Together but separate

Although after all the cement layering had been peeled off and our house looked like a abandoned home with all the bricks exposed, the re-plastering was slower in comparison to breaking

Since my childhood, I remember our house in Santiniketan with a lime wash as its interior and exterior wall colour. So when 15 years ago, I came to live in it, I continued with the tradition. Primarily because a lime wash is cheap and so a major chunk of your spend goes into labour and not to any paint manufacturing corporate. And since a lime wash gets ruined easily one has to do it more frequently than the popular protective wall paints. So more money for labour.

However, it is only recently that I realised that the labour who I thought I was doing a good turn to, were increasingly reluctant to do a lime wash. It had become infra dig. They kept thrusting various shade cards of protective wall colouring of different companies at me, saying that computerised mixing of colours would be far superior to the lime wash tinting that needs to be done by hand. 

This year, however, seeing the face the labour contractor made when I told him I want a lime wash, my resistance snapped. I succumbed and agreed to the ubiquitous “weather coat”. But then I was told that in order for industrial protective paint to hold, we needed to really scrub off the lime wash that had formed a thick coating over the years. We did so, suffered in silence as the exterior scrubbing covered us in dust. However, thinking of what the dust would be doing to the workers’ lungs made our inconvenience insignificant.

But scrubbing off the lime revealed the wrinkles of a 70-year-old house. Now the cracks in the cement layer became apparent. The contractor who had been our ‘crack’ physician over the years suggested some drastic action. He said that we now needed to take off the outside plaster of the whole house, expose the bricks and then re-plaster. A few days later, he mobilised labour and work began in earnest. It was interesting to see a whole layer being taken off wall by wall and reveal the bricks inside. The contractor pointed out the difference in house building techniques 70 years ago and now, all apparent from the exposed bricks.

Although after all the cement layering had been peeled off and our house looked like a dilapidated and abandoned home with all the bricks exposed, the re-plastering was slower in comparison to the breaking. Because by then much of the labour had gone back to their villages. It was paddy harvesting time and most of them had a little land to call their own. 

They did not return for a week and we were getting a trifle restive. We were told that they would come back only after they had sown the potato crop in the land the paddy had vacated. Anyway the workers returned and more four undressed walls got their clothing back.

In winter, we usually put a makeshift dining table out in the garden and have our breakfast and lunch under the shade of a huge jamun tree. This year thanks to all the dust floating around we had been confined indoors. Finally, when the breaking was done we brought out the table ceremoniously. 

At lunch, the labourers too would spread a mat under the shade of a tree and open their respective dabbas to eat and enjoy their lunch break. As they sat a little away from us, and we ate together but separate, I wondered about what they would be thinking of us abandoning our dining room to eat in the garden like them.