Blah Blah Blah & A Delhi Story

Back in a rain soaked Kolkata after 3 months is beginning to seem therapeutic for my mostly blank mind. With nothing much to do but eat, read, swim and sleep countless hours is definitely my present version of the good life. And the good life brings all sorts of urges back to the fore. Ok that doesn't sound right. But its my blog and I'm rarely right so..

I was thinking of Delhi all day, and how at the end of each working day I'd come home to find something or the other out of place. Be it a busted electric line or garbage that hasn't been cleared or no water or, worst of all, a non-functional AC. The last one's a death sentence man. Trust me. Even so Delhi has grown on me, so much so that I know presently Delhi is where I wish to find myself. Calcutta is more of a spa treatment undertaken to pamper oneself. And one does need pampering after surviving Delhi and its weather.

The city and its weather work together hand in hand to drain the life force out of the working man. There is no chi flowing through the people of Delhi. It all gets sapped out by 3pm latest. I for one often resort to lying on the floor infront of the AC just to get some semblance of energy back into me so that I can make the effort to get out again to find dinner. Hence blogging definitely goes for a toss.

But there is another side to Delhi. And that is its people. I know, especially being an ex-pat Bong in the capital, the general notion of Dilliwallahs is that of being rude and uncouth and (if you ask a Bengali Bhadrolok) uncivilised. While I personally do not give credence to any of the aforesaid, it may be admitted that the populace of Delhi are certainly more aggressive than those in most other parts of the country. It is evident from my own boss who has subjected me to the kind of abuse in 3 months that I have not experienced in 25 years on this planet!

However, in Delhi and in the same aforesaid office I also came across this gentleman called Shivkumar or Shivkumarji as I call him. Shivkumarji has been my boss's munshi (clerk) for 8 years and had been his father's clerk for 2 years before that. He hails from a Brahmin family in Western Uttar Pradesh and had come to Delhi 13 years back, then a 24 year old man with a young wife and a baby girl tagging along for they were his responsibility. Shivkumarji wasn't literate so there were no office jobs he could land. However, he had experience farming as a boy and was able to find work as a gardener at Ms. Renuka Chowdhury's (presently an elected Member of Parliament) house in Delhi. Ms. Chowdhury's gardens are still tended by Shivkumarji, whose 13 years of faithful service has been rewarded with a place to stay within Ms. Chowdhury's premises itself. But being a gardener is not enough to feed 3 mouths, especially in a city with a cost of living index as high as New Delhi. And since Shivkumarji's arrival the costs have only gone up. So Shivkumarji juggled jobs. He would tend to the gardens early in the morning, then go out and deliver newspapers, then work odd jobs at various stores and eventually also substitute for another to run a photocopy machine at Patiala House. It was here that he was introduced to the legal profession. He met clerks who had come to Delhi from diverse parts of the country, and made friends and even learnt to read in bits and pieces. Sufficient to recognize particular names of advocates on the daily cause lists and matter numbers on the display boards.

My boss's father, whom I admire greatly, is an extremely docile and learned gentleman. He speaks normally in what sounds like a loudish whisper. Shivkumarji through his new found friends and contacts heard of an opening at the aforesaid counsel's office as a peon, and the same was a lucrative offer for him at the said time. Hence he shifted from the photocopy machine at Patiala House to being a peon at a Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record's office. This brought him some extra money and some extra time to spend with his family. Unfortunately within 2 years of his joining his boss's health started deteriorating to the extent of him abandoning his practice to his foul mouthed and short tempered only child (my boss). The father's erstwhile court clerk refusing to work under such a poor specimen of the humankind, his son had no choice but to accept Shivkumarji as a clerk for by then the resourceful Shivkumarji had pretty much mastered basic English letters and numbers, sufficient for him to check the daily lists and boards required to assist an Advocate. His sweet and polite demeanor further lent him a good rapport with most people at the Section offices and Registry of the Supreme Court making him invaluable to any Advocate-on-Record.

Thus Shivkumarji quit delivering newspapers and working odd jobs at grocery stores and photocopy machines for the relatively stable position as an Advocate's peon and then found himself promoted to the position of a clerk under the said Advocate's son. He continues to live and work on Ms. Chowdhury's gardens every morning, and he further delivers cause lists to various offices in the evening after my boss leaves. His earnings, though modest by the ever increasing Delhi living standards, are presently sufficient for him further provide a stable and loving home for his wife, send his daughter to school and induct his 4 year old younger girl (who was born in Delhi) to Montessori as well.

There was this one day when I had to rush to attend to an Arbitration proceeding in the morning and I did not have the time to grab breakfast. Shivkumarji accompanied me that day for I did not know the relevant former judge's house and I could not afford to be late. After the said arbitration, upon hearing that I was hungry, Shivkumarji emotionally blackmailed me to come to his house and provided me with the most hearty breakfast I have had in my 3 months in Delhi. So much so that I chose to skip lunch later in the day.

I like reading fantasy novels and history books to know of great people and their heroic deeds. But 3 months of working and living alone in Delhi has taught me to perceive heroism in a new light. Shivkumarji has been many things (life's forced him to get versatile); namely a gardener, a shopkeeper's assistant, an illiterate peon, a semi-literate clerk and an occasional delivery man. But most of all, he's a good man and an urban hero.

In Delhi I found work alongside a man I really look upto.