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