimum -- enough to feed [ourselves],” says Nabin. “And to buy other supplies as oil or salt, my people had to work on the fields or in homes of others for daily wages. Amader grame kothay ar taka chhilo? [There wasn't much of cash in our village, you see]?”

“Villagers would grow paddy only in small patches on their land, while the rest of the plot would lie fallow,” he says. The reason was that small farmers did not have enough money to meet the input cost involved in cultivating the entire plot. There was not enough money even with “eksho diner kaaj,” he says referring to MNREGA known locally as 100 days’ work.

“Job card thhakleo sarkari kaje poisakori anek derite mele, gorib manusher tate chole na. [Having a job card won’t ensure swift payment. It is official work. Money takes a long time to arrive. And we poor people cannot afford to keep waiting]. That is why most people moved out from the village at an early age in search of work,” says Nabin.

He knew he was off to Mumbai.

His very first long-distance journey on a train from Maldah Town in West Bengal to Kalyan railway station in Maharashtra, was nothing less than a nightmare. “As soon as we entered the station, they [Travelling Ticket Examiners] started asking for tickets and Aadhaar card. If you're a minor, they also demand money, 500 or 1,000 rupees, or any random amount on a whim. There is no explanation, no receipt. And if you refuse, they threaten, and might even detain you in the police station. We have to give in. One glance at our faces and they know that we are going for work,” says Nabin.

“And there's no respite from them once you've boarded the train either. It is the same story at every other station as the train moves through Bihar,” says Pakia. He even remembers hiding under the berth for over 24 hours just to avoid police harassment.

But none of this defused the excitement in Nabin’s heart: “I was feeling great! On top of the world!”

Contractors in the city, flouting the Child labour laws, were waiting to exploit minors like Nabin, Pakia and Munna at the large construction sites. “A lot of times the contractor would refuse to pay us,” says Pakia. “And then at times there would be police raids at the site. We would have to rush here and there to hide. I have seen people slip and break their bones while trying to run away.”

Days of relentless labour at various construction sites across the city in Badlapur, Kalyan, Dadar and other places finally got Nabin some cash in hand. “First time I got 9,000 rupees in hand, I bought a mobile phone and sent the rest of the money home,” Nabin says. Now, after a decade and more of fixing iron rods for six to eight hours a day and working overtime to make a little more, he manages to earn about 1,000 rupees a day.

His days start at 5:30 a.m. "By 8:30 in the morning we are ready, done with cooking, eating and are out for work. Most days we eat rice, sabji [vegetable curry] and daal [pulses],” he says. The same food is packed for lunch at the worksite. "After slogging like a donkey through the day, if we don’t get a decent meal at night, we lose it. It’s either roti and chicken, or machli [fish] and chawal [rice].” They take turns cooking and buying groceries. Nabin boasts about his skills in roti-making. He can make six to seven rotis for each of his cabin-mates in no time, he says.

At the end of a long and tiring day six to eight people squeeze into one small space of 10 x 10 feet and rest before starting another day of arduous labour at work site. “We make our own small, makeshift cabins at the construction site with munda [firm, straight logs], sariya [iron rods], tin, tarpaulin.” Nabin shows some of the photos on his phone.

“The seth or the builder would only give a few basic things and money. The rats, mosquitos and flies frequent our cabins. And there have been cases of cash or mobile phones thefts,” he adds. The builder provides electricity and water but the workers complain of frequent load shedding. “We have only one or two common latrines among a total of 50-60 workers living in tents, leading to utter chaos in the mornings as we get ready to go to work.

"At the site no laws ensure our security or health. We have no protective equipment,” says Nabin. He has witnessed the contractor and the owner doing everything in their power to save their skin and escape a police case a few years back, when a labourer had died on the spot after a heavy lid fell upon him while he was at work. “How can human beings be so harami [heartless]?” Nabin is overcome with sadness as he remembers the incident.

