(This one is from my archives. Written on 22nd Jul 2001).
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Once she went so far as to try and transcribe the Indian part of her name, "Mira" into her Filofax, her hand moving in unfamiliar directions stopping and turning and picking up her pen when she least expected to. Following the arrows in the book, she drew a bar from left to right from which the letters hung; one looked more like a number than a letter, another looked like a triangle on its side. It had taken several tries to get the letter in the book, and even then she wasn't sure if she'd written Mira or Mara. It was a scribble to her, but somewhere in the world, she realized with a shock, it meant something.
-Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies, Sexy
To call this man old would be an understatement. He had this extremely wrinkled face, and his health was emaciated to put it mildly. I first caught sight of him some months ago. The building structure in which I live was undergoing a complex reconstruction job, involving the addition of extra floors and all the associated functions that come along such as plastering, painting and so on.
The construction business is quite a labor intensive job, yet labor is possibly the cheapest component, due to its abundance. Workers are like (and are) nomads who travel from site to site, as the construction flows from structure to structure. Most of the time, you shall find these workers exist in a make shift adobe, where they stretch from one construction day to another, and this make shift adobe is actually the construction site itself. The story I am recounting happened in the same structure where I live, and the old man in question was a construction worker living on my premises. (I can't help feel flirtatious about the 'my', somehow sounds hollow isn't it.)
The man was old, must have been around 70 years old. Wrinkled face and emaciated, he was a frail short structure no more than four and half feet. Pitch black, in all probability he was from Hyderabad, since I have often heard him speak Telegu.
I remember the first time I saw him. I was returning home from work, and it must have been around 10.30 at night, and as I entered my building, I saw this man in our compound. Did not shock me to see him, since I guessed that he was a construction worker. He was sitting in a slightly elevated bed made of bamboo and jute wires. He was playing with a small kid, who was in fact a girl. The girl must have been no more than 4 years of age. As I walked towards the entrance of my home, my eyes lingered on this sight, and for a brief moment, I found that our eyes met. Even he must have general inquisitiveness as regards a stranger (thats me).
In that moment, I detected a sense of fear in his eyes, the fear of the society. Possibly, for him, I represented that section of the society which he resented and had learnt to treat with respect and sacrosanct, a section he was afraid. There was some acquiescence about the whole look, yet there was no malice.
As I thought hard, I realized with a shiver and shake that it must be so claustrophobic for the life embedded within that man. He knows that he is towards the last days of his life. At the age of 60-70 he still needs to toil hard for 12 hours a day to earn Rs. 100. (My dad is about the same age too.). At night, he eats roti's (wheat cakes) made without oil or grease on plain hot coal, with a few pieces of onion and green chilies (sounds filmy, but very true, I have seen that myself). This life which I am assuming is so similar to mine, does not crave for a Mercedes, does not want to have a rendezvous with J Lo, does not want to wear gold rings and chains, even to dream of these things would be perfidy for him.
What is that which distinguishes two similarly capable lives. Birth and environment maybe....I don't know, but thats such an unfair brownie to be held by one life against another.
What is it that I felt at moment. I could not help imagine what must be going through the old man's head. And I knew if I were him, I would have hated life, and run to death. Don't I do that already? The old man does not have a life, and is not allowed weapons using which he can fight for one. He is a slave, not to life, but to the society around him. I hate being a slave.
What forced me to write this. Guilt. Nope. A man without a set of values and conscience cannot experience guilt, guilt as a concept in itself is alien to me. Philanthropy. I never believed too much in that, think in its common form, its more of evil than good. Anguish, a response to the pain around, like the Buddha maybe. Nope. I am surprised at the pain around, but nothing even close to the Buddha. What is it then. Despise...maybe.
BTW, I spend Rs.100 daily on my food and travel expenses without a second thought, and Rs.100 is exactly the same amount the man fights to make after 12 hrs of grueling work. . For a person(me, that is) who does not believe in God, after life or any of that bull crap, its hard for me to reconcile with the fact that most of us are completely servile, puppets in the hands of circumstances, victims of some cruel experiment gone completely awry.
Do I love life?
22 July 2001
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