The relentless, three-month-long dry summer had sucked out the last molecule of moisture from the air leaving the land and its people parched. The fumes-laden air shimmered above the city’s melted asphalt distorting vehicles and buildings and the noisy, chaotic streets would turn silent, utterly devoid of pedestrians by noon. Then one scorching afternoon in mid-July, a cool, moist wind started blowing in from the east bearing a phalanx of monsoon clouds towards the dusty capital. As the dark-hued clouds, the colour of Vishnu, gathered over the city, the afternoon sun was obliterated and people looked up in greedy anticipation.

The long-awaited rains were preceded by crackling lightning and what sounded like a heavy artillery bombardment. The clouds pregnant with rain then opened up. First, strafing the ground with angry diagonal pellets and gradually settling down into a steady barrage. It looked like it would rain the entire day and the next. Ram Aasrey was absorbed in his work applying plaster on the inner walls of a building under construction. He looked out through the yet to be fixed window to see the rain-drops dance on the black, wet road and wistfully remembered the arrival of the first rains in his village. How the children would all rush out screaming with unbounded joy and the elders would look up in thanksgiving to Varun Dev for their prayers to have been answered. A sweet, warm earth smell would waft up from the wet earth.

When a tired and happily-drenched Ram Aasrey returned home from work in the evening, he found the cluster children still playing and roaming around in the rain. Seeing him, his five-year-old daughter Pooja excitedly ran up to show a heart-shaped Peepul leaf she had caught as it fluttered down in the strong wind. The Peepul tree gleamed a bright green each leaf washed of its coat of city dust. Ram Aasrey picked up his daughter and put her on his shoulder holding her little palms in his own. Pooja looked skywards and opened her mouth trying to catch the raindrops on her tongue. A few other children, including her best friend Shivam, came running to Ram Aasrey tugging at his shirt wanting to be hoisted on his shoulder after Pooja. He reluctantly obliged two before managing to get away.

His wife Sudha sat with her friends outside on the pavement talking. They looked up at him and smiled and one of her friends called out as he passed them by, “no food today, only water”. Then laughter and a bawdy remark, “maybe he needs something else” followed by a longer laughter. The rains were a welcome relief for the cluster residents and had lifted their spirits though they knew that in the next few days the mosquitoes and other pests would rapidly multiply. The new hand-pump installed by the government last year for the cluster, which looked to be in its death throes that morning, had already started showing signs of renewed life.

Pooja and Shivam, shrewdly anticipating an exclusive surprise, tagged along as Ram Aasrey walked towards his home. Once inside his ramshackle bamboo-and-plastic shed, he gave them a whistle lollypop each and they ran out in the rain whistling. It was a mistake. As he was changing into dry clothes, a crowd of expectant children gathered outside. If it had not been a rainy day, he would have shouted them away. But today that option looked forfeited. Ram Aasrey reluctantly parted with the Potato-Onion-chilli Pakoras Sudha had fried for him and kept in a covered plate by the kerosene stove. She walked in shaking her head to make him a tumbler of milky tea redolent with sugar and crushed ginger.

Ram Aasrey had arrived in Delhi with Sudha and Pooja and two other families in search of work four years back. Pooja was just a year old. They were agricultural workers dependent on seasonal employment during the sowing and harvesting seasons of Kharif and Rabi. Three years of consecutive drought in their native Jhansi district had dried up the rugged land and work in the fields had almost come to a halt. The resulting penury had forced destitute landless labourers and marginal farmers to migrate to the cities or more prosperous rural areas in other states. In these two-three years, lakhs of people who were just above the poverty line had quickly slid below it finding it difficult to arrange two meals in a day for themselves and their families. Knowing the difficult conditions in the area, labour contractors from the big cities had spread their net wide and their agents roamed the district, particularly its most affected blocks, in search of cheap labour. These agents were able to undercut and squeeze the work seekers without much effort labeling them as unskilled for work in the city. Avoiding these sharp agents, Ram Aasrey and his two friends had decided to directly move to Delhi and take their chances.

Daily wage work in the mega city was not too difficult to find. Initially, they started as loaders at warehouses and factories in West Delhi. Even though the local contractor took ten percent of their daily earnings, they were able to earn enough for their food and other small expenses and rental. Of the three, one friend Babban could not cope with the back-breaking work and adjust to the big city life. He longed for the quieter, slow-moving village and decided to return after two months even though his wife had found work as a house-maid and they were unsure as to how they would make ends meet back home with two small children. A few months later, Ram Aasrey learnt that Babban had come under a goods train and died. It was put down as a likely case of accident by the local Rail and Police authorities but in Delhi Ram Aasrey knew that his friend had killed himself.

