(Bhim Prasad, the main character of the story spoke in Hindi only. But for the purpose of this story, written in English, all his conversations have been given in English).
On my first appointment as a Civil Engineer at the age of 25, I was posted to look after the construction jobs of a new project being undertaken in a maiden location surrounded by vast agricultural fields on three sides.
There was no human habitation within four kilometers so I had to arrange my accommodation at the nearest village, Manbhanjan that was nearly five kilometers away from the project site. It was a three room rented house, the owner of which lived in the nearby city. He was Santa Prasad, around fifty years. Though he lived in the city with his family for the education of his wards, in dress and appearance he was like a typical rural farmer. The house he rented to me was the only RCC house in the village with AC facility.
When I was having difficulty in finding accommodation after joining the new job, the supervisor of a nearby brick kiln, Bhim Prasad, helped me to find this rented house. Bhim and Santa were distant relatives.
Bhim, around 38, was the supervisor or Sardar of the brick field that supplies bricks regularly to our project site. His physical features fully did justice to his name. He was more than six feet in height with the strong muscular body of a body builder. His appearance with the height, weight, broad chest and strong biceps would remind one of a ruthless gangster. It was needed for the job he looked after, supervising workers, keeping their attendance records, making payments to the daily rated workers, supplying bricks to parties and collecting payment from them, looking after the safety and security of the brick field, handling local goons etc. It was the biggest brick kiln of the locality and known for quality products. The actual owner of the brick kiln hardly visited the field and Bhim was the undisputed lord of the field. He looked ruthless and ferocious though from the day of my joining he had been very helpful to me.
When and how did Bhim come to work in the brick kiln was not known to me. When sometimes he used to visit our project site and stood beside me, I felt like a tiny person beside him.
The labourers that worked in the brick kiln were mostly from the marginalized adivasi population living in nearby villages. However, the hard economic necessities made a good number of people from other communities also to work there. Some workers even came from far away states like Odisha and Bengal. As it is a common practice in many brick kiln, there were a large number of female workers. They used to work from early morning till dusk like their male counterparts.
For the workers who came from far away places, there was a cluster of unhygienic slums just outside the brick field. There were about sixty huts made of bamboos, straws and polythene and three tubewells and five common latrines. The huts were of different sizes. The smaller huts accommodated at least two persons while bigger ones had four to five persons. Apart from the workers, there were children of the workers. When the children grew up, they too worked in the same field and many of them started working before even they turned fifteen. But in official records they were enrolled as eighteen years. Their children never have had any schooling or education. The slum population was two hundred plus including children. The water of the tubewell was used for bathing, drinking and cooking purposes by the workers. The huts were built by Bhim for the benefit of workers and he collected a nominal monthly rent of fifty for the larger huts and thirty for the smaller ones. These were all single room huts where parents lived with their young as well as grown up children. Some larger huts arranged polythene partitions within them to maintain parents' privacy from their children. It was particularly necessary where there were grown up children. Like any slum, it too had problems of quarrel in dirty languages among the inhabitants over water, over illicit relationship with neighbours. Liquor was another reason of their merriment and quarrel. But in case of any problem or illness, the entire slum stood together.
Those workers, who were not from nearby villages, preferred to live in the slum. Many had grown up daughters or healthy youthful wives. If they lived outside the slum, some local goons disturbed those wives and girls. In Bhim's Barrack (as the slum was known) they were assured that none would dare to look at the females with ulterior motives.
Bhim lived in a small house in one corner of the brick kiln. It was a pucca house, the front side served as his office and at the back he had built a big room with attached modern toilet and kitchen on two sides. The room approximately sized 26X13 feet was his bedroom. The location of his office-cum-residence was such that during day time he could survey the entire field through the window. Unlike the slum, his office had electricity and in his bedroom there was an industrial fan running on electricity during the summer. Bhim was unmarried and lived on minimum things. Twice or thrice I had been to his office-cum-residence either to collect the bill of supplying bricks or to hand over bank cheque towards bill payment.
