At 74, people in his trade would retire. But forCumbharjua’s Divakar Volvoikar age does not catch up. “There is no battle onlyunderstanding your environment and making sense of it” says the septuagenarian.
Son of a wood merchant, Divakar was on his own at an earlyage. “I was devoid of much formal education but always understood what itmeant” he says as his deep set eyes drift away to a land, which current timesmay not recollect. The mining areas of North Goa. Divakar land at V S Dempo’smining company as a tipper driver. The young trucker landed at Dignem-Surla.Dignem, a village under Surla Panchayat of Bicholim Taluka then, was apicturesque small cluster of houses. His life would start from transporting oreto extracting ore as a first machine operator in a career spanning over twodecades. A regular life? Not quite.
It was early 70s and the workers colony at Dignem growing insize. The children who had no place to go as there was no primary school in thevicinity. “I was afraid that the children had to cross the route that miningtrucks plied on and though all of us who plied there also lived in the colony,any eventuality had to be avoided” reminisces Divakar. Also the nearby schoolat Khodingne had two shifts and small children could not be out in the remoteareas for so long. He first petitioned to the mining company to give donation.The donation was confirmed but where was the land? The local temple priest wasapproached for the same. He however was not in a charitable mood. “We used thethousand rupee donation to just buy the school land” says Volvoikar.
But for the man who never compromised, he did the unique. Heled the fellow truckers to collate unused and abandoned metal sheets, pipes andbuild the primary school. All with thatched roof and resembling the least likea school. The education department would not recognise the school. “It was afortnight to inauguration and parents had taken off their children from otherschools far away” explains Volvoikar. The enterprising man went about all theother schools in the region picking up extra desks and benches because ‘thechildren should know that this was no fad but serious school’. He footed theschool’s maintenance bill for over four years from his paltry salary of Rs 500.But the gamble worked. Today, forty years later a solid brick and cementstructure stands almost phoenix like amongst the mining dust but its’ creatoris forgotten.
What is striking about Volvoikar is his penchant for findingsolutions to small everyday issues that add up to human misery. The financiallychallenged, poor workers community had to loan money and even pawn jewelry tokeep their kitchens running. “After the salary, there remained no money and theexistence was hand-to-mouth”, recollects Divakar. The cooperative society runby the workers that stored its’ own groceries was born with a unique practice.Each worker had a small diary and his ration would be deducted directly fromhis salary.
For the man who believed all his life that raising a redflag of protest as a worker is demeaning to the symbiotic worker-managementrelationship, problems like these and scores of others had ‘their solutionaround us, we just need to think such that the equilibrium of life is notupset’.
