Soyjuddin
“We take whatever work is available, from cultivation to construction work to brick kilns, wherever needed – in West Bengal, outside, Delhi, Bombay, Kerala…”: thus Soyjuddin introduces himself. However, once after the harvest season, he would start to tell his story sitting in the verandah of his mud house, he’d make it very clear that going far away is no business for him anymore. While that ‘we’ referred to a wider collective identity – a ‘mental community’ with the people on the road, those who leaving their villages, travel places no matter how far to find better work opportunities –, since he’s become a father, his own movements have followed the regular cycle of paddy cultivation and concerned exclusively the rich agricultural district of Bardhaman. Leaving the state? At least until the children are grown up, longer absences are out of question. It is by excavating in his past experiences that Soyjuddin’s dislike of migration becomes understandable…