a mARTIAN dIARY

Some people by a single act of volition leave a mark on millions of people without ever intending it and the irony of life is such that at the time of the act and years thereafter they never realise the weight of their decisions nor come to face with the millions of faceless people whose face-lines they changed. It is like an invisible cloud that took its first steps of formation the moment they took the decision and then ever growing exponentially every moment thereafter as the decision took effect affecting one, then ten , then thousands of people in succession, always following the person around in its growth, awkward and blissfully unaware, ever threatening to vanish into thin air with in a single act of fury but never driven beyond that invisible line between life and death.

India with its controlling past has many such examples, where decisions that touched the life of millions of people was taken in a moment which was more devoted to finding out ways to reach ‘that’ itch on the back which was at that no-mans land the hands could not reach, in some dingy office with yellow walls, pastels falling out not because the funds were not there to repaint but because the funds were taking a stroll with the Mrs as that lucknowi chicken churidar that was bought a year back, and under a cranking fan, which started cranking the day it was installed and which most people that knew about its existence could never imagine without that sound

But as fate would have it not all decisions were done with the same callousness that these dingy offices bring to mind. Yes there were idealists. People who were beyond corruption or the arrogance that was brought in by the protective rationalisation that destroyed all planning centric economies like ours. When Sam Pitroda was entrusted with the task of modernising Indian telecommunication sector, he was a idealist, a man with a dream. He dreamt of an India where no mothers cried for want of hearing their son’s voice and where no lover slept without hearing sweet nothings from their distant better half. He dreamt of an India, who could rival global standards of telecommunication and more importantly global costs. And he single-handedly set forth into motion that invisible movement that would eventually have made India one of the most connected and cheapest places in the world for phones. The fact that reality caught up with this dreamer before he could see his dreams fulfilled is another thing altogether.

He also set into motion a revolution that eventually became a welcome addition to the hugely imaginative Indian folklore growing tired of all the freedom heroes as time eroded their charm. He coined the term, the idea - PCO. Public Call Office or PCO’s was a concept which revolutionised how Indians saw telephones. Soon, to an Indian a PCO was more than just a telephone office. It became a beaming community centre, an unintended fallback to the village centres of the yesteryears. Even in the early years of post-liberal India, private telephone waiting lists was 2-3 years long and more of an luxury item. Anyone who had anything to do with a phone, unless he belonged to the miniscule affluent class with “connections”, had been touched and deeply touched at that, by the PCO. The social meter reached high markings near a PCO for many a love affairs, dispute settlements and business activities centred in and around the PCO.

But still getting a PCO licence was something that required knowing the right people and greasing a few palms. But in line with the socialistic obsession with social justice, there were some exceptions built into the dogmatic and sluggish machinery. One such loophole was the disability clause which set aside permits for people with disability. Though the person who thought up the rule might as well have been inspired by a disabled person he chanced to stare out through his government ambassador car or just a theoretical application of something he learned at a foreign university at the governments expense, none-the-less it touched many less fortunate lives by helping them break out of the metal crutch that society had forced them to wear

Once such person was Chandarshekar Nair or “Chandru” to his close ones, from gods own country. He was to me, till few days ago, same as a bench or water cooler at the railway station I have been using for most of life. But now he is something much more.

The moment of his birth had brought with it an unwelcome guest into the family. From being a revered male child in a middle class Nair family, the instant his deformed that legs came out resoundingly announced the birth of a disability certificate that said he would be paralysed from waist down. As a wailing infant lying in over crowded government natal ward he was blissfully unaware of this, but growing up brought him face to face with the harsh realities of being an invalid in a developing country where it was a rat race everywhere. But what he lacked in motor skills was more than adequately balanced in his cerebral skills. He topped every class he went to. Chandru didn’t like pity, but unfortunately that what he got from most areas. Growing up dreaming the Great Indian Dream of meritocracy and in a state obsessed with academic performance, he looked at studies as the only ladder out of the sea of pity which was drowning him. But even when he passed B.Com with a gold medal, he was seen as the Invalid who happed to get a Gold Medal rather than a B.Com Gold Medallist.

He finally understood something that the jagged faces of reality etched upon his density long back, the fact that the Great Indian meritocratic dream is not for the less-able led like him. From door to door his search for a job yielded only more and more pity. Dejected he contemplated extreme measures until a good Samaritan neighbour moved into his locality and heard pity-filled stories about him. No one will ever know if pity was the emotion that lead him to do what he did next, but history makes that irrelevant and he offered him a chance to get a PCO license through his contacts in govt. Chandru accepted it with open arms and then things changed around him for a turn. “I still remember the evening Madhavan Ettan, came to my house to offer me that option. I had gone and brought rat poison and was praying to god for the strength to go through with it, but he came in like a god’s messenger and rescued me. I and my family owe whatever we have today to him. He not only got me the licence but also got me the seed money to get going with it. But as they say that god calls back good people back to him fast, he died a few years later in an accident on a trip to Guruvayur”

Now sitting in his PCO booth at the un-crowded corner of the chebakam railway station, he and the weighing machine standing tall beside him share something more than the connection with the railway station. Both anachronous in this age of mobile and electronics weighing machines but both an integral part of the memory of many a commuters who use and have used the station over the years. Take any of them away and any picture of the station, drawn either with imaginary strokes of memory’s brushes in ones mind’s canvas or real horse-tail brushes on a paper canvas, would be like the last masterpiece of a maestro on which he was working just before his death. Complete to everyone but still with a sense of incompleteness that no one can put their hands on.

