When the Indian government declared a national covid lockdown in march 2020, we have seen millions of labourers walking back to their villages from the capital city, Delhi. It was a “shock” for the middle-class consciousness to see these workers walking back with their small belongings. But where these people were living? Why many of them do not have a house to stay back? Why they are forced to walk back? Even the government when it unilaterally declared the covid lockdown, they never thought about these labourers. The fact is that it is through their cheap labour that the entire Delhi is functioning. The governments and the general public normally know them as ‘numbers’ or ‘statistics’. We only know that millions of labourers walked back and ‘some’ thousands perished on the way. They usually don’t have names or addresses. However, what if someone writes a story about a labourer who is having a name, address and opinion on himself and others? Aman Sethi’s A Free Man, in many ways rejects the idea of reducing labourers to mere numbers. Instead, Sethi, by painstakingly following Mohammad Ashraf, a homeless labourer who lives in Delhi, maps the story of his life and broken dreams.
Sethi’s pen produced a protagonist who is otherwise an insignificant figure for a story. The story of Ashraf has no extraordinary tale, no great events, and no surprises and twists. Uprooted from Patliputra in Bihar for various reasons, Ashraf ended up in Bara Tooti Chowk, Sadar Bazar in Old Delhi. Being homeless and address less, like the friends he made in Bara Tooti, Laloo and Rehaan, together they make their living out of daily wage work. Bara Tooti is also having a thriving labour mandi where labourers of different types and groups stand there to be picked by prospective employers for different kinds of work. Though Ashraf earlier worked in many professions, he identifies himself as a safedi karigar, a master house painter. He is not having a family and is not a seasonal labourer. He works only whenever he is short of money for leisure time. After two or three days of work, he earns enough to spend for another week. Then his routine changes, waking up late, sipping a necessary chai from kaka’s dhaba and killing time with ganja and alcohol. Once he becomes completely penniless, then only Ashraf will go again to work and the same routine will get repeated.
The fate of the homeless labourers in Delhi or any other metropole in India is more or less the same. Their life expectancy is generally very low from the national average. Most of them become ill when they cross their forties. Excessive consumption of alcohol, smoking, and exposure to unhygienic living and working conditions exacerbate their health condition. Most of these labourers end up in tuberculosis hospitals and care centres and die there unattended. Nobody cares, neither governments nor public conscience. Ashraf’s story is no different.
Sethi interestingly provides a detailed account of the life and struggles of a homeless labourer, their working patterns, social relations, pain and happiness. For instance, when the author explains the clothes of homeless labourers, he notices that “Every mazdoor was a walking album, panelled with money, papers, phone numbers, and creased photocopies of ration cards.” The clothes of homeless labourers have special pockets to keep money and important documents that often give them a sense of identity or maybe to avoid harassment from the police. When the author asks Ashraf about his work, the latter says, “The ideal job has the perfect balance of kamai (payment) and azadi (freedom).” And, Ashraf goes on, “Azadi is the freedom to tell the malik to fuck off when you want to. The malik owns our work. He does not own us.” Ashraf has only his labour to sell, but he is conscious that he sells it only for a limited period. He cherishes the freedom it provides. He does not want to be a gulam (a slave) of anybody, neither contractors nor himself. However, the freedom enjoyed by Ashraf also comes with its own tragedies. He also longs for a family, wanted to see his mother and friends and wanted to chase his dreams again. But going back is also difficult and with age, he could not recollect his family address and phone numbers. In the end, like many others, Ashraf also succumbs to tuberculosis in a care centre in Calcutta.
Sethi’s story forces the public consciousness to fathom the existence of people like Ashraf in our society. The governments or the elections do not notice their presence because, for them, they are just numbers or random labourers who come and go. Ashraf’s story is not a unique one, but the story of millions of labourers who end up in Indian cities.
The contemporariness of this work will never fade away. Even if someone reads this book after hundred years, there will be (should not be) Mohammad Ashrafs among us. Whenever we talk about workers and labour exploitation, we always remember one immortal soul, Karl Marx. For someone who is acquainted with Marx’s masterpiece work, Capital, particularly the chapter ‘The Working Day’ we could find how he forces society to take notice of workers’ lives which perishes in factories. A Free Man does the same, similar to other works like P Sainath’s Everybody Loves a Good Drought and Harsh Mander’s Looking Away, it forces us to notice the presence of Mohammad Ashraf in our society. And the human question, how can we make sure that the presence of Ashraf cannot go unnoticed?