Stone cutting blues

Last year my parents decided to upgrade their kitchen and bathrooms. My mother went through all her old issues of of Good Housekeeping and finally came up with layouts and designs she liked. She called a couple of my old friends, one of whom was now an architect and another a builder and got her plans approved. The builder sent in one of his contractors and a troop of laborers and work was soon underway.
I was in Bangalore on vacation at the time and volunteered to oversee some of the work when no one was home. The problem with vacationing in India is that everyone I know who's still in town is working in the daytime when I'm free, so I didn't mind killing some time supposedly watching over the workers, but actually enjoying the air-conditioning and a stack of '3 in 1' DVDs while they sweated outside. After a while I realized that it was impossible to watch TV and enjoy my sweet lime soda over the din of hammers and electric saws, so I stepped out into the backyard to watch them. To quote Jerome K Jerome - "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
The contractor had left for another site, so there were just the three laborers hammering away at the granite slabs and cutting them into shape. I smiled, they grinned back, I asked to borrow a beedi, one of them obliged and even lit it up for me, I asked if they needed some water or anything, they said no and we all settled back to our posts - they hammered and sawed away while I sat on the steps and opened up some old 'Amar Chitra Katha' comics that my mother had lovingly saved up at the bottom of my cupboard.
At around 1:30 in the afternoon I went back into the house for lunch and asked the cook to send out some plates for the men. She returned and said that they told her they weren't hungry and would eat later after they were done.
At around 4:00 one of them knocked on the window to say they were leaving. I went out and distributed some baksheesh which they happily accepted.
"What are your names?" I asked
"Amit Mukherjee", "Ranjit Roy", "Mukesh Sen" came the replies.
I was surprised, but did not say anything. When my father returned in the evening I told him about it and he was horrified. Good Bengalis reduced to breaking stones for a living. Why, one of them may have even been a distant cousin.
After a few days it was Durga Puja and the house was bustling with the usual festivities. On our way out to the pandal my father and I stopped in the backyard to give our Bengali brethren the rest of the day off to enjoy the holiday.
"Where's Mukesh?" I asked, noticing that one was missing.
"Who?" They seemed puzzled.
" Mukesh Sen, your partner."
"Oh Mukesh" They looked at each other quickly. "He's at another site, he'll be back in an hour."
"You can take the day off, go enjoy the Pujas."
"No, no.. that's all right.. we'll finish our work and leave later."
My father seemed troubled and he stayed back to talk to them in Bengali as I proceeded towards the car to join my mother. He walked over after a few minutes, smiling happily.
"They're not Bengalis" he said, obviously relieved. "They're from Bangladesh. Illegal workers."
Well, that explained it. The fake names, the fasting (it was Ramzaan) and the willingness to work through Durga Puja.
Apparently there are close to 15 million Bangaladeshis living and working illegally in India. That's almost double the 8 million odd illegal Hispanics in the US. They migrate for the same reasons, better living conditions, willingness to work cheap and the lack of employment in their home countries. They have become an essential component of the manual labor workforce in many states. The Indian government is starting to be more active about the phenomenon and is tightening up border security, but a 4000 km long border is not easy to monitor, so the trend is likely to continue.
Frankly, after seeing the crap that immigrants have to put up with in the US, I'm more than a little sympathetic to those who travel far from home in search of a better life. Maybe I saw myself in the stone cutters - working hard in a foreign land, unappreciated but essential. I wish them well and hope they find what they're looking for.