In case you're wondering whether this 'tall','dark', 'amazing','handsome', 'awesome','vibrant','I ran out of words' young man is me.....I hate to disappoint you.
It all transpired a couple of months back, it was high time for UPSC mains and the only thing I could see is the Indian architecture styles, desperately trying to mug up but without much success. My subtle calls for a distraction were heard when an unknown number from Karnataka(courtesy: Free wala truecaller) appeared on my phone. I instantly picked up the call (I mean what could be more mundane than mugging the kind of cements used through history). A man's voice( and my hopes of the caller being the girl whom I had a crush in college were smashed.....again!) from the other side uttered, "Aree bhayiya, kaise ho?.......Pehchana?" with a garnishing of bhojpuri accent. The call came as a pleasant suprise for me and I replied, "Rajkumar Yadav, bhai kaise ho?"
Rajkumar yadav aka Raju was our cook cum kam wali bai in our college days, he is the reason because of which I could live a dignified life in college, distinguished from a room where under garments are seen resting on a sofa or on a laptop, even a plate(yes sadly its true..huh!) which is characteristic of college boys. He was our residency cook back then and soon became a part of our gang.
Rajkumar(A grand name..isn't it) is slightly different from your average domestic help. He has that one thing: a quality that some of us try to inculcate, a trait that most of us have failed to master, an attitude that is hallmark of the great. To sum it up in simple words he is made of the same intangible stuff that Ranchod das Chanchad was made of : A sense of curiosity and A desire to learn.
Within a matter of months Raju learned to operate a laptop, a machine that was completely alien to him. He learned English alphabets an their rough pronunciation. Combine all this with a true bhojpuri guy and what you get is a all day long bhojpuri song marathon on a Sunday on youtube(trust me... avoid it!). After getting hold of youtube Raju became what i can arguably call the biggest fan of that 'cool', 'educating','decent' and a 'reality' show that we all used to watch fondly in college....(come on don't be shy.....no prizes for guessing). Yes, he became a fan of Roadies(boo yeah, yo!). Such was his enthusiasm that we even sent him to Chandigarh auditions. Although he didn't make it he was at the top of the world seeing his heroes live!
Fast forward to 4 years after college all of us flat mates are scattered in different locations. Meanings, aims and problems in life have changed. People who once took pledges of not growing up are facing an identity crises and I am stuck in the silky web of UPSC. All I knew about Raju was that he went with one of our flat mates to Bangalore and that he was earning 8k a month. But my perception changed with the call.
On the call when i enquired from Raju about his financial aspect he said that he was earning around 35-40K a month!(for those of you feeling smug for your salary being more.....use you heads and recognize that he is an illiterate not an engineer) He further explained that he left the job with our friends and through his 'links' earned a canteen contract for a gated defence society in Bangalore!. Like what the hell! Here we find it tough to navigate the social space where a tongue twisting language is spoken and there this almost illiterate bhojpuri guy is using his 'Links' to get 'contract' in an unfamiliar land, earning more than a software engineer! And there is more, he also explained how he was taking part time cooking contracts for bachelors through the internet! I don't remember any one in my circle who has put internet to such a productive use(and i thought i was the man here as i used to read THE HINDU every day).
But Raju had more to say. He credited whole of his success to us, the boys for whom he cooked in college. He said emotionally with a heavy voice that he was just an illiterate, scared and ignorant village lad who was transformed because of us. He recalled those merry and carefree evenings we used to spend on the roof of our flat, those silly jokes we used to insult each other, the names of our crushes which could never proceed further, those baarati dances after getting drunk, the looks on our faces when the house budget over shot and many more light hearted instances. He made me relive all these moments that I had so forgotten during past 4 years, the value of my friends. I am soon going to meet them in person and express my feelings with a couple of abuses. haha.
In his is brilliant fiction THE WHITE TIGER (and no I was not paid to promote it!) ARVIND ADIGA talks about how an illiterate village boy becomes the owner of a booming business in Bengaluru. He calls the man the White Tiger because just like a white tiger, who is born once in a generation there are seldom instances where a person is born literally capable of carving out his own destiny. Guess Mr. Adiga who found a real WHITE TIGER.
Abhishek Rana
