Not Just Another Day

It was around 10pm at night when we started watching Bhuvan’s Boys playing the Goras in the epic movie Lagaan on the television. It was the day when the tricolor was unfurled at the Red Fort and patriotic spirit set afire with tons of Whatsapp videos and messages celebrating the 72^nd Independence Day. This was the day in 1947 when the Union Jack came down and we began our tryst and twist with destiny at the stroke of midnight. By the time we shut down the idiot box, a new day had begun but we woke up within 2 hours of it for our daughter was to fly away for a short vacation overseas. Driving in Mumbai streets is best at 2am, possibly the only time when the city actually sleeps, and in no time we reached the airport. The Tiranga was fluttering high in full glory at the airport and the pillars there were lit up in colours of saffron, green and white which made us feel proud for once.

After learning of her having cleared emigration, we left for home and I again woke up in a couple of hours to catch a flight to Vadodara on a business trip. After finishing the meeting at a client’s factory, which was located about 45 kms outside the city in a place called Panchmahal, I requested my office colleague to take a short detour of a fort nearby and we saw the UNESCO Heritage site of Champaner Fort built by Sultan Mahmud Begada in the late 15^th and early 16^th century. Due to paucity of time we could not venture inside the fort to see the magnificence created by the Sultan and his successors but was happy to have got a sight of the monument cruising in a car on a rain drenched afternoon. Quite a coincidence as the movie Lagaan was set in the principality of Champaner. Though I found no trace of the Boys of Bhuvan but got to see some donkeys on the road, something you don’t see on Mumbai roads. Maybe, these creatures, whose intelligence we make fun of, get deterred by the infamous potholes some of which are larger than the craters on moon. Anyway, these bumps on the roads never stop us Mumbaikars from venturing out and braying aloud calling this madness our indomitable spirit!

By the time I landed back to Mumbai in the evening, my daughter had posted a few of her pictures in London.  The young lady was taking a welcome Independence Day break, after almost 9 long years of servitude in the government medical colleges of Mumbai and Delhi. The long hours the doctors have to put in under extremely trying conditions there would put even the hardcore military regimen to shame. And what do I see; the Union Jack is up again once more! Maybe, the English team had taken sweet revenge of Lagaan’s defeat on Virat’s Boys at Lords and had every reason to feel high! Wonder if BCCI should put a Lagaan of 3 years of non-payment of monies to these Gods when they fail miserably?

Eureka…I just discovered the similarity Captain Andrew Rusell, the tormentor of Champaner shared with Indian cricket team’s heckler of today,  Jimmy Anderson…decide for yourself….ditto to me.

By sunset now, the mood in the country had gone sullen with the sad news of the demise of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a man who possibly had no enemies, a man even his worst political opponent would think twice before saying anything bad about. As all the cameras were trying to catch a glimpse of the dignitaries arriving at the AIIMS Hospital, I remembered two incidents associated with the Poet Politician of India.

The first was almost two decades ago when my girl was studying in Sardar Patel Vidyalaya at Delhi. Atal ji, who had just become the prime minister 12 days ago, was to come and deliver a talk to the students and parents . The man, whose grand-daughter was also studying in the school, arrived in his crisp dhoti-kurta and spoke in his inimitable quick witted style. The content of his speech I do not remember much but he ended saying he was going to the Parliament to prove his majority and jokingly said that he may no longer be the PM by the end of the day. After the speech, my wife and I saw some good food kept in the school lawns and thinking it was for all assembled there, we walked in and picked up the plates. Soon we found the Prime Minister joining us along with some senior teachers but found something amiss…there were no other parents in the lawn. We said Namaste to the PM and quickly made a hasty retreat in total embarrassment! Vajpayee, that evening, put in his resignation to the President of India leading to fresh elections.

Some time passed and Vajpayee ji once again became Prime Minister for the second time. He went ahead with the nuclear tests Pokharan II which made us all proud of our country and its achievement. It was the autumn of 1998 and Durga Puja was round the corner. My daughter each year would participate in the fancy dress competitions organised by various Durga Puja Samitis in CR Park, the Bong homeland at Delhi. I decided to dress her up as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the icon of the year. She acted well and also delivered the funny lines I made her memorise in the style that was so unique to the Late PM and won accolades. Many wondered how I managed to dress a little girl in my Kashmiri Nehru Jacket and my dad’s dhoti to look like the revered statesman….little did they know that a father had taken half day leave from office to come home and worked overtime to stitch the jacket from within to shorten it by almost seventy five percent of the original size.

As I was reminiscing, the flag which was flying high at midnight was now at half-mast. Next morning newspapers carried these oft quoted lines from the pen of the man who had just been laid to rest.

