Here we have another brickbreaker, this time a man. He has other sources of income: he is a faith-healer, he raises cows for the Eid sacrifice, sells milk, sometimes does day-labour, and sometimes takes land and farms it on a share-cropping basis. He also has a complex private lending side line (described at the foot of this page).
He was born into a not-so-poor farming family in a nearby village but had less than two years at school (he says he doesn't regret this). His mother died when he was 8, his father remarried and over the years sold off most of the family land (Diarist 10 still owns a small piece, with some valuable trees on it).
Diarist 10 left home, married, and ended up living with his parents-in-law in our area. His wife has worked as an office helper but gave it up a few years back as it was too poorly paid. He did not educate his children. His son drives a rickshaw and now lives separately. One daughter died and another made an unsuccessful marriage and has for long periods stayed with Diarist 10 along with her two children.
He started his kabiraz (faith healing) work 20 or 30 years back. It consists mainly of manipulating limbs and of breathing onto the bodies of his patients. He gave it up recently after local people started a rumour that the death of his daughter (16 years ago!) had happened because of his kabiraz work.
His biggest transactions come from his cow-rearing, but as we see from chart 01, it is the other work - above all the brickbreaking - that produces income on a month-by-month basis. He is a 'gang supervisor', meaning that he recruits and directs other brickbreakers in addition to breaking bricks himself. The brickbreaking work is somewhat seasonal, since building work is most active in the dry months. He earns a surplus of income over all expenditure (business and household) in more months than not. This has allowed him to make home repairs and withstand spells of poor income. Cow prices have soared recently, but the piece-work rate for brickbreaking has not. Recently his eyesight has been failing, probably because of cataracts - but he says he can't afford the time to have them fixed because he is busy brickbreaking or caring for his cows.
