Deft, nimble fingers

The tragedy and its aftermath's spillover continues. As I stood outside the LNJP Hospital, I met this man who was trying to scan the board for more familiar faces. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on November 18, 2010.


Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 17, 2010


The child's deft, nimble fingers had been crushed under the weight of the building.
They didn't show on the photograph pasted on the board, one among the nameless 42 who had perished in the building collapse.

It was only a face, eyes shut, distorted. Blood that dripped from the forehead, or seeped from the bandage, was a shade darker on the gray scale photo.

Majju, 14, was the youngest among a group of young men, who traveled from Dhapra in Katihar a few months ago to barter the speed of their slender fingers that could bead artificial jewelry faster than adults, for a few hundred rupees. They stayed in a group, under the supervision of the contractor who had promised them the moon, or what looked like a first step towards a better bargain at life. They came from the very marginalized families in the village, the poorest of the poor.

Abdul Bari almost missed the crushed face of Majju, ashen and grim, pasted in the third row of the board outside LNJP Hospital where the victims of the Lalita Park mishap had been brought.

He was third in the row. The first was 23-year-old Arshad, who also hailed from Dhapra. But Bari, who works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mehrauli, could not put together a whole face from the crushed features on other photos. He kept scanning the board for familiar faces. Out of the 10, only two were adults and over the age of 18 years, Bari said.

Eight of the ten in the group of mostly minors whose fingers worked for hours threading beads into threads, making jewelry that was exported to foreign countries, had died. Their fingers mangled and reduced to pulp with the disaster that killed more than 67 people, and injured many others.

“The contractor is also injured. We found the bodies here. They are in the mortuary. We will leave tomorrow for Katihar,” Bari said.

It would be a journey spanning hours. Almost 24 hours by train to Katihar, and then local transport till they reach Dhapra, where wailing mothers and sisters are waiting to bid the final farewell, the village mourning its loss and poverty, and its fate.

On the board, the faces of children, innocent even in their painful death, stood out. There were side profiles, and a few captured their faces turned towards the camera.

Of the 67 reported to be dead, 21 are minors, or under the age of 18 years. The youngest to die in the collapse is a one-and-a-half-year-old child. Then there is a three-year-old and a four-year-old, too. Most of the children who died were at home when their mothers had gone to their work at the nearby, more affluent houses. That's when the tragedy struck, and that's when then the dark thumb of fate pressed them to dust and rubble.

Most of who died were under 40 years of age, mostly labourers. Of the 42 that were brought dead to LNJP, only three were above 40 years.

In the drizzle, the mortuary seemed a dark, dreary place. The faces, now on A 4 size paper, were pasted on the wall. Relatives, friends, acquaintances crowded under a parapet, under the photos. They had recognized their dead. No paperwork was required. One just had to get the series of number handwritten on the photos and take those to the mortuary, claim the bodies, and wait it out.

The smell of stale blood filled the passage as a Mithilesh's body emerged from the back, the dark chamber where many such bodies lay. His brother-in-law was pushing the stretcher. Its steel was splattered with blood, the sheets reddened.
At least 29 bodies from the ramshackle building that fell Monday night lay there, waiting to be identified, or taken away. Another 26 were languishing in various departments in the hospital, a few in the ICU even. No more deaths were reported from the hospital on Wednesday.

According to the Medical Superintendent Dr. Amit Banerjee, 20 bodies had been identified by 3 p.m. The hospital had put up photos of the men, women and children because most families that lost their kin were illiterate, could barely make out the letters. Their eyes could only recognize the features, the shape of the familiar faces.

Most children died because of haemorrhage and asphyxiation as they lay crumpled, and crushed under the debris.

“Their families have been informed. Some of their relatives are here. It will be a sad journey, taking bodies of children to their parents who never anticipated this,” he said. “But they were so poor. The contractor would only take children.”
It was all about the deft fingers, the speed at which they wove together the beads. Now, they had been rendered lifeless, a pulpy mix of flesh and blood, and dead.


BOX

The census of India reported 12.66 million working children.


But agencies like The Global March and the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE) estimate that here are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India. Human Rights Watch pegs the number at 100 million.


According to the UN case study of the Delhi garment industry, poor, first generation industrial workers are recruited by contractors known as thekedars from rural areas as migrants do not unionize and can be exploited.
Many of these migrant workers are Muslim boys and young men from Bihar who work in small units in and outside Delhi. They are the invisible links in the in the global supply chain.
The case study also reveals that these children work up to 12 or more hours a day and work all seven days of the week.
They live in “extremely difficult and dangerous conditions”.