Kichu Nai Barite Taito ... Amar Porar Kharoch Jogate Kaje Giye Chilo … Ekhon Khabo Ki … (My brother went there (Mizoram) as we have nothing … he wanted to educate me… now what will we eat and how will I go to school)...”
That is how a hapless fifteen-year-old girl wailed for her dead brother who went to Mizoram as a migrant labourer and died when an under-construction Railway bridge collapsed off Aizawl.
Like this hapless teenager hundreds of others, at Choudar village mourned the death of their migrant workers. Smriti Sarkar, another elderly woman has turned into a lifeless stone in the past two days. She only murmurs intermittently.
“I have lost all the men in my life … Till Wednesday my life was like any other person … today it has no meaning for me,” she says as a Asiful a neighbor informs “she has lost her father, husband, son and brother.”
Out of 24 residents from Malda district who have perished in the Mizoram accident, this tiny hamlet — with an assortment of a few dozen of thatched huts — alone accounts for 13, locals said. “There is not a single home where food has been cooked for the past three days sir … we do not know how life will go on after this,” said Moti Sheikh a villager. Ratua, Ingrez Bazaar, Gazole are villages in Malda district which have never dug so many graves or lit so many funeral pyres in one go. Not even during the corona pandemic. “Most of us have no earning.
Whatever lands we have are just not enough for bare survival as we do not get the correct procurement price for our paddy … as a result we have to migrate to other States to earn Rs 500 to Rs 700 per day … here the earning is less than Rs 400,” said Rabiul Sheikh. When informed that Governor CV Ananda Bose had promised to hold talks with the Railways and the State Government to provide Government jobs to the next to kin of the deceased, Sarkar asks “what will I do with the jobs or the money … pour them on my funeral pyre.”
Known for the prompt actions he takes Bose on Friday visited Malda and met the family members of the victims.
“It is not possible to bring back who have gone but I will certainly be by their side … let us see what can be done … some proposals of providing these people with jobs have come … that will certainly be taken up by the Railway authorities and the State Government,” he said while handing out cheque of Rs 10 lakh to the relatives of the dead.