In India, May Day is red. The 1st of May marked the day the red flag was pressed into service for the first time. Red is also the colour of strong emotions – the kind that creates common cause among labourers everywhere in the country and the world. The simple definition of the labourer is a person involved in unskilled manual or physical labour. This is a rather uni dimensional approach. What about a person involved in agriculture, sanitation and transport? What about the coolie who struggles under the weight of suitcases that the owners won’t lug? And the behind-the-scenes workers who clean dishes, mop floors, build roads and houses? There is rarely a part of our lives not touched by the labourer.
Sadly, in many parts of the world, including mine, the concept of ‘dignity of labour,’ is slow in catching on. We still believe that some jobs are beneath us. We are ardent pursuers of the white collar job, the corner office, the house, cars and the foreign holiday. We fail to acknowledge the simple truth that we are all people, no matter the work we do.
In the touching Factory Town, poet Austin Smith uses a taut narrative to paint a simple domestic scene between a factory worker and the son. I like to believe the worker is a woman. The child and the parent return from the factory-run theatre where their presence seems to make the ‘pale-faced people,’ nervous. At home, the son asks for a glass of water as the mother reads, “that ancient story you three loved.” Someone is missing from the scene. Maybe the woman is learning the ropes in a new world and a new workplace, building a life for her child, starting over.
I also enjoy the strong Steel by Joseph Bruchac. It’s set in a construction site and ends with these hard-hitting, honest lines. “Those who hold papers/claim to have ownership/of buildings and land. They do not see the hands/which placed each rivet. They do not hear the feet/ walking each hidden beam. They do not hear the whisper/of strong clan names. They do not see the faces/ of men who remain/unseen as those girders/which strengthen and shape.” It is the sad irony of our times that those who build our houses are often shelter-less. They fix windows, polish wooden floors, place the marble kitchen counter and breakfast nook, drills holes for wires for the expensive sound system or are essential air conditioners and then go back to a makeshift, sooty and uncomfortably hot dwelling. Their windows are the tile-less space in their roofs and their breakfast is often a glass of sweet tea.
Marge Piercy says it so well in To be of use. She loves those people the best who, “jump into work head first.” Who does that these days?
The poem ends with these eloquent lines. “The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done/has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil/Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums/but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.”
Real work. Labour with elbow grease and the grim satisfaction of a job well-done and hard-won. It isn’t for everyone. In the shipyard, at the fishmonger, the weaving mill and the cattle farm – work happens because labour does. Labour feeds, clothes, shelters, entertains, educates and moves us.
Labourers aren’t a commodity. And they are certainly, undoubtedly essential.
Srividya is a poet. Read her work at>www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in
