I am… Sujatha B.

Occupation: Works in road construction

You really want to hear my story? It’s not at all rosy. I’ve had to face more than my share of tragedies over the past several years. Forgive me if I tear up in between. I cannot help it.

It all began when I inadvertently got caught up in a gang fight in our colony at Korani, near Attingal, during Onam five years ago. I was inspecting the resultant damage to my sister’s house when there was renewed fighting. A huge rock, thrown by one of the gang members, shattered the bone in my left leg into several pieces. Since then, I’ve been in and out of the Medical College hospital. The leg is much better now, meaning it doesn’t pain as much every time I take a step. However, the incident has left my leg a bit crooked.

Thankfully, it doesn’t hinder my work in road construction, even though I am on my feet all throughout the day. My main duties involve preparing the surface to be tarred. Along with the other women in the crew, first I clean and sweep the area. Then, we fill in the potholes and level the space before the construction crew begins their work. Once that is done, I also help to spread a layer of liquid tar on the base surface, which will later anchor the tar-gravel mixture, which in turn will be compressed with a road roller. Yes, its back-breaking work, often in the stifling heat, not to mention the blasts of heat from the tar burners. But, I’m used to such hard labour. Ever since I was young I have been carrying head-loads of sand in construction sites and elsewhere.

I’ve been at this job for a year or so now, under employment of a contractor. Several of my neighbours work in the same field and that’s how I got this job. It’s not steady work, though. Road construction jobs are few and far between. Sometimes we may go a month before we get another project. That’s a reason why few people chose this kind of work these days. Most of the crew are people from the north. We do have a communication issue but there usually someone around who knows Hindi/Bengali and Malayalam, who will act as translator when the need arises. The pay, though, is good; I make Rs. 700 a day and one job is enough to tide me over for the next month or two.

I am 58 but I must work, as my husband, Ravi, a head-load worker, is paralysed on one side and is laid up. I have three children. My daughters, Manju and Shinju, are homemakers. Their husbands too are head-load workers, while my son, Ratheesh, is a daily wage labourer at the CRPF camp. My son has two small children; girls, seven and five years old. So, he’s not able to help us out much but he’s caring enough to give his father a few hundred rupees every month. My one regret is that I did not equip and educate my children with necessary skills to make a better future for themselves. In the rush to survive, I forgot that my kids would be doomed to have a future similar to mine.

(A weekly columnon the men and women who make Thiruvanthathapuram what it is)