Beneath the rubble

The yellow JCB digger lumbers back and forth,lifting the rubble in slow,mechanical moves.

The yellow JCB digger lumbers back and forth,lifting the rubble in slow,mechanical moves. Inside,Satpal Sharma,28,the man who works the controls of this 15-foot hulk of a machine,leans forward in his seat,his brow creased in concentration as he looks out of the window,trying to see what the machine is lifting. I have to be careful, he says,after he alights from the JCB. There could be people buried under this,people like me.

Ever since the six-storey building in Delhis Lalita Park collapsed on Monday,Sharma has been working 11 hours a day,even nights. This is one such night. People crowd around the lone digger,most of them just waiting and watching.

Before this incident,Sharma had been at a construction site in Mohan Nagar in Ghaziabad. The night of the mishap,Sharmas employer,at Harbinder Singh Kuku Construction,in east Delhis Patparganj area,sent him to the spot,following an order from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Four other diggers were put on stand-by,but the narrow lanes would allow only one machine. It took me one-and-a-half hours to navigate the area and enter this lane, says Sharma.

He has driven a JCB digger for 10 years now and has never given much thought to what his snarling vehicle had been up tothere was rubble to be picked,a job to be done,and he would work the knobs and get it done. But this time,he says,he is tense. When you cant see whats in front of you,you dont see what youre picking up, he says. A sewing machine makes its way into the bucket of the JCB digger.

In the three days since the tragedy,Sharma has seen enough miracles to keep him going. The first night,after the machine lifted two columns,I found four children. They were terribly injured,but alive, he says.

Sharma lives in Pandav Nagar,a colony not too far from Lalita Park and which,like Lalita Park,shares the unauthorised tag. His wife and two-month-old daughter are away in Gurala,his village in Himachal Pradesh. Like him,his father had been a driver in Gurala. Ten years ago,Sharma decided to move to the city for the better opportunities it offers. He earns Rs 8,000 a month,of which he pays Rs 2,500 towards rent.

Sharma says his employer promised him a bonus for the work he had done after the collapse. I refused. How can that compensate for all these lives lost? I would have done something to help even if I werent a JCB driver, he says.