Construction And Construction Workers

By Aditi Gaur

Long, long ago, I attended a meet that had to do with construction. Let me go back a bit to explain. Resorts offering holidays had just about started out and adopted the novel idea of handing out forms, wherever they could, asking people to fill them in with the offer of an assured gift. “What’s the harm”” I thought, the first time. In due time I got a call, inviting me and the Mr. to a meet as we had been “chosen.” I did wonder how they assumed I was not single. That query resolved itself when I realised, they kept a watch only on couples and those who looked like taking a holiday…together. It took some persuasion to get the not so patient other half to agree, but once we went, we were trapped. “Trapped “is too strong a word but it proved true for us. The young boy explaining the whole presentation turned out to be my son’s friend from school. We couldn’t refuse him. And so, we sat and listened patiently, though unwillingly. After an hour or so, we came back with a certificate for free stay at the locations mentioned, to be availed of in a period of 6 months, I think. We are split second people who don’t plan holidays and the certificate died a slow death in some drawer. After that, we fended off potential agents who came in many guises, to their astonishment that we were not interested in something gratis.

Now, that’s the backdrop. Here’s the story of “construction.” I had, at that time, recently left off working and revelled in the state of doing nothing. You know, how when you ask a youngster. “What are you doing,” and they say “nothing”. That kind of nothingness. While filling out forms at the presentation, there was space for occupation. Instead of the usual “housewife”, I sat back and decided “Aha, I’ve come a long way, baby…I am no housewife, but I’m a homemaker”. And that’s what I wrote gleefully. “You are in the construction business?” asked the boy with a smile. I cleared the confusion with a straight face but back home I mulled upon it thus.

Homemaking is absolutely a process of construction. You can as well be a homemaker as a home breaker. You can even break other people’s homes without a qualm, and the only punishment would be self-recrimination. However, getting back to homemaking. I had written ‘homemaker”, as occupation …just a word to fill a space. I no0w reflected what a great responsibility that word entails for a woman. I don’t want to go into gender wars, but my belief is that the onus from time without beginning has always been on the woman, under acceptable stable conditions. The vision for a happy family, the planning for that building called home, not in cement but in love, the everyday materials that prop it up, starting from the plinth of cheerfulness to the iron rods of determination, the willingness to redo the structuring when you’ve rubbed up everyone the wrong way, the shared joy as the home expands to include children, the additions and alternations as the new inhabitants grow up, and the open spaces to let off steam….are they not so comparable? And when severe storms assail this home you’ve built so carefully, your efforts at holding it all together, not getting blown away by the winds of emotion, battling home grown resistance to your ideas,….in what way is a homemaker not in the construction business?

“Construction workers” is a recent thought. In keeping with current times, masons and construction workers are a regular feature round the year. If you live in a society complex, you would think that there is no space really to build anything. And like earlier times, a coat of whitewash, would be good enough to move in. However, whosoever moves in believes it to be his beholden duty to change something or alter from scratch. How will they show off their superiority otherwise? So, you have a constant assault on the senses by perfectly shaped material coming in and broken bits leaving. As in life, the perfect bits are brought in with fanfare, but when the discarded bits leave, they are thrown into the waiting trucks with venom. As children, mounds of sand would be piled up into little hills at construction sites, which we would climb and slide off much to the irritation of those who the material belonged to. We would reduce those hills to flat beaches. Still, there was the joy of playing, the thrill of being threatened and the sheer victory of having spoiled something for someone. I do believe it was all that repression in school, being taught discipline, that caused this niggling urge to do something contrary. I have digressed.

One small point to ponder on. It beats me why the people at the brick kiln take so much care in making perfectly shaped bricks. It could be so that they can be carried around in stacks on the worker’s heads. I say this, for the minute these bricks reach the site, they are mercilessly broken into pieces as fillers. Well, some of them at least.

Then there is a person called the ‘supervisor” who operates on decibel level. I do believe there is a decibel test that they have to go through before they qualify. You will hear him shouting at the workers from time to time and not only decibel, it has surround sound as well, so that the voice seems to come at you from all directions. Then there is the add on. His only occupation is to keep up a constant conversation as the others do their work. Needless to say, he can dislodge the supervisor any day in comparative decibel levels. As one worker hands another a plank, the add on bellows ‘hoy.’’ ‘Hoy,’ one of them shouts back. And then some inconsequential, irrelevant conversation follows. Add on is the wrong name…it should be cheerleader. Before you know it, it’s time for a break.

This temporary peace is broken by the nourished voice power that comes back. Meanwhile, where is the supervisor? His appearances diminish as time progresses till he is a dot on the horizon. It could also be that he lowers his voice when he comes, so that the people around who have numerous complaints against the workers can’t spot him and complain. Who else would you complain to except the supervisor? You don’t know who the owners are till they move in and give you that box of sweets. And you say duty bound “please don’t hesitate to ask for any help. After all you’re new here.” All the while you gnash your teeth thinking of the broken glass, the dust, the noise…yes, noise needs a fresh paragraph.

The prime time for the maximum noise is exactly from the dot of 2pm, just when your food is on its way down your gullet. The rude shock it gets has a further reaching role than the benevolent digestive juices that will mix with it later. All kinds of drilling, banging, thumping, throwing happen…come on, use your imagination and add a few. The morning blends very fast into the first break. It’s probably the equivalent of white- collar workers who spend the better part of the morning greeting each other. The point is, not much gets done till after lunch. The afternoon meal is the proper one when they come back fully fortified to blow your eardrums to smithereens. I have asked others, and they agree on this 2pm phenomenon. Could it be something to do with “sound” vastu, I wonder. Like sound related work is propitious only 2pm onwards. The owners, meanwhile, could well be in the Maldives. But we, the perpetrated against, have a solution.

This solution was chanced upon when trying to cut off another variety of sound menace…. the sound of humongous household pumps transporting water from down to up or sideways or in any direction for all that I care. I think these gazillions of litres of water hoarders with their equally powerful pumps to make you jump out of your seats do believe that when the day of reckoning comes, they can only qualify to face their maker piously with the words “We stored enough water.” Maybe it’ll put them on that first rung of the stairway to heaven. Coming back to the “sound” strategy we have devised, it is to play metal, all kinds, heavy, death, black, progressive, thrash, just name it. It’s a beautiful cover up. Of course, to play it in the afternoon becomes counter productive if you’re planning that snooze with the pillow over your head. Barring afternoons it’s the best all day strategy. You make your own noise and I’ll make mine, till the cops take both of us away.

By Aditi Gaur