On every occasion, Bhim took me to his bedroom to sit comfortably and offered either tea or lemon juice or cold drinks. There was no furniture in his bedroom. The plastic rope that hanged from one to other corner of the room served as his rack for keeping his clothes. But all the clothes were neatly folded and kept in a tidy manner. The concrete structure was elevated from floor up to two feet, nearly seven feet in length and six feet in width to serve as his bed. The elevated concrete structure of the make-shift bed had a thick mattress on it and was covered by clean white sheet. It had two pillows and a bolster. The kitchen surprisingly had an old Voltas refrigerator, which Bhim frankly admitted was mainly for chilled beer during the summer. The kitchen and toilet were also very neat, clean and tidy.
Whenever I went to his den he gave very warm welcome and would mind if I refused to take something at his place. But there was a rumour against him that many workers of his Bhim Barrack sent their wives or grown up daughters to his den at night and in return Bhim paid them wages even without attending the job on a particular day or overtime wages without working any extra hours. Some even said that the female workers coming from nearby villages also availed this opportunity so that if one of them had absented from work, she could get her absence regularised by staying back at his den on some night.
Before going to sleep at night, Bhim used to give a tour round the brick field to ensure that there was no intrusion by unauthorized persons. His detractors said that often during the round he used to go to the barrack and picked up the woman or the girl of his choice. Nobody dared to oppose him for his power and clout with local politicians and police, as also for the cash and kind favours he bestowed on the family from which he picked up the woman or girl of his choice. It was rumoured that for a suitable victim that served him well on bed, the entire family used to get one day wages extra for each of its workers. So out of fear and greed, the husband agreed to send his wife, father his daughter and a brother his sister. There was, however, not a single complaint against him. But these were rumours which were hard to believe as no victim ever opened her mouth about any such incident. On the contrary, the workers who lived in the barrack were full of admiration for Bhima for his help to them. I too had seen him sending the poor workers or their family members to the district hospital by his own jeep whenever they fell seriously ill. During festivals like Dewali, Holi or Eid, I saw him distributing sweets to these families or giving crackers to young children of the workers. During my first two years of working there, I didn't find anything to complaint against Bhim. During the period of stay in the locality, I became quite friendly with him.
Near the end of 2nd year, my parents arranged my marriage to Mansi, who was then 24 years, three years younger to me. She had just completed her MBA. She was not very pretty but had very bright complexion, an oval face with sparkling sexy eyes, long eye lashes and a perfectly glowing smooth skin. Her chin was olive shaped with a small black mole on the left side of her cheek, about a centimeter away from her upper lip. The mole added to her beauty. She was not very tall but had right curves at right places. Before marriage I didn't see her face to face. My parents had sent her photograph and profile. Just looking at her glances in the photo, I informed my parents that I was ready for the match.
In the "baraat" that accompanies a groom to the house of the bride on wedding day, along with my colleagues and friends, Bhim also participated. The way he respected my parents and my parents-in-laws, the way he worked during the reception endeared Bhim not only to me but to my parents and in-laws as well. His physical stature and personality even impressed my newly wedded wife, Mansi, who later wanted to know from me who that tall person was.
I told Mansi about Bhim, the way he helped me after I joined there including the rental house he arranged for me and other things. Later I also told her about the rumours I heard about Bhim pertaining to his alleged liaisons with female workers. I thought Mansi would react sharply to hear that. But she took it quite lightly and teased me, "Hope as his friend there is no such allegation against you too."
I replied back in equally teasing tone, "So far I haven't heard any...but may be there could be such detractors who would say that he was very good during first two years but after he fell for the girl with a beautiful mole on her left cheek, he too lost his character..."
Mansi laughed at my reply and exclaimed, "Really wondering, did he lose character to the girl with mole or the girl with mole lost her character to him..."
We both enjoyed the joke and then Mansi asked me, "Do you think I should avoid Bhim as far as possible?"
"I don't think so," I replied, "He is neither a predator nor you're a vulnerable prey."