They found him lifeless on the floor

In November 2019, Latha Bollapally got a phone call from her husband’s coworkers in Qatar. They’d found him lifeless on the floor. Madhu Bollapally, 43, had died of a heart attack. He worked as a laboratory assistant, mixing medicines at a hospital, and had been gone since 2012.

“He never came back to visit us after he left,” says his son, Rajesh, 21, from his home in Mendora, a village in Telangana.

“During the seven years he was in Qatar, he called us three times. The last time we talked to him was nine months before he died,” Rajesh says.

Like thousands of others, the cause of death was registered as “heart attack, natural causes”.Ten days after the tragic news, the body of 43-year-old Madhu Bollapally was returned to his home village. Even after the father’s death, Rajesh is hesitant to say why the family had such little contact.

“He didn’t like talking to his family. A relative visited him once in Qatar and told him he could call home whenever he wanted. Shortly after that, he sent $592 and when he did call, a year later, he asked how we were doing. That is all.”

Madhu went to the Middle East for the first time in 2008, to Oman, where he worked in construction for two years. He returned to India for a short time and eventually headed for Qatar in 2012. After two years he’d learned English and other skills, which landed him a job as a lab assistant.

“But he never said anything about his pay or the work conditions, or how he lived in Qatar. When he died we received $13.16 as compensation,” Rajesh says.

He does not know if his father had any plans on returning to India, since the little information they received about Madhu, came from a relative who also lived in Qatar.

“My father lived alone, cooked all his food and when my uncle nagged him to reach out to his family, he distanced himself from him too,” Rajesh says.

Rajesh worked as a sales clerk at a supermarket in a city in another part of Telangana, but returned to the home village after his father’s death.

“I just couldn’t keep working and living like nothing had happened and my mother needs me,” he says.

Despite his six years with the same employer, Madhu’s family only received a little over $1,500 in unpaid salaries. Rajesh says he does not know why his father died.

“He was strong and healthy.”Rajesh and his mother now live with relatives in a neighboring village.

“Like most women here my mother works as a ‘beedi’ rolling tobacco, and earns very little money,” he says. “I pick up jobs too, but it’s not enough to survive. I’m trying to find more work, but the closest city is 12 kilometers away, so it’s hard. The pandemic has hit us all very hard.”

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