Coolie as Community

      

"Coolie as Community"

The project was to select a community by the Journalism students and we had to explore details about it regarding, life, culture, survival, and residential points. So I started to reach out to different communities and I was in search of a big community from where I can get some responses and the people out there would speak to help me for my community project.

Then, I chose “Coolie” community as my project and started working on questions to be asked for the video requirement. Through mind-mapping I wrote the shots I wanted to show and the location I selected was “Cant Station”.

So, the idea of “Coolie Community” aims to highlight the coolie out there, who were living under one roof and on regular basis how their duties go through the dawn to dark. This community is rarely seen that no one highlight their voices and issues.

The “Coolie” profession is the one of the oldest profession to exist and mostly poor people and villagers are observed in this profession to make their both ends meet. It is a low wage profession and the coolies are facing great difficulties in these inflation days. They have families in their villages and they have to support them also. There are days when they have to starve also unlike the low wages, they are oppressed to face a tough time i.e. many of the times they have to even starve. If we talk about the wages they get from the people for carrying their luggage so that is much least and on that people even argue for some favorable charges. So they have fixed rates according to the number of luggage they carry. They are allotted with some quarter- rooms to stay in, at the night time for resting or sleeping. They all have timings to perform their duties in order to make a balance for every coolie to earn. Then it depends on their fate that how much they can convince traveler for carrying luggage. They were questioned about their caste, language and culture on which they said that they live here under one roof by means of “Brotherhood” and maintain friendly relations. They belong to different languages i.e. “Siraiki”, “Sindhi”, “Pashto”, “hazaray-walay”, “Punjabi” etc. In order to maintain decorum and peace they have to cooperate and compromise on many of the situations with their friends (other coolies). They were asked about the movie based on Coolie life that how the media portrays the hero as a “fighter” on which they replied that there is big difference in reality, here is no one special and everyone here is a hero in themselves.

Many of the coolies were in this profession as it was a “family profession” and their relatives and elders had worked as a coolie. They are mostly illiterate and due to lack of education they started this profession to meet their daily requirements. Many of them were found to be happy and satisfied by this profession and were thanking Allah for whatever they have as they work hard and look forward for the fair wages unlike begging. They were to continue their life as their name tag “Coolie”.