गीत नया गाता हूं

टूटे हुए तारों से फूटे बासंती स्वर
पत्थर की छाती मे उग आया नव अंकुर
झरे सब पीले पात कोयल की कुहुक रात

प्राची मे अरुणिम की रेख देख पता हूं
गीत नया गाता हूं

टूटे हुए सपनों की कौन सुने सिसकी
अन्तर की चीर व्यथा पलकों पर ठिठकी
हार नहीं मानूंगा, रार नहीं ठानूंगा,

काल के कपाल पे लिखता मिटाता हूं
गीत नया गाता हूं

SS 

Goodfellas

Today I sat with four youngsters at a restaurant over lunch. These youngsters were new management trainees recruited by the company who worked on a project given by me for over three weeks. The project was slightly futuristic and from day one these trainees worked beyond expectations and churned out information and data which convinced me of their calibre. This was a thank you treat as they submitted the excellent report to me on time. It was also the first time that I got to openly speak to them beyond work and know them better. While one girl had a reasonably good family background, the other young lady had lost her father while she was pretty young.  The third said he was the first in his family to be in service while all others were in business. The fourth man who spoke very little told me a tale that swept me off my feet.

Santosh was born in West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh. His father was a truck driver as was his grandfather. His mother looked after the home while the father travelled across the land. Santosh also had a younger brother. Unlike many who were from families in the profession of driving, Santosh and his brother were sent to a local school in their village by their father. He was a bright student and was among the front rankers in the class but times at home were never easy. He earned money for the first time when was still in class 6 when he got Rs 50 for unloading bags of cement from the trucks. By the time he was in class 9, he was earning some regular money by cleaning the AP State Transport buses at the local depot.

Santosh claims that driving is in his blood and he started driving heavy vehicles by the time he was in class 10. Much against his wishes, he was made to complete senior secondary but he refused to study further. By now he had got his licence to drive and he hit the road in the rightful family tradition. One day Ms. Sridevi, a teacher from his school days, was shocked when she saw him slide out from beneath a truck after greasing the parts below. She heard his story and encouraged him to continue his studies which he finally did. He enrolled in a distance learning program as he travelled for almost 26 days in a month. All this while his younger brother continued with his studies refusing to join the family trade.

The boy started driving huge multi-axle trucks and worked for one person all through five years. The benefactor was in the business of trucking and Santosh would carry truckloads of fish and eggs to Kolkata and other places in West Bengal. These were not the refrigerated trucks but normal high body trucks where the fish were placed in plastic boxes filled with ice. He had to make sure that the cargo reached the destination on time or else the Bengali Bhadralok would not have touched smelling fish and the Boss back home would have been terribly upset. Santosh never missed the timelines even though he said he would often get into trouble with the police on the road who would try and obstruct him when he refused to grease their palms. Delightfully he told me about the route he would take to reach Bankura and Asansol. Unrelenting in his principle of not paying anyone anything that wasn’t right, he moved on.

The father had warned him against going to Assam. For some time Santosh obeyed his father but his heart longed to go beyond Bengal. Finally, one day he took a truck to the green land of Assam and then the trips to the far east of India became more common till one day someone from his village saw him there. The matter was duly reported and an angry father reprimanded the young man who by now was a hardened man behind the wheels and would hardly listen to such parental advice. He started frequenting these parts more often and he said he needed to now add thermocol to ensure longevity to the crates of fish at the back. Long trips to Dibrugarh and remote parts in Nagaland added to his thrill and also earned him good money.

Santosh in a few years bought himself a truck of his own but still carried fish and eggs for the same transporter. Earnings rose which helped him pay for his younger brother’s education at the Government College in Pondicherry. The younger brother egged Santosh, who by now had completed his graduation through distance learning course, to appear in a competitive exam to join the same management course in Insurance as him. And as luck would have it, Santosh cleared the entrance exam in the first attempt. He sold off the truck and joined the same college from where his younger brother had passed out for a regular two year management program.

Our company went to the Pondicherry College on Day Zero of recruitment and Santosh was picked up immediately despite his weak communication skills which needed much honing. While telling me his story his eyes gleamed as he said, “My brother who had done regular studies all through wanted to join this company but was not selected and I who missed many normal things in life got selected. Even my scores in the management course were better than him but I am happy he joined a reputed insurance broker at Hyderabad. I am neither ashamed of my past nor shy to share my experiences. By God’s grace I am happy I utilised the opportunity I got.”

When I asked him where he would like to get posted, thinking he would inevitably opt for Hyderabad, “No Sir, I am happy to go and work anywhere. I am a person who has lived a life on the road, I wish to see more. Moreover everything is a luxury to me now!”

While I haven’t met Govind Jaiswal, the rickshaw puller’s son who recently cracked the Civil Services exam in the first attempt, but having met Santosh today, I felt like standing up and saluting him. Surely the lives of Govind and Santosh teach us that adversities cannot put down a good fella.

SS