Kalleda Ramesh
Kalleda Ramesh
"He was only 40 years old and that’s no age to die"
On August 10, 2016, Kalleda Shravan's father had just left his shift. Suddenly, he fell and began to twist in agony. - I drove him as fast as I could to a hospital where they said he had a heart attack. The company, for which his father has worked for nine years, paid the last monthly salary, and delivered the body. - My father came back to India as a dead body in the luggage along with some money - His job was hectic, the car he was driving was old. The engine boiled in the heat, and it was unbearable to sit inside the car. He was only 40 years old, too young to die, says Shravan.
Told to the journalistic platform Blankspot
There are two memories Kalleda Shravan can never undo. One is watching his father have a heart attack and die in a crammed hut in Qatar, and four years later, getting a call from India that his baby had died in December 2020.
“Within a span of four years I lost my father and my child,” he says. “I can’t even begin to describe the loss.”
It all started 10 years ago when Shravan joined his father, Kalleda Ramesh, to work in Qatar. The father drove a pickup truck for a road construction company and the son started in construction making $165 per month. Eventually, he became a supervisor for the work scheduling, and by the end of 2020 he earned $550.
It was August 10, 2016 and Shravan headed back to the small room he shared with his father after work. Suddenly, the father fell to the floor and began writhing in pain.
“He lay there, crying and told me how much it hurt. I drove him as fast as I could to a hospital, where they told me he had a heart attack,” Shravan says. “I noticed that the doctors didn’t really bother explaining anything to me. They spoke English, which I didn’t understand, and did not let me visit with my father. They told me to leave.”
Shortly thereafter he learned that his father was dead.
Shravan used the compensation from the employer to bring his father’s corpse home.
“His job was stressful, the car he drove was old and the engine overheated all the time. He told them the heat in the car was unbearable. They didn’t listen.”
Shravan also says that the food they got was bad and his father ate less and less.
“I think it’s a mix of factors that killed my father,” he says. “He was only 40 years old and that’s no age to die.”
After burying his father, Shravan returned to Qatar to work for the very same company, even if he felt betrayed and hurt. He got into fights with the administration about how they had treated his father and made them aware that they had not fairly compensated the family.
“These companies don’t care when someone dies like this, how are we supposed to survive?”
The money Kalleda Ramesh sent home was used to build a house in Telangana. He also took out a larger loan.
“So even if my father is dead, the loan still has to be paid,” Shravan says.
To pay off the loan and build his own house in Telangana, Shravan continued to work in Qatar. In December of 2020, he got the next bad news. His mother had been bitten by a poisonous snake and taken to the emergency room. Later that night his pregnant wife woke up with severe contractions.
“Since my mother was at the hospital there was nobody at home to help my wife deliver the baby. She had to find her own way to the hospital. The child did not make it.”
The wife survived, but was hospitalized for a long time and fell deep into a post partum depression. When Shravan told his employers about the tragedy and asked for time off to home and help, he got the cold shoulder.
“My boss told me my job needed to be done. He also told me that I had already used up my vacation time and I couldn’t go home. That my mother was in the ER, my daughter dead and my wife was sick did not matter to them, so I just left.”
Since Shravan returned home to India life has been hard.
“I want to live here, start my own business, but there aren’t any jobs and I have debt,” Shravan says. “All my savings went to hospital bills and the funeral for my child. I can’t even afford to buy milk right now.”
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