Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: Hit by the double whammy of demonetisation and Vardah, many of the Bengali labourers working in construction sites of Chennai and other parts of coastal northern Tamil Nadu have returned home in the general compartments of delayed trains.

“The gush of the wind still echoes in my ears,” said 35-year-old Bengali labourer Santu Pal who clung to his life with 10 others at the Indiranagar MRTS railway station near Taramani in southern Chennai as cyclone Vardah passed over. Santu and his group of three friends reached home in Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district on Thursday morning.

“Our earnings have already dwindled due to demonetisation. Still, we clung on. But after the cyclone, we decided that it was time to leave as family was very anxious about our safety,” Santu said. Like other residents of Chennai, the network of the mobile phones of the labourers went astray due to the cyclone. “I tried contacting Santu but to no avail. Suddenly today morning, he knocked at the door. I burst into tears seeing him,” Santu’s wife Savitri said.

Since November 8, the daily wages of many Bengali labourers in Chennai have gone for a toss. “The contractors pleaded helplessness. We had to take our necessary items on credit. Recently, many of us got some amount of money that was due,” said Santu’s friend Dhiren Das. Some 300 Bengali labourers may have returned in the general compartments alone in which Santu and Dhiren returned, according to their rough estimates.

To return soon

Though the labourers are shaken by their experiences of the cyclone, they vow to return back to Chennai soon firstly to take their due remainder amount and because their family looks up to them for their seasonal migration. “If I stay back, who will feed my family? Chennai has given us improved living standards back in the village. Where else can we go?,” asked Imdadul Haque, a father of four children from Raghunathganj in Murshidabad district of West Bengal.