Anna alias Shivaji Vithoba Dhotre, 60, is a man of few words. He only speaks when he is free from his daily duties of stone splitting. His day begins at a quarry, where he is called upon to apply his inherited skill of using the sutaki—a traditional tool to slice stones and give them a smoothened shape. Anna earns his living by cutting, harvesting and dressing stones, which are required for the construction of a wall, well, or even a dwelling. Currently, he has a lockdown project; he is busy building his own house on the outskirts of Phaltan, the small erstwhile princely town in Satara district, where the daily wage earner has been residing for the last 
three decades. 

Born into a Solapur-based construction worker family, Anna belongs to the migratory Waddar (scheduled) caste, known for earth-digging, quarrying and stone-crushing. Barely schooled for two years, he was raised amid boulders and rubble mounds. The nature of his work often causes hand and leg injuries. Interestingly, Anna’s own sons have not taken to the traditional occupation.