Bhuj: Uncertainty lingers for migrant workers heading back home as news of ceasefire trickles in

On Saturday morning, the patrol party was asking the small hamlets and wayside hotels, catering to truck drivers ferrying the last loads of salt inland from the salt flats in the border regions, to shut down. By evening, patrolling personnel from Khavda police station were still following what now appeared to be outdated orders, asking owners of wayside restaurants and tea shops to shut shop in anticipation of the blackout that was already ordered for the third consecutive night of May 10-11.

Photos of the third night of black out In bhuj and the newspaper tactics being used to shade lights (Express/Bhupendra Rana)

In the morning, on the way from Bhuj town to the border villages, this reporter saw pickups, loaded mostly with migrant workers. The National Highway 341 had only one way traffic, going back to Bhuj.

In Khavda town, over 20 vehicles, including vans, buses, pickup trucks and large autorickshaws, called “chakkdos” locally, continued to be filled to the brim with migrant workers employed at several industries located close to the border, most of them in power and renewable energy companies.

At Khavda police chowki on the outskirts of the town, several workers could be heard haggling over Rs 200 fare for the 72 km, one-and-a-half hour ride to Bhuj. A man from Bihar, working as a land boring expert, told The Indian Express, “I came here just six months ago and now I’m going back home to Samastipur, Bihar. No point staying here if you can lose your life. In any case, it has rained so there is no point… as we cannot drill anymore in this season. I’ll go handle my chicken shop back home.”

While that was the case around 1 pm, the situation grew more disconcerting for these workers at 7 pm on Saturday, a couple of hours after the ceasefire was announced with hordes of them gathered at the Bhuj railway station, hoping to get on a train and go home.

Speaking to The Indian Express just outside Bhuj railway station, where large number of workers were still deciding on the next course of action, Pappu Singh, a father of four from Kanpur, leading a group of 12 other workers, all from Uttar Pradesh, said, “We haven’t gone home since since six months. Now that we are already in Bhuj we might as well go home and come back after three weeks. We saw on social media that a peace deal was reached but that further meetings are still pending, so better safe than sorry.”

With several groups of workers confirming that they had no word from the administration, the district administration too did not realise this situation had developed at the railway station (Express/Bhupendra Rana)

This group was headed to Gandhidham by train and then onward to UP.

On the other hand, another group of 16 workers, from Jharkhand and Bihar, had just received a call from their company, asking them to return to work. While some of them expressed doubts about going back, having already spent money and a whole day travelling from their work site just 3 km from the border all the way to Bhuj, others were reluctant to go home after the call. A leader among them was considering taking a vote to decide on the matter.

With several groups of workers confirming that they had no word from the administration, the district administration too did not realise this situation had developed at the railway station. The Indian Express spoke to Kutch Collector Anand Patel, who said, “I am immediately sending the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) as well as asking the railway and police officials to inform and assure the workers of the ceasefire developments.”

Kuran and its ‘war veterans’

Meanwhile in Kuran those weathered by previous wars with Pakistan were having a deja vu moment.

“We have always been on the front line, and we don’t mind it,” said an 87-year-old man sitting at the chowk of Kuran village, just 35 km away from the border. It is the last major village of Kutch district and was the first to indirectly experience an attack from the other side when a suspected armed drone crashed and got entangled in high tension power lines.

This octogenarian, Dharabhai Velabhai Marwada, whose father and grandfather have lived in this village and who himself has seen it grow into the 250 houses with a population of 850, says that they have witnessed several wars but had to leave their village only during the 1965 war. Speaking a mix of half Kutchi dialect and half Gujarati, Marwada said, “We had evacuated the village in 1965 and had gone to live in Bhachau while the war was underway. When we returned, our village was untouched. We have never evacuated after that, either during 1971 (East Pakistan), or during 1999 (Kargil).” Sarpaji Sodha, a Taluka Panchayat member, sitting on his charpoy in his home under the fan that switched on with the intermittent electricity supply, said that while there was concern about the war, the situation had remained mostly normal. In fact, there had been a wedding in the village on May 7 but the celebrations had been interrupted by the cross border conflict. Within a few hours, a black out had been initiated, people told to switch off their lights, stay in their homes and a ban put on playing of drums.

On May 10, when The Indian Express visited the border village, there was another marriage in the village, but one that was visibly muted. There wasn’t a single musical instrument during the wedding procession. Instead, the groom’s family boarding several pickup trucks and headed to the bride’s village for low key celebrations. There are no air raid sirens in Kuran, but what they do have, are clear skies. Young men in Kuran say they spotted a couple of drones flying overhead on the intervening night on May 9 and 10. A few even managed to take some videos.

Now, all that has gone quiet.