The months immediately following spring were the hardest on her. The sudden rot of city air hit her hard and lingered on for weeks before she finally became accustomed to it. Saaedah watched the other children jumping on and off the sand pile as she stood under the sun with her little shovel. 

She could already feel the sun and the construction debris undoing all her grandmother’s work. Every year when she returned to her village in spring her grandmother would fuss over her and complain how the city air and the sun had darkened her skin. She would drag her to the veranda with a bowl of thick unguent uptan and start rubbing it all over her body. She hated every minute of it but did not complain because she knew her grandmother was old and it wouldn’t do much good anyway. 

The memory of the fragrance of the neher on the cool wind gently washed over. She slowly lifted her head and started shovelling the badarpur into the dozen or so empty sacks that were arranged near the sand pile. The sun felt hot on her neck, but she didn’t mind it anymore. She was older than the rest of them and it was her time. She looked at her palms and how hard they were becoming from her daily work with shovel. 

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the kids of the plumbers swinging on the branches of the trees from swings that they had made out of old dupattas. The fabric was dangerously worn out and she felt it could wither away at any given moment, hurting them badly in the process. She scooped up a shovelful of sand in one expert motion, depositing it into one of the sacks. A fight had broken between the boys now, and they were pulling on each other’s knickers in order to get some swing time. A mess of brown and black bodies started struggling against each other on the sidewalk. In the commotion, one of the boys’ bum poked out from under his pyjama and was out in the next moment. She lowered her gaze, her cheeks flushing red. She stared hazily at the grains of grey sand in front of her.

Why was she more embarrassed about their nakedness than they were themselves was beyond her understanding. The deafening sound of the angle grinders started somewhere in the foundation of the building. She closed her eyes and imagined the red sparks flying out and then vanishing into thin air. 

‘Achha sun, Mai jamun todne jaa rahi hoon’, the voice next to her commented while staring at the boy covering himself in the distance. 

She looked up at Areeba who was sitting on a stump of concrete that was jutting out from the otherwise smooth surface. Her hair was combed back and had been tied up in a ponytail. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and let her eyes run over Saaedah. Jamun was the code word Areeba had both suggested and finalised when she had enlisted her help in her secret excursions. She stared at Areeba and tried to push back the irritation that was making its way through her chest. She smiled widely and nodded at her instead. The corner of her lip curled slightly. 

Areeba returned her smile and started casually walking away so as to not inspire suspicion. Saaedah begrudgingly admired her skill at hiding her intentions. If anyone looked at Areeba they wouldn’t think twice that she had a set direction in her mind. Saaedah followed her with her eyes until she finally vanished behind the blue tin boundary of the building site. 

She had caught her with her tongue down a Hindu boy’s throat last month. Her first reaction was indignation and she had the sudden urge to run away, find the first adult she could and tell them everything that she had seen. Areeba sensed this and immediately followed her. Over the next hour she confessed everything to her and beseeched her to help her make sure this remained a secret. Areeba had met him in the government run school that her parents had sent her to. 

A pang of pain shot through her arm as she thought about how lucky Areeba was, and how inconsiderate she was being of all the things her parents had done for her. Saaedah’s mother had also wanted her to go to school. But her father had been squarely against it. Her father was strict but fair in most things. She didn’t mind listening to what he said because he would give her his phone in the evening so that she could watch videos online. She knew from the screams that echoed through the jhuggis at night that others around her had it worse. And neither she nor her mother wanted to test his temper. 

She thought of Areeba sitting in her crisp white dress on one of the wooden benches; reading from the slate that was mounted in the center of the stuffy classroom. Rubbing shoulders with other girls and even boys during the lunch break. She tried to imagine what it would be like to meet the Hindu boy under the shade of the amaltash that was planted midway between the construction site and the school.

She found herself smiling despite herself. It felt strange to feel this nostalgic for something that had never happened to her. She smiled at her foolishness and continued scooping the sand. The bricklayer working a few feet to the left of her gave a loud cough. Everyone looked up. He turned his head a little to the right and then started moving his trowel swiftly against the cement. She understood and quickly wiped the smile off her face.  

The Sahib who was the site in charge was on his afternoon rounds. The shadow of his pot belly slowly paused near her, before moving on to the masons working inside the excavated foundation. 

She raised the corner of her kurta and dabbed at the drops of sweat that were starting to make their way into her eyes. There was no use cribbing over these things. Yes. Think about how hot it would have been inside the classroom right now. At least the wind was cool here, and she could breathe freely. She didn’t have to wear a tight plastic belt around her waist and could wear her salwar kurta as she worked. It was going to be lunch soon; she would get herself something nice from the stalls beyond the jhuggis to stop thinking about all these unpleasant things. 

Suddenly someone was shouting. With the special fury that told of an emergency. She looked around a little and spotted everyone looking at the crane. One of the metal wires holding the concrete bucket had snapped and the bucket was swinging dangerously on one string. The operator tried to move the crane but it wasn’t responding. The few kids who were sitting near her quickly ran off to see the commotion. She was in no hurry, and she could very well see it fall from here without moving any closer to the danger. As the people around her started relaxing again, she too planted her shovel in the dirt and started for the chai wallahs. 

A few people occasionally yelled out in the distance but she paid no attention to it. She quietly set down the coin and opened the jar to take out a cream puff. The chai wallah poured her a cup and slid it towards her. 

She dunked her biscuit and started wandering about aimlessly; the concrete bucket was ominously hanging in the distance. She seaw a blur moving towards her from the other corner and turned to it. She started petting the three legged dog while biting into her biscuit. The family who had rescued him as a pup had moved to a different construction site. So the dog now wandered around their settlement and played with all the kids. Everyone had a different name for him, so she had never bothered coming up with one. She scratched his neck and let her hand close around him as she pulled him in for a hug. 

‘The clouds are beautiful today aren’t they?’

Areeba was standing next to her with a lost look in her eye. She went back to petting the dog as Areeba contemplated the concrete bucket. 

The crane operator had finally gotten the crane to move and was trying to angle the concrete bucket away from the foundations so as to avoid damaging them. The heavy bucket was swinging violently and sending sprays of sand with every little motion on the crane operator’s part. 

Saaedah wonderd to herself if the people who will come to live in the high-rise will ever think about the hours she spent shovelling the sand back into the sacks. She wanted to hit the people who would move in with her little shovel.  She felt an intense hatred rise up in her against the invisible horde of people who will move in and never know she existed here, toiling away under the sun. Slowly she felt her rage shift to her father, to the sahib who inspected her work and even to Areeba. She snapped out of her thoughts as the dog yelped. She loosened her hold around his neck. The dog looked at her with his hazel eyes and ran off. 

‘Come let’s go and see how it turns out’

Saaedah nodded and followed Areeba to the place where the crane was. They start moving in between the other buildings that are already three or four floors tall, weaving in and around the scaffolding. They turned the corner just in time to see the second cable snap.

The concrete bucket swung through the air in an almost spiralling motion – Almost flying – before it fell down out of view. There was a loud thumping sound followed by a sudden torrent of voices crying out. Areeba took her hand and started running towards the circle that had formed. She wanted to let go of her hand and run away from this place. The cries had subsided into whispers now. And she felt them fly over her head as she and Areeba made their way to the center of the crowd.

A man has been crushed under the concrete bucket. 

She turned up her ears and started listening to what the adults are saying. Apparently the man was coming out of the building for lunch and had his welding goggles on, and earphones plugged in. 

She focused her eyes on the man and spotted a familiar tuft of curly black hair. Her mother’s scream pierced the evening air as she tried to hold in her urge to laugh.