Mazdoor Diwas

#MayDay #LaborDay

It is may day, labor day, worker’s day. Whom is this day for? 

on this day of ours, I as a worker sitting in comfort of AirConditioning imagine other workers. In flashback workers appear, a lady in tatter carrying basket on head with dripping excreta, the young mother on construction site who has left few months old baby under shadow of tree, a sixty plus white bearded rickshaw puller struggling to pull overweight passengers. More pictures pop up, the filth covered brave hearts who enter the manhole and clean the gutter, the coal miners who risk their life to make the country 100% electrified, the entertainers in maut ka kuan, farmers toiling in the scorching heat and the housemaids who bear all the insult and humiliation and make the lives of Sirs and mem saahabs comfortable.

I wonder, what is the relevance of such day? With the socialism being scorned and the communists having relegated themselves to the position of bystanders, who cares to celebrate May Day. The communists, it appears have interpreted the poet of revolution, Faiz Ahmed Faiz totally wrong when he says;

ham dekheñge

lāzim hai ki ham bhī dekheñge

vo din ki jis kā va.ada hai ………

When there is no hope from friends of working class, when there is monster of consumerism and materialism devouring the masses, when the humanity is being commoditized, one can complain in the words of Allama Iqbal;

Tu Qadir-o-Adil Hai Magar Tere Jahan Mein

Hain Talakh Bohat Banda’ay Mazdoor Ke Auqat