My name is Khairdeen. My story began in 1947 when I started working as a watchman. I had worked as a well digger or a farm labourer. In 1947, there were innumerable instances of bloodshed, looting, and sexual violence against women. Similar incidents happened in the nearby village, Tola Loona Zaildar Wala.
Amarjit Kaur, Weaver, Singhanwala (Moga)
I have spent all my life working on the loom. I used to weave cotton blankets, now I weave woolen blankets. Everyone used to work on cotton earlier. It was my own effort that I started weaving woolen blankets. The wool is divided proportionally and the pattern is formed accordingly on the blanket. We lay the warp here at home, and then I weave the weft on the loom.
I have been working for 50 years. I started helping out my elders early on. I worked in Gobindgarh for a year and a half, but I had to return to Saraud due to some family concerns and settled here permanently from then on. I am 67 years old now. I am eligible for the old-age pension from the Government but I am yet to receive any. I have applied several times, but they say there is some discrepancy and keep turning me away.
My grandfather was from Toba Tek Singh. When the plague spread in 1908, he was two and a half years old. His elder siblings died during the plague, his uncle took the surviving children along and came to Haripur. I was born on the 15th of July, 1944. I’m 75 now. My childhood wasn’t like a normal childhood. I didn’t have the option to go play anytime I wanted to. I have been working from the age of eleven
Our family has been making musical instruments from hundred and fifty years. I was fifteen when I got into this, it has been thirty-three years now. Our business almost came to a standstill before 1984 but after ’84 it became alive with a wave of new young singers. People moved on from Tumbi to more diverse traditional instruments with time.
I have been a cleaner and sweeper of cattle dung in almost all the houses of Surastigarh. After 6 months, some households would give me 2 quintal rice, some would give 3 quintal wheat. I had to fight for it if someone didn’t give the meant amount. Sometimes I did extra cleaning jobs if needed and got additional money for that.
You are too young to have seen the coal operated buses. It happened in 1952 due to the shortage of petrol. They fixed a small steam engine behind every bus. It happened for a year. 100 rupees was all it was needed to become a partner of transportation company but even that was rare in those days.
My grandfather was a contractor during the British rule. He was an expert in working carpentry and masonry. Impressed by his work, in 1933 they gifted him a pocket watch made by Western Watch Company. Around 1970, he passed it on to me. I still possess it and it is in working condition.
My father used to sit here earlier. I’ve been here for the last 20 years. He never let us help him with the work, instead, told us to go home and study. But when he passed away we had no alternative but to take over this profession. Even though we didn’t have any hint about repairing shoes, we started to sit on the roadside spot our father used to, offering the similar services.
People know my worth in this town. They show their respect by calling me a professor or an artist. But what I do has a zero value in the market.
Tongs are what I make. It’s been 40 years, I started in my early teens. Our father used to work as a farm labourer, usually helping with moving bales, we also followed him.
This may seem easy but it takes a lot a time to make a sickle. First I’ve to flatten an iron bar by beating it with full force. Then inside an iron piece, I have to fit a steel inlay which also comes in a bar.
Recently, when I visited my mother, she told me about an old lady in the next village who weaves toys for children and ornamental objects for girls. My mom looked so excited to go and visit her.
My parents used to work as a farm labourer until I was sixteen. They worked their way out and started cultivating land on contract. Every year we rent 2-3 acres, plant the seasonal crops along with the fodder for cattle.
Machines can never replace what’s done with hands. All this repair work you see, this fine finishing with these tools is handwork, there’s no machine you can place it under and get such results.