It is a battle that this old man has to fight every day. A battle that begins with the first ray of the sun and comes to a halt when the sun skids behind the thick veil of the darkness. The night brings a respite but the next day throws the very same challenges at him. This battle going on in his life shatters the frail back of this old rickshaw puller. On the top of it he is deprived of one arm.
This amputee rickshaw puller is in no manner inferior to those soldiers who are engaged in a fierce battle on the borders. The analogy is fully convincing. Both the personas have one common objective in nature and this is to keep the enemies at bay by all means. Though the enemies whom our maimed rickshaw puller has to vanquish are the forces of hunger and poverty. They are always on the prowl to predate upon him. But he is a man of formidable strength and robust resolution whom I often meet in the streets of our colony. At his very sight, I instantaneously retard my pace and my gaze impulsively gets rested on his furrowed face marked with a crisscross of wrinkles.
Albeit, looking haggard in body, he still exudes an indomitable spirit and always reciprocates my smile with his more elaborate and extended one. Holding the handle of his rickshaw firm with only one hand, he pulls it breathlessly. Sometime sitting on his Rickshaw in some shady corner, he keeps muttering some incoherent words.
Though his words are incomprehensible to me but their tenor and texture makes it clear that they are not the invectives of some distraught and disgruntled individual whom fate has maltreated. The words, in fact, sound to me some incantatory notes constantly uttered in the praise of the Almighty. More than this I am never able to visualise anything else during my brief unscheduled meetings with this old rickshaw puller, whose name I am not even familiar with.
On 1st May we all commemorated Labour Day dedicated to the labour class. But my soul is stirred from the fact that how serious our society is to the basic needs of our labourer brethren. The day has just become a perfunctory ritual and after its commemoration in various parts of the world, we, the affluent class, will again turn our backs to the workers. They have been merely reduced to hands that construct our bungalows, drive our fancy cars, clean our plush houses, cook our meals, and pull us from one place to another and so on. Most of us have always paid cold shoulder to the labour class. Whereas we must have emphatic attitude for them as they are also the architects of our society. Like my dedicated rickshaw puller friend, they epitomise copious courage and rustle up their daily bread and butter with dignity. Unlike the corrupt politicians they don’t puff up their chests and publicly thump them. If the labour class had not existed in society, we could never have dreamt of the luxuries we roll in. Therefore, the world must be grateful to them and also try to unite them with the mainstream of society.
Professor Shiv Sethi is a noted columnist and literary critic based at Ferozepur, Punjab
