'Help! I can't Breathe...'

Try to hold your breath for couple of minutes - 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds ... difficult... starting to feel deprived of oxygen ... feeling suffocated ... cannot hold on more ... give up finally ... 

It is such a relief to get your breath back, isn't it! Feels divine!

Imagine if it is so difficult to hold your breath for few seconds, then what would it have meant for those two municipal workers who suffocated to death in that manhole, in the city two days back.

Yes, you heard it right, two workers died of asphyxia in that shit hole. Manual Scavenging is banned in the country but that did not prevent the contractor to force one of the workers to get down inside the manhole, with no safety gadgets whatsoever, to clear the blockage in the drain of one of the houses on the other side of the road. 

Apparently the house belonged to someone 'important' hence instead of checking the blockage from the house, the contractor chose the manhole route. When the worker got trapped inside the manhole, the contractor panicked and tried to escape. A fellow worker who tried to rescue him also fell in the hole and both of them did not survive.

The news in the next day's daily was published, few read and soon after it was forgotten. 

The contractor will go scot-free after the issue dies out, in all probability. Reality is that no one gives a damn to those poor souls who passed away.

Last year around the same time of the year two workers had died under similar circumstances when they stepped into a 15 foot deep manhole in East Bangalore. And even the year before that, two workers suffocated to death in a sewage drain at M.G. Road, one of the top locations of the city. The apathy is very clear.

'Help! I can't breathe...' they would have tried to cry out loud but their voice and lives would have been snuffed out of utter suffocation.

I shudder to think of their final moments. What a horrible end ... 

Shame on us, Shame on this city !!!

As we go to local municipal elections tomorrow, can we stop for a minute and think about these workers who are treated like guinea pigs in keeping this great city functioning and ensuring that all the 'shit' remains under the 'ground'.

It is so surprising that in a country where we even worship animals, we deny fellow human beings of not only a dignified life, but also a dignified death.