A Rickshaw wallah's Tirade

“Amar naam Chatterjee!” (My name is Chatterjee!). Sounds like a proclamation from a fiery leader of the masses at a public rally. Much less, one from a rickshaw wallah plying his trade in the dusty bylanes of North Calcutta and addressed to no one in particular.

It was a pleasantly strange coincidence that led me to Chatterjee’s rickshaw on my way home. Instantly, this frail old man launched into a tirade of indignation against the ruling political party whom he branded as a group of turncoats, insisting vehemently and repeatedly to nothing but the pleasant evening breeze that he had always been a Congress man. Yes, he defended, petrol prices have been rising, but surely the bosses in Delhi would admit to that! What is the point of protesting about that in an insignificant meeting of rickshaw wallahs’ union, he asked? It was the tone of uncompromising understanding of world affairs that drew me to listen to him, rather than plug in my earphones and switch off the world. And for it to come from a humble rickshaw wallah surely added to the charm. If at all you expect one of his kind to blabber, it is about their domestic troubles or a cricket match the players had shamed them in. You certainly do not expect him to suddenly start explaining how Parliament works. He went on about how “two thousand crores” are allocated to a given state by Delhi to solve their own problems. And when the money ran out, where did the babus go? They went to the vishwa Bank (World Bank). He didn’t approve of it for sure, he reprimanded as if the old men at their game of carrom had suggested otherwise.

Sixty two years, he said, he had stuck to an honest living. And what had the world given him? A life of drudgery surrounded by “fools” who understood nothing. He spoke of Tagore’s ‘Where the mind is without fear” and he spoke of Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy as we crossed a bridge I had initially feared he would ride me into, with the rickshaw to boot. His old friend Langda Shyam had died. Did the fear of death drive him to compromise with his ideals? No, he insisted, throwing in the odd English phrases. Honesty is the best policy, he bellowed at a group of bewildered women who shielded their children behind their generous Indian waists.

“Today, the world has lost the eminent singer Bhupen Hazarika”, he said solemnly. Yes, he wasn’t in touch with insignificant details like dates, the bard of Assam having passed away nearly a week ago. But surely you could forgive an old man his folly. Chatterjee, as I find myself fondly calling him, reminisced about a popular song by Hazarika “Manush Manushyer jonne” (All men for one another). He labelled as fools all those who could not understand the deep underlying meaning of Hazarika’s lyrics. But he wasn’t a fool, he remonstrated at the top of his voice. He listened and he understood. And then he broke into a melancholic rendering of the same song, drawing catcalls from a group of boys standing at a paan shop we were passing.

A taxi tried to overtake him. Chatterjee warned the driver not to honk the horn. When he was paid no heed, he sniggered at the taxi that had by then long gone, that he would complain to the Dum Dum thana (police station) and pocket a thousand rupees of commission off the two thousand the driver would pay to save himself for a crime that I did not really understand myself.

I would have liked this almost surreal ride to continue but I had reached my destination. He asked me why I had kept quiet all the way and not asked him to ride faster, which evidently most of his rides do. I answered that I had been listening to what he had to say and asked if he listened to Bhupen Hazarika. To which, he paid tribute to the great man along with Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar and Mukesh. With that, he bade me farewell and wished that we meet again.

I certainly wish I do. Three years I have studied social sciences at a college supposed to be one of India’s best. Never have I learnt more than during this rickshaw ride. Sure he didn’t have a lot of fancy things to say. His philosophy of life was the humanistic message of Hazarika’s songs, his understanding of politics was deep although simple and he emphasised again and again on the principled honest life of Tagore and Vivekananda that can be the salvation of mankind according to him. He scoffed at the corruption of the taxi driver and the narrow worlds of his fellow men who did not know how politics worked and did not understand the socialist message of “Manush Manushyer jonne”.

At the end of the day, we may agree with Chatterjee and we may laugh him off as a mad snob. But either way, it is a woeful commentary of our world today that a sixty-two year old man has to pull rickshaws for a living. It is a woeful commentary of our society that the opinion of a rickshaw wallah, however intelligent is ridiculed. Would we really be worse off with a few more like him, although better appreciated?