From West Delhi, Ram Aasrey and his friend Sanjay moved to Southern Delhi where new, glitzy shopping Malls were coming up at a frenetic pace and there was a sudden spike in demand for workers. The wages were slightly higher and the work somewhat less strenuous and no rental had to be paid. Like them many workers had moved in and a number of temporary shanties sprang up among the shrubs on the rocky tail of the Aravalli range  around the deep, gouged out construction sites. After a few months at the site, Ram Aasrey was adopted as an apprentice by a Raj Mistri and started learning the craft of brick-laying and plaster work. In another few months, he was able to work without much guidance and got a raise in his daily wage as a semi-skilled worker. He opened a bank account and little Pooja started going to a nearby school run by an NGO. Things started looking up; he could send some money home every month to his old parents. Separately, he and Sanjay started sending some money every month to Babban’s widow even though it meant further drawing down on their meagre savings. The poverty line was left behind, and both the families decided to move to a cluster where facilities were slightly better.

The rains had intermittently continued for four days and the people had started hoping that the skies would clear up at least for a day for the clothes to dry. A few days after the long rainy spell, one late evening around seven Ram Aasrey was returning home from work carrying a sheet of thick, blue plastic to reinforce the existing cover over their shelter. He was nearing a traffic light at the end of an open stretch of road when a speeding SUV,  trying to overtake another speeding car from the wrong side, hit him from behind. Ram Aasrey was flung far by the impact. The last thing he remembered before falling unconscious with shock and unbearable pain was the screech of tyres and the sound of persistent horns. The SUV had driven away, recklessly crossing the traffic light even as it turned red. It was highly unlikely that the driver would be traced and apprehended; the accident would go down as another statistics – a routine entry in the list of hit-and-run cases on the city’s dangerous roads. Whether the driver would even feel remorse and be more careful while driving next time was also not certain.

Fortunately for Ram Aasrey, a co-worker was walking a few feet behind him. They managed to quickly take him to the Safdurjung Hospital in the Supervisor’s car. Ram Aasrey was in the hospital for almost a week; the first two days in the ICU and then in the General Ward. Both his legs had suffered multiple fractures and there was considerable blood loss. He gained consciousness after almost a day and saw a nurse and besides her Sudha looking down at him anxiously. A smile formed and then he dozed off. The next day, he was shifted to the General Ward both his legs in plaster that came up to his thighs. When the Doctor-on-Round came over in the afternoon, the only thing he asked was when he would be able to get back to work. The doctor told him not to think about it. Recovery would take at least three to four months, and if he was not careful the bones would not mend properly. He could be left with a permanent limp or worse.

Back in the cluster, Ram Aasrey lay on a wooden chowki brooding and feeling helpless. Pooja sat by his side seriously engaged in colouring a book handed out by her school. He smiled; he had never seen a more brightly coloured horse. Random thoughts and fears assailed him. What if his legs didn’t heal well? What if he couldn’t work as before? The hospital and medicine costs had wiped out the small savings he was so proud of till recently. More than anything, the savings had provided them with a sense of security and ease of mind. Sudha was away at work; it was her first day; she must be scrubbing and cleaning in what must be a big Kothi. He would visit her workplace when his condition improved a little. He felt a lesser man though he knew he was not at fault. As if reading his thoughts, Pooja said, ‘you need to take good rest so that you can get well soon and go back to work.’

After a month, Ram Aasrey went back to the hospital for a checkup. They told him that it would take at least three more months for the plaster to come off and then he could walk slowly using crutches. The crutches could be discarded gradually if all went well. Within two months of the accident, Ram Aasrey and his family again slid below the poverty line. He had to borrow from his friend Sanjay; he promised to return the amount as soon as he started working again. Ignoring his friend’s gratitude, Sanjay said, ‘this is the least I can do for you. You saved our lives – tempting and pushing us to come to the city. Otherwise, like poor Babban, maybe I too would be looking at you all from above.’ 

Ram Aasrey’s legs healed and he could return to work five months after the accident, albeit at a lower wage due to his slower pace of work and the smaller number of hours he could put in. Sudha continued to work though she reduced the number of households she covered to just one. Together, they again broke through the line of bare minimum needs by the dint of their hard work. But not so Rehman and many others. Rehman’s hands had been mangled while working on a factory floor. After a year, his wife had left him taking along with her their two children. He now begged at a traffic light near the Air India office and lived on the pavement in front of a popular temple sheltering under a tarpaulin hanging from a government colony’s boundary wall.

A learned, suave Professor was discussing the latest Economic Survey with a packed Post-graduate class in a sprawling campus in another part of the city. He was saying that if one fine day the Government woke up and decided to equally distribute around five to six percent of the country’s GDP (now, it would be a much lower percentage ) to those below the poverty line, which in any case was set dismally low, there would be no one left without two square meals a day in the proud nation. And some of the doting students wondered shouldn’t that be the obvious priority in resource allocation above all. Or, maybe, they didn’t comprehend the mechanics of the system well enough and other more important priorities came ahead while framing public policy.