The man crouching on the side of the road seemed to be thinking about something difficult

A man with a scruffy beard flecked with white sat on the edge of a dusty alley in Malda. A length of cloth was draped loosely over his shoulder. For laborers in India, this is no mere scrap of fabric—it is a tool in its own right. It cushions the weight of loads borne on the shoulder, wipes away sweat, and at times is wrapped around the head to ward off the sun. A simple piece of cloth, yet one that speaks volumes about its owner’s work and life.

When I raised my camera, the man suddenly lifted his head and glanced upward, his eyes turning away toward the distance. That sidelong gaze might have been wrestling with some deep philosophical question—or perhaps only recalling that the curry at lunch had too many onions. From the gaps in his beard spilled not words, but silence, broken only by the dry rhythm of my shutter clicking in the heat.

In India, such scenes of laborers squatting along the roadside are far from rare. Malda, long a town of trade, still relies heavily on human muscle for transport through its markets and narrow lanes. The phrase “mechanization,” so familiar from European history textbooks, remains a distant notion here. Human shoulders and feet are still the most dependable machinery available.

The man never met my eyes. Yet in that upward glance lingered both a trace of unease at being photographed and a weary indifference, as though to say, “Do as you like.” To him, my camera was no more than a bothersome fly. Was he testing me, or merely succumbing to the sluggishness of the afternoon heat? I cannot say. The only thing certain is this: somewhere in the corner of Malda, a bearded man lifted his eyes and looked away into the distance—and that much, at least, remains recorded.