AT THE CRACK OF THE DAWN, they arrive in a bus wearing lemon yellow or grey overalls and blue industrial caps, carrying tiffin carriers containing maybe some lentil, some Indian bread, some dry vegetables, some chicken/mutton. Can’t be sure. They get busy with completing the multi-storey building under construction hardly a few hundred metres away from my living room window from where I watch them almost daily. Most of them, I presume, come from the sub-continent and occasionally hear them talking in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil while passing them on road during the day.

What surprises me is the absence or minimal use of wood. Environment-friendly! Of course, there are scaffoldings, but they are made of steel rods and not of bamboo or casuarina tree stumps I am used to back in India. Another missing element is the ‘uplifting’ exercise of men and women construction workers physically transporting bricks, mortar in a human pyramid fashion from the ground level to the floors above. It was a sight to behold as men perched – precariously of course – on wooden scaffoldings diligently grab the items ‘thrown up’ from just below them. Well, there are no women workers at all.

Amazingly, I seldom noticed anything getting dropped in that tiresome physical exercise. Error-free, but risky. Mechanization has altered everything. Giant cranes lift iron girders, bricks etc to any level the building contractor desires these days. Thanks to helmets which are compulsory perhaps, there are less accidents at construction sites.

At times, I get a feeling that I am watching an industrial plant in motion – not a building under construction. Maybe the ‘uniformed’ approach. Maybe the lack of hurly-burly associated with construction in the sub-continent from where I hail. Plus the wooden-barricaded compound around the site that I am not used to. The work does not come to an end with the sunset. Powerful beams turn the night into daylight almost thus enabling non-stop work. Like there is a double or treble shift in operation, don’t know. I definitely miss the sound of mixing of cement, sand and stone granules that go into floors/ceilings in the site with the machine roaring, men and women dumping the ingredients into the revolving – either mechanical or hand-driven – mixer. The floor/ceiling ingredients come in pre-mix format and machines pump them to whichever level one needs. The only sound I hear is the ‘hissing’ noise of the driver sitting inside the huge glass-fronted trucks monitoring the whole exercise with the buttons console in front of him.

Yes, one thing I envy is the crane operator. He has a panoramic view of the surrounding even while he lifts building materials from trucks onto the site and the desired floor level. Don’t know whether his glass cabin is air-conditioned.

What time all activities end, I don’t know. By the time I switch off my bedroom lights around 11 in the night, they are still at work. When do they leave for home or whatever they call as their abode, I have no clue. Yes, but at the crack of dawn the next morning, they are there. As diligent and as they were the previous day.

THIS Column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, dated 19 January 2009