I have known Dawan pretty much my whole life. In my childhood he seemed to be a large, strapping man. When bags of wheat were unloaded from the tractor trolley at home, he would heft one on his back, walk toward the garage, and dump it atop a neat and growing pile. Each bag would weigh upward of a 100 kg, or a quintal, as we call it. It seemed no mean feat to me then, that a man could make the trips back and forth, lifting those bags, shrugging them off, only to return for more.

And then, afterward, the workers would eat, Dawan among them. Dressed in lungis and undershirts, with their shirts flung over their shoulders, they would squat over a meal of rotis, dal and vegetables. And rice, of course, always rice. A meal was not complete without bhaat . They would work hard, eat well, and laugh loudly. Dawan, or Dauna, as he is often called, would have a bit of a swagger, and a big grin, set off by a small moustache.

He retains the moustache, and the brightness of that grin, but he has shrunk in the years that I have known him. I tower over him now, so I can no longer gift him older clothes of mine. It is not genes, no miracle of DNA or descent, merely a matter of nutrition. His hard work has not won him the food that he should have had, or had with regularity.

He is, what we call in the English writing press, a ‘landless labourer’.

The term does little justice to the life that such a man must live, dependent forever on those that own land, and can employ him. No matter how strong such a man might be, or how resilient his spirit, the work strips the flesh off of a body, it reduces a person to muscle, ligaments, and skin stretched tight over the bones. It is not as if Dawan did not try. He travelled far for the work that he got, all the way to Punjab, at times. And it is not as if he did not earn. He did. And with his earnings he built a house. But his son lives there, and Dawan still lives in the old thatched-roof mud house that I have always seen him emerge from.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I bought him a jacket — as also one for another person who works at the farm. We made a mistake. The jackets were too nice, and they disappeared, skived off or given away, to their children. This year we were a little less generous, and maybe a little wiser: the sweaters we gifted stayed with them, for at least the few days that I saw.

This year Dawan’s daughter is to be married. If you have been following the news you know it has not been a good year for farmers, even worse for those who have no land. Nor is this the first bad year.

This is the second year that the rains have been uneven, coming at times when they should not have, and not coming at all at times when they should. Very few people have the savings to tide over these things, certainly not the very poor. Some odd jobs and loans keep people afloat at such times.

The government has compensated farmers who have been able to show that 75 per cent of the crop has been destroyed in the village, at about ₹5,000 a hectare. Per season. Imagine living on that for four months, half a year.

Anyway, that is more land than most farmers in UP have. Dawan has none.

He does have a daughter, though, and this is the year that she is to be married. As dowry — a practice that is illegal but continues nevertheless — the boy’s family has asked for a motorcycle. Where Dawan is supposed to find the money for one is hard to imagine. My mother has suggested that I pay. My sister has just become the vice-president at a very large hospital, and so she has sent some money. We are the fortunate children of India, fortunate for having been born in the right family. Our hard work has been rewarded while Dawan’s has stripped him to the bone, and left him helpless against a society that will not show even an ounce of mercy, not even during a drought.

My mother fears that by giving money to Dawan for his daughter’s marriage, we will be somehow complicit with the dowry demand. Somehow it seems less terrible than simply standing by when somebody I used to admire as a child, is left with nothing in the end.

Omair Ahmad is the South Asia Editor for The Third Pole, reporting on water issues in the Himalayas; @OmairTAhmad

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