“I have seen it all” he continues in that distinct kochi dialect of the malayalam. “Yep, this station has been my second home for the past 23 years and I have seen it all”. Now nearing 50, I can see small wrinkles starting their conquest of what would once have been a very handsome face, as his voice reverberates thru the lazy afternoon air inside the station. “It’s the lean time” he explains, “thats why I asked you to come at this time when you called up. After the Chennai mail goes at 1 o clock there is no other train at least till 2:30 pm. That’s because today is a Wednesday and there are no long distance trains starting during this time today.” I can see that he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the trains and their timings, and my mind wanders why he doesn’t double up on his PCO business by setting up an enquiry as his voice and demeanour seem more human that the computer-like voice that greets you when you call the official railway system or even at the enquiry counter that is just a few steps away from where I am sitting now. But then my wandering mind comes back and fixes on his voice. “Well, actually business is quite low these days, what almost anyone from a daily labours to fish vendors having a mobile, no one is bothered about using the PCO.” While he talks about mobile proliferation there is a unique tone in his voice, which shows a sense of disappointment but also, to me, a strange sense of pride. I enquire him about this and he replies back “Well even though this PCO is something that puts the food on the table for my family, but it is also something that gave me a sense of worth in this world and I consider my self a proud stakeholder of this industry. Not the PCO industry, but the industry that helps provide the service to the people of this nation be near to their loved ones when they are far and also get their business done from afar. These old arms and body may be a relic from a different era, but I like to think of them as having played a small but important role in its progress.” I think, here is one person who is probably loosing a major part of his income due to the mobile proliferation and still he looks at it in such a manner. As my eyes catch the Vodafone and Airtel posters in his booth, he proudly declares that he also does mobile “currency” charging at his booth which leaves me admiring at his ingenuity and also his sheer power to look at the “Big Picture”.

Slowly our discussions move towards his family, upon which he takes out his purse to show me a B&W family photo. “Mine was an inter-caste marriage, with the daughter of a coolie. At that time we used to have mass inter-caste marriages done by the communist government. EMS himself inaugurated my mass wedding. Her father knew me thru the station and she used to visit often. Since I was not “valuable” to my community there was not much opposition. I wonder whether it was a love marriage but shy away from asking this. Love marriage or not, his love for his family clearly sparkles in his eyes makes my doubt irrelavant Of his 2 sons and 1 daughter, all are settled he says with a sense of accomplishment. “My elder son Krishnan used to help me initially with the PCO but now works in a mobile repairing shop while my younger son, Madhavan works at a travel agency nearby and my daughter is married to a TC in the railways.” After each and every sentence his makes it a point to thank god, the railways and everyone else that helped him to be where he is.

I look out thru the window near his booth, trying to imagine how the view would have changed thru his 23-24 years there. I let know what I am thinking and he looks out, going into a day dream simultaneously. He speaks about how the huge hotel that now occupies most of the view was a small tea shop and how well he knows the owner. The sun is away from the window but the hot Kerala summer sun makes you sure that you don’t forget its presense thru his messengers that heat up the place. The small revolving table fan is doing nothing for the AC’ised me but seems to be enough for him. As he speaks about his buddy ship with the hotel owner, I look at his desk predominantly occupied by a billing machine with a monthly magazine and the days newspaper lying beside it and in the side lies another anachronous relic, a radio, at which he catches me staring.

This brings about another dimension to our discussion in which he tells me about how the railways have changed over the years. Like most people related to the railway fraternity he also seems to admire Lalu Prasad Yadav for the results he is bringing. “The quality of the food has improved; the inside of the station, even though I don’t go in much, has become a lot cleaner. There is a lot of transparency in the tender process thru when some of the work in the station is outsourced. Earlier I used to see lots of people coming to my booth and saying…the train was 12 hours late…train was 24 hours late….now I have even heard the train came half an hour early. All in all he has brought about a face change in the railways.”
His cerebral powers come to fore when he beautifully goes on relating the different things in the cities history to the different changes he observed in and around him; the gulf war, the NRI exodus, the cricket match days, the liberalisation, the party meetings at Cochin, the religious conclaves etc for all this affect his business and also stimulate his fertile mind. And his knowledge of history astonishes me, for he goes thru dates of important events in the city with a super speed. I wonder, if he had more opportunities where he would have ended up.

His disability is something I am, now that I think of it, shamefully scared to tread upon. But he brings me to ease by talking about it as something very natural and something he is not ashamed of. He is probably put to ease for his condition and what he has achieved is something that evokes admiration in me rather than pity. “Our whole society is very disability unfriendly. For example, this is my 2nd home – but I cant use the ordinary entrance for I cant get into using the wheel chair without another person’s help so I have to go around and use the entrance for luggage and then come back to the front. Going to the bathroom is the time I hate the most in a day about for it is an ordeal everyday.”

My experience in the UK and the disability friends services there reminds me of an area where we, as a nation, lag against other countries, something which frightens me for the sheer amount of effort we will have to put in to get it right. On expressing this, he calmly replies that neither he nor any of the less-abled people he knows expects anything drastic overnight. The most they expect is for people to at least start recognising that this is an issue and then to take simple baby steps at a time. By this time his face takes the looks of a serious social activist to whom these issues are visibly close to heart. He talks about the small organisation that he and other less abled people and their well wishers run for bringing such issues to fore and the activities they have undertaken

As 2:30 approaches, I can see the blanket of indolence that had so grasped the station slowly uncover, with people arriving for the train and coolies taking their place in the station to be the first to get to the potential customers. I realise it for me to end this vicarious trip thru Chandru’s eyes and get up and bid good bye to this man, who epitomises most of what is right about the mankind. So this is the story of a faceless Indian who was taken on a roller-coaster ride by destiny but perseverance and hope, along with a little luck, drove him to where he is against impossible odds and I look forward to keeping my promise of putting his story into words so that, after me, you and others can be inspired by him.