Name: Majibul Rahman
Age: Does not remember correctly should be between 32-35
years
Marital Status: Married with two kids for 4
years. Meets his wife twice in one years
Occupation: Rickshaw puller in New Delhi
for 15 years now
Earnings: Rs. 200-250 ($4-5) per day on
days he works
Residence: A small room in an
“unauthorized” basti that now spans from Noida toll road to sector
Originally from: some village I don’t even remember the name
of now
Education: None
No, I don’t remember the village he comes
from but I do remember being shocked when he told me that there is no
electricity in his village. The nearest city to have electricity around his
home is 15 kilometers away.
This is the bio data of a Rickshaw puller
in Delhi. There are over a million more like him in Delhi who come from small
villages we have never heard of and find “well paying” job as a rickshaw
puller. There are millions of such Indians, who work as street vendors, maids,
drivers, rag pickers and some who don’t find jobs work as beggars. I was
walking around in Chandani Chowk with my friend the other day and I was stunned
to discover the different ways in which an ordinary Indian makes money, feed
herself and run her home. To clarify what an ordinary means is the one who
doesn’t own a vehicle and work in an air conditioned office. Simply put someone
who never files tax because s/he doesn’t make enough income. Because there are still millions of people out
there who have never logged on to the internet, who do not use facebook and who
do not tweet!
I know I am not making any kind of a
revelation. No! I am not saying we are a poor country with lots poor people
around. I would let the foreign Goras coming in to make movies about that to
let us know what we really are. What I felt after returning from United States
is that India lives in layers and stratas. Its upper class never interacts with
middle class. Its middle class very rarely maintain contacts with the lower
middle class and brings up its children telling that the poor kids are not to
be spoken to. We grow up mistrusting and mistreating the section of the society
that does the most amount of physical labor and makes least money simply
because they make less money.
How little I know an average Indian, (not
an ordinary Indian), is something I realized when I spoke to one of the Rickshaw
driver for the shoot of my documentary. He was kind enough to take us to his
jhuggi. We sat there for an hour and he opened up his life to us in one
conversation. It was a small room where he said up to 5 people could live at a
time. There was a small fan on the ceiling, a lamp, an old suitcase, mat on the
floor. A few papers, carry bags and clothes were piled on each other on a
corner and he sat in the center. There was a tap right outside his room and one
his neighbor was washing clothes outside his room. He said a room of his own in
the basti could cost uptp Rs 30000.
He makes around Rs 4,000-5,000 a month
after pulling his rickshaw everyday for 9-10 hours, pays around Rs 700 as his
rent, Rs 300 as phone bill and sends Rs. 2,000-3,000 every month. Back home in
his village in West Bengal he has his parents, his wife, and two kids. He has a
small piece of land on which his family does farming. Sometimes they hire
labourers at a daily wage rate of Rs. 100 per day.
While most rickshay walley in Delhi rent
their Rickshaws from contractors who are referred to as “Rickshaw Mafias”,
Majibul owns his rickshaw. When I asked Majibul about his problems a rickshaw
wala, he had no complaints. What struck me the most in this conversation was
that though from my perspective I could see his problems but from where he
stood, he had a satisfactory life. He
had did not want anything more from his life. He did not have goals set in his
mind or “stress” that gave high blood pressure at young age. In a small room he
lived with a big heart. Even though we were strangers to him, he had the heart
to let us into his home, offer us bottled water and Coke because he was so sure
we wouldn’t drink water from the bottle he carried around for himself.
How many Indians and how much of India I
really know I wonder now. A proud Dilliwali, I am, But how often have I tried
understand how people live in the small jhuggis that we complain the landscape
of Delhi. Who are these people who come small villages into big cities and do
all sorts of jobs. Who are these who clean your table after you walk off from
the Dhaba after a meal, who is the lady who cleans up my room, who is man who
pulls me from home to Metro station on his rickshaw, who is the guy who sells
me onions, who is the guy who cleans up my car each morning for Rs 250 a month
and yet leaves my Rs. 500 back into dash board when I drop it in my car. Who
are these people. Indians. My fellow Indians.
