A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (11 page)

As he left, the television channel that had masterminded the prank reported that the security guards saluted him smartly and wished him a pleasant day. Rajput, a small-time actor and car driver by profession, was playing his favourite role: Shatrughan ‘Shotgun’ Sinha—Bollywood star of yesteryear and at that time, the Union Minister of Shipping.

On interrogation, Rajput stated that he had frequently played Sinha’s double on road shows and television spoofs and agreed to impersonate him in Parliament when the television channel promised him instant fame and a subsequent meeting with the famous actor-politician. After his interrogation, police told the press that Rajput had been charged with impersonation, criminal conspiracy, and trespassing. The promised meeting with Sinha did not materialize either.

Soon after the incident, Parliament security spent an undisclosed sum on upgrading the already upgraded security infrastructure. If the Final Performance Profile released after upgradation is to be believed, Parliament is now protected by an array of devices such as ‘Boom Barriers, Road Blockers, Active Bollards, Tyre Killers, Flap Barriers, Power Fences, Emergency Sound System and CCTV cameras’. Rehaan, however, pays no heed to these measures when he slips into Parliament. His daily pass suffices. On days when he doesn’t feel like going to the railway station, a contractor’s lorry picks him up from the footpath of Bara Tooti and deposits him deep in the heart of the Indian Parliament.

At the gate, each mazdoor is assigned a security pass and, after a stringent body search, is given a standard issue trolley and dispatched along a circuitous tour of offices, departments, waiting rooms, and meeting chambers.

Broken down to its basic components, any sarkari office—and Sansad Bhavan is no exception—works on the presumption of continuous communication between the ‘officer saab’, the ‘clerk saab’, the ‘storeroom’, and the ‘staff’. Most offices now boast of the latest advances in telecommunication such as the telephone and intercom, yet effective administration is still premised on the twin pillars of the Ghanti and the Parchi.

According to Rehaan, every officer saab’s office is equipped with the following conveniences: a television, an air conditioner, a sofa set, a double bed, two peons—better known as chaprasis—and one bell, or ghanti, to summon them. Originally wrought from the finest brass, the modern ghanti sacrifices art at the altar of efficiency and now appears as a nondescript plastic button on the officer’s desk. Once pressed, the ghanti emits a crackling electronic buzz. The PA then sends across the chaprasis who are handed a note, or parchi, by the officer. In case the PA does not respond to repeated buzzing, the officer might be forced to pick up his phone and punch out his PA’s extension number to draw his attention; this could constitute a serious breach of protocol.

The parchi issued by the officer usually concerns the limited functionality of some aspect of his office. Perhaps his air conditioner has packed up—exhausted by the battle of maintaining a room temperature of twenty-three degrees in a forty-five degree summer; perhaps there is a crease in his double bed. Whatever the problem may be, it is expressed in an illegible scrawl that requires the PA to leave his desk and appear in person to ascertain the exact nature of the inconvenience. Once apprised of the situation, the PA then asks the clerk in charge of the storeroom to send a replacement. The most sought-after objects in the storeroom are, in order of popularity, chairs, jugs, air conditioners, rope, tables, and the occasional almirah.

Rehaan’s job consists of replacing faulty parts with the repaired units. He is not required to fix anything—for that there is a separate department of electricians, technicians, and plumbers—he is merely expected to place objects adjacent to their point of installation. Normally, in the course of an eight-hour shift, for which he is paid hundred and fifty rupees a day, there seem to be enough offices with broken furniture, malfunctioning air conditioners, and missing almirahs to keep him busy.

‘One day we showed up at Sansad as usual, but instead of escorting us to the storeroom the guards took us to this other part of the complex.’ There, shimmering ever so slightly in Delhi’s omnipresent haze, stood a building that was never in the original layout and so should never have been built. ‘It was an illegal construction, an encroachment in the middle of Parliament—hidden away where no one could see it. They told us to empty it. It’s an order from the Supreme Court—no encroachment anywhere!’

‘So what are they building in its place?’

‘A pleasure garden,’ says Rehaan without a hint of irony. ‘Next we went to the old cash room and they told us to empty it out. You know what was in there?’

‘Cash?’

‘No, files. Mountains of files, piles of files, cupboards full of files, shelves weighed down by stacks of files wrapped in alternating bright red and dull green cloth. So many files that even the extra rooms built specially (and illegally) were filled to the brim. So many files that it finally took more than twenty trucks to cart them from Sansad to their new resting place in Lok Nayak Bhavan near Khan Market.’

‘So what was in these files?’

‘Everything about everything, Aman bhai. Records of every transaction ever made; of every square foot of land bought, sold or disputed; every suspect, accused, and victim