“Main aapko poora Punjab ghuma sakta hoon ab to.”
My name is Seetaram and this is my story, Through the 40 springs of life that I have witnessed, this one is a bit different. They say that my house is at risk. I do not understand it though. For a daily wage laborer, who constructs buildings, malls and other beautiful areas of the city, this concept is something that I do not understand in one go.
I come from Madhubani, Bihar. There we are married quite early. I am 40 years old now, and am having 5 children and a wife in my family. They all stay in the village, while I stay working here
I have to travel a lot because of my job. Each day, I just go to the railway station, to catch the trains for cities like Sriganganagar, Firozpur, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar etc. I have seen every route in these cities. If anyone decides to visit Punjab and require a tourist guide, then I can be the one.
I do miss my family. But the life is much easier here. I stay in an accommodation along with 4 other men. All of us do not pay any rent, as the house owner belongs to our village only. He lets us stay there for free.
I miss my village. I miss the visits we used to make to Devghar. It was an experience for me every time. The temple at Devghar is around 117 kilometers from our house. Some people walk this distance during the monsoons. It takes them around 5-6 days to traverse this distance. Once a boy covered it in around 2-3 days, but he later fell unconscious in the temple courtyard and died.
I am unable to understand much about evictions. My pradhan tells us that our community is under the threat of it. But I do not understand what all can I do in this. I can only obey what pradhanji and the NGO people say. I trust our pradhan. He had made many efforts to get our documents ready and many other efforts. I know we can obey what he says.