Uttarjhanporda, July 16: The rows of pucca houses may seem a little surprising for this village of mostly landless peasants. Some have air-conditioners and even a garage, waiting for a car that might come some day.
But hope here is inexorably mixed with a nagging fear, for bad news too keeps coming.
It was the ringing of a phone at 4 this morning that woke this village in Howrah's Domjur block, just 20km from Calcutta but tied in life and death to a city hundreds of miles away. Then a chorus of wails followed.
Located in a pocket of Bengal that sends hundreds of its sons to work in Mumbai's gold workshops, Uttarjhanporda has bled more than once when terrorists attacked the city's jewellery hub. It did so this morning, just as it did in 2003.
This morning's phone call brought news that Baburam Das, 45, a victim of Wednesday's blasts, had lost his battle against his injuries in hospital an hour and a half earlier.
Luck had smiled on Baburam only to deceive: exactly like Prabhat Nayek of East Midnapore, Bengal's other casualty in the blasts, Baburam left his workshop in Zaveri Bazaar a little before the explosion, only to walk into Opera House where another bomb waited.
When terrorists bombed Zaveri Bazaar the previous time, in August 2003, they killed Tapan Das, another son of Uttarjhanporda whose family lives next door from Baburam's in the village.
"Tapan too worked in a gold shop at Zaveri Bazaar. My younger son Robin is still there; I feel terrified for him," said Tapan's mother Bechabala, all her hopes now pinned on the younger son.
Such tragedies and grim coincidences dredge into the spotlight Bengal's forgotten migrant economy that supplies the sweat and muscle to keep enterprises humming elsewhere but not in the home state where opportunities do not exist.
Around 1,500 men from Uttarjhanporda's 5,000-odd families work in Mumbai's jewellery shops. Overall, the numbers are 6,000 from Domjur and 4,000-5,000 from East Midnapore, and they go up by a few hundred every year.
Gold craftsmen from Bengal are the most sought after in Mumbai because of their skill and the modest wages they are willing to work for. It's not difficult to see why they remain willing despite the constant terror threat.
A day labourer here or in Calcutta earns about Rs 100 a day and only when work is available. In Mumbai, he gets Rs 400 daily round the year plus a roof over his head and two decent meals a day.
"I keep telling Robin to come back, but what will he do here? He risks his life for money, like his elder brother did," Bechabala said.
Her two-storey house testifies to the prosperity Mumbai has bestowed. Baburam's house is concrete too. With the money he earned in Mumbai over the past 19 years, he got all his four sisters married. He also bought a modest house at Bhayandar, Mumbai, where he lived with wife Pronoti and son Avishek, 14.
"Even after we got married, he would always be there if any of us needed money," said one of the sisters, Shankari, wife of a barber.
After the family learnt of his injury, "the whole village pooled money to buy an air ticket for my mother; she flew to Mumbai on Thursday evening", said Alpana, another sister.
Baburam was cremated in Mumbai this evening at his mother Latika's wishes. But Uttarjhanporda lives in fear. "All I can do is pray for my son Bikash who, too, works in Zaveri Bazaar," said Abala Das.
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