Collecting people

Collecting people

 

Everyone likes to collect something. Stamp, a precious stones, seashells, watches. I like to collect people. I have an eclectic collection of them. Such a collection has made my life livable and my soul shine.

 

Let me share a glimpse of my collection with you all.

 

Visram Sivram Salvi is the first person on my list. He is dead and gone. He was a family servant and mentor to me. His immense contribution to what I am today includes life-defining traits such as tying my shoelaces, reading clock dials, washing clothes, and being respectful to elders. He worked for our family for over 40 years. He then grew old and went home to Dapoli, in Maharashtra. How I traced him after two decades is another story to be told.

 

Muli ben was my class teacher in grade 2. She was a widow who always wore white and devoted her life to us rowdy boys and girls in a local primary school. When I was laid down with a plaster on my foot, She visited our home for a month to provide me home lessons when I was sick, a selfless act that I could have never repaid.

 

Sushila ben Shukla, another teacher in senior years prepared me in spoken English in 3 months' time when getting a job was a matter of life and death for me. She used to do cooking on a coal fire angithi on her kitchen floor and made me sit next to her. So for me, it was really a trial by fire. But I got that job and Sushila ben is my hero since then.

 

Prem Mulchand Mulchandani was my assistant when I joined a textile company as a management trainee at Ahemdabad. He took me under his wing from day one. He showed me nook and corner of the vast textile mill, introduced me to everyone who was someone, taught me nuances of textile qualities, took me home for lunch knowing I am a bachelor, and struggling to cook. Prem was a foodie, wore gaudy colors, dark glasses, spoke with a false Hollywood accent but had a heart of pure gold, and played a huge role in my success in that company.

 

Naval Kishor was our company driver in Calcutta. He wore coarse dhoti, blue long shirt, and pink gamcha hanging on his frail shoulder. He would be there at the airport or railway station no matter the day or night. Seeing him at the airport at 2 am was an indescribable relief. His sole aim in life was to make our life comfortable. He dropped children to school, ran errands, picked up, and dropped us and attended to our cars and our homes. I vividly recall his face as I said my tearful farewell at Calcutta airport.

 

Thansingh Negi was my peon when I served the Government of India. Totally illiterate man who attended all my complex paperwork with the efficiency that I could never figure out. He had an unbelievable network of peons in the government departments and he could get me any paper of file in the most rapid manner. He always brought lovely achar from his home in the distant Garwal Teheri region.

 

And lastly, that unnamed woman who sat across me in Pachhim Express train. I could never see her face covered fully in the true Marwari tradition. She watched me forlorn and frustrated not having got the food that I missed ordering. She silently filled a plate of delicious roti, subzi, and achar and placed it in front of me.

 

Was there any way I could have repaid her? Or for that matter to any one of these people! They passed through my life to make it richer in its texture, to provide fragrance that comes through connecting our souls and to make me realize that I am part of this vast universe mysteriously linked to everyone around me.

 

I have some more people in my collection and you will surely hear about them someday.

 

I have not stopped collecting people yet so….