Ripped jeans, belts, doorknobs, plastic toys, bindi packets, tea strainers, incense sticks, and even almond milk—who makes them? Whose hands toil, whose eyesight dims crafting these everyday objects that surround us? Who sews the buttons on shirts, packs the namkeen into packets, or places each bindi on a paper card, then covers it with cellophane? And how much do they get paid for this backbreaking labour?
Jana Natya Manch’s new play Kabhi Na Khatam Hota Kaam raises these urgent questions aloud, singing, “Puccho! Puccho! Puccho! Cheezein ye kisne banayi, kisne kitni keemat paayi? (Ask! Ask! Ask! Who made these things, and what price did each of them get?)” The play emphasises that it is women, particularly working-class women, on whose bodies and cheap labour the empire of capitalism is built. A recent event at Studio Safdar brought these issues to the fore through a performance of the play followed by a book discussion.
The play was paired with a discussion of Neha Dixit’s book, The Many Lives of Syeda X, highlighting the struggles women face between the domestic and public spheres in pursuit of a dignified livelihood. While the play reflected the breathless grind of underpaid women’s work, Dixit’s book added depth through the subjectivity of the character of Syeda, a woman whose multiple identities encapsulate the realities many people live.
Not about labels
Syeda is not just a woman; she is a migrant worker, a Muslim forced to flee Uttar Pradesh after the Babri Masjid demolition, a mother, and a poor working-class labourer juggling multiple jobs. Dixit says: “We live in times where no single job pays enough to survive, so people are doing two, three jobs at any given point. Take app delivery workers; they might clean cars in the morning and deliver food in the afternoon.”
The book, which Dixit worked on for nearly a decade, weaves Syeda’s personal story into the broader historical context of India over the last 30 years. Both the play and the discussion underscored how government policies—or the lack of them—affect working-class people.
The play focuses on women like ASHA workers or mid-day meal workers, who in spite of being government employees have to work long hours for a meagre pay; this, according to Dixit, is partly due to the “patriarchal nature of the state and society”.
History shaping inner lives
“Over the past 30 years, events that might seem like mere news snippets to some have deeply affected those on the margins,” says Dixit. “The Babri Masjid demolition not only impacted people at the time but continues to do so as Hindu majoritarianism has grown. We saw industrial workers displaced after the MC Mehta pollution judgment.
In these decades, rights to food and education were established, Aadhaar cards were rolled out, and space missions were launched. Yet, caste violence continued, and more women joined the gig economy.”
Highlighted in both the play and the discussion is the disparity in how resources are distributed. Malls use vast amounts of electricity while poor urban areas struggle for basic power supply. Reshma, Syeda’s daughter, who worked in a mall, observed how demonetisation disproportionately impacted the poor, especially home-based informal workers who rely on cash.
Dixit also touched on Kerala’s ‘right to sit’ law, which allows workers to sit during long shifts. Reshma, who spent exhausting hours on her feet, wondered why Delhi did not have a similar law. The culmination of these historical and social shifts is the Delhi riots in 2020, which once again disrupted Syeda’s life in Karawal Nagar. “These events,”
Dixit says, “may seem like distant political changes or isolated incidents, but they profoundly affect those on society’s fringes.”
Dixit’s book offered a compassionate insight into the lives of India’s working people, showing how gender, poverty, and majoritarianism intersect to shape reality. The play, meanwhile, written after extensive on-ground research by the Jana Natya Manch team and theatre director Mallika Taneja, illuminated the everyday struggles of working-class women.