Скачать или смотреть Manual Scavenging - still a harsh reality in India! | Uncovered by Humans Of Bombay

“You see this chair next to me? It’s for Suraj. It’s for the day he’ll come back home. We’ve ironed his clothes too. He’d gone to work and had told us he’d be back in 4 days.

Suraj was our younger son. We’d named his brother ‘Aakash’ because bade Aakash mein chota Suraj hota hai. Ours was a happy family. I was a barber and my wife, a teacher. We didn’t have much, but we had each other. My sons were great at studies; we’d buy second hand books, and that too, in instalments. Aakash completed his studies and began working in a bank. Suraj, on the other hand, suffered a lot. He wanted to study science, but he was from a Marathi medium; he couldn’t cope with the English syllabus. He began failing his exams. He stopped eating and sleeping. That’s when I told him, ‘Abhi break le!’ He agreed. To keep himself busy and contribute to the household expenses, he began working as a cleaner in local government office. He used to enjoy it.

Everything was okay, until Covid.
We all lost our jobs and Suraj became the only breadwinner of the house. He took up multiple jobs to ensure we had food on our plate. But things kept getting worse. Suraj would often not have slippers under his feet, they were all ragged. He’d eat the cheapest quality food to save money. He'd leave the house at 4AM and come back at 12 midnight. He’d enter the house, exhausted and would lie down on the floor and doze off. It was around this time, in March last year, when Suraj was approached for a project in a different village. They offered him double the money, but didn’t tell him what exactly the work was. ‘Aaja, phir batayenge!’ People warned him, but we needed the money and so, he decided to go ahead. He didn’t tell us about the warnings; we learnt about it only later that day when we got a call from his employers, ‘Tumhare bete ko kuch ho gaya!’

I immediately called Aakash and rushed to the hospital. There, he lay on the bed, covered in mud and sewage. My son, Suraj had left us. I cried and asked what had happened. He was made to clean sewage which was 15 feet deep and 15 feet wide. My 6 feet tall son was made to clean it with no help. I don’t know what was going on in his mind while doing that? I wonder what his thoughts were at that moment? Or what exactly happened in his last moments?

In the last 1.5 years, we have knocked multiple doors for justice but no action was taken against those people who were responsible. Just 2 months ago, the Bombay High Court sanctioned a compensation of ₹10 lacs, but that will never bring back Suraj. Nothing will.

My wife and I still wait for the day Suraj will come back and sit on this chair. We’ll then switch on the fan, give him a glass of water, and ask him to rest. And this time, no one will disturb him. No one!”

Uncovered by Humans of Bombay: Where Emotions Unveil the Untold.
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CREDITS
. Producer: Karishma Mehta
. Channel Head: Anant Kaushik
. Content Head: Kirtishree Rathore
. Writer & Director: Anam Khalid Mirajkar
. Story Sourced by: Shreyas Pande from Muse Foundation
. Post-Production Head: Shivam Maurya
. DOP: Amit Gaikwad
. Editors: Jeetesh Solanki, Mohita Mhaskar
. Thumbnail Design: Fatema Plumber