The first two months of lockdown during covid-19 pandemic were another blow for this young adult. “It was terrible. We got hardly any cash from the builder. The food was so scarce. The police were out to chase us with batons if we stepped out, even to get the essential things. After two whole months about 50 people from our village jointly booked a lorry spending 1.4 lakh rupees and returned home.”

Nabin and his friends were back at work in the city as soon as the lockdown was lifted, and they started getting calls from the contractors. The work in the alien city is important to him. He has seen his hard-earned money making a difference to lives of people at home. They have started building a pucca house, bought two cows, set up a diesel pump in the field that they often rent out for irrigation to others. The family has also added a few bighas to their land making it a total of six bighas now (roughly 3.72 acres), and they have another seven acres on lease to grow two rounds of paddy a year, and mustard once in a year.

Shanti no longer works on other people’s fields for Rs. 40 a day. She transplants, weeds, harvests and sorts paddy on the land the family owns. They are finally able to sell what they grow and add to their income. Nabin's father Nangnarayan Thakur, now 85 is unable to handle the scissors between his quivering fingers anymore and stays at home. “Ma and dada [elder brother] made all this happen by carefully saving every bit they can,” says Nabin.

Nabin's dada, elder brother Sudan, 27, works as a barber, offering haircutting and shaving services at temporary locations, inside the weekly village haats and fairs, like his father and grandfather. He has also set up a hair salon on the other side of the river that gives him a rather steady income. “I manage to earn 500 rupees a day. It goes up if there's a marriage or a funeral,” he tells us as he leaves for work on his bicycle.

A decade ago, Nabin had tried taking Sudan to Mumbai as well. But he was disillusioned quickly and was back in the village within three months. “Our family also wants Chhotka to learn the skill. ‘Stay in the village like Badka [the elder one]’ they say.” Sudan’s face glows with pride as he speaks. Nabin is not quite convinced. Not yet.

“At least a few things have changed now,” he says, seeing reason in the road that he and his friends have taken. “There is less suffering in the village. Many villagers are now better off with family members working outside the state,” Nabin says. “They can send money home. Had they not gone out, our people would have lived with scarcity and starvation as before. Earlier they couldn’t ensure even two meals.”

“Back then the villagers used to earn and spend their little income on drinking. Now there is an urge to save money, to have a bank account,” he says. Pakia adds his own voice in support, “Our fathers didn't care much about us. Their addiction destroyed them. We are enduring all these hardships, so that our children don’t suffer. So that they do not have to leave home for work.”

And that is what makes Nabin and his friends return to Mumbai after his kin’s wedding.

But now Nabin seems to miss his family more than before. “In sickness we just remain wasted in a corner. If something happens [there], no one will ever know,” Nabin says. He is haunted by the plight of Bhim Chaudhuri, a fellow migrant worker from his own village. “He went to Mumbai leaving his ma, baba and pregnant wife at home. He fell sick and died here. The family members did not even get to see him one last time. His co-workers from the village performed his last rites in the city.”

And then the accident that Nabin himself narrowly escapes at the construction site. “All of a sudden, a huge iron lid fell to the ground from the twelfth storey of a building under construction, barely two metres away from where I was working. None of us had any helmets or safety belts.” Nabin’s voice quivers with the fear and the shock of it all as he speaks to this reporter over the phone.

The very next minute it sounds firm and decisive. “I need no money or anything. I've informed my family members. If I have to scavenge shit back home, so be it. But I am never coming to Mumbai for this work…”

Nabin returned to Baptail in February 2025. He works with his family at their land during the farming season, and at other times drives a toto (battery operated rickshaw) around the village. His brother is also training him in their family profession. Nabin has already bought a salon chair.

“Yes, people can’t dupe us anymore in Mumbai, but, our lives -- outside our villages -- have no value,” he says.

Chhotka no longer wants to go Mumbai.

The story was originally reported in Bangla.