The Man under the Sky

You come down from the Mehrangarh fort, follow the main road, leave the Girls Secondary School at your left, reach the crossing and turn left. You are at the outskirts of the Jodhpur city. This road will go to Mandore Gardens, but that is still four kilometres away. Instead of waiting for the bus or a tempo, you decide to keep walking. And soon at the left you see an island of workers - men, women and children – their heads bent, weaving the brooms, containers and dividers made of bamboo sticks.

There are about 30 people working, and the elders would tell you they belong to one family – an extended family. You see the nimble fingers of the 8-10 year olds moving fast in stitching the bamboo partitions, creating exquisite patterns. You ask their names, and take pictures so that you can claim later that you met some ‘child labourers’. The children would happily pose for you.

Go forward a few steps, and you will find a young Rajasthani belle, wearing a red Salwar-Kurta, a veil covering her head and face, weaving a large broom. While her left hand is holding the broomstick, her right hand is moving in clockwise fashion to neatly pack fallen twigs, and tie them together. You haven’t seen her face but you can feel that she is young, very young. A rugged, old man standing at your left says, “Aasma. She is Aasma. Take her picture.” You kneel down on the road, focus your camera on her face, and pray to God, “Let the veil go off for a while.”

And it does. Three kids surround her, hold her neck, rest on her back, and in the commotion her veil indeed goes off. You feel she must be under 20. The old man mutters, as if to himself, “Her children.” An adolescent mother! But then you are busy clicking the photos. Aasma doesn’t stop her work. You stand up, switch your digital camera to ‘Display’ mode and show her the photo on the LCD screen. Still working on the broom, she sees it, and then, for a fleeting moment, casts a sharp, witty glance at you. As if to thank you.

You turn to go, ignoring the old ladies who are yelling, “Our photo, saab, our photo.”

You look at the thin, bearded man, who must be well over his sixties, and ask, “You also work here?”

“No, I don’t work. She does. Aasma is my wife,” he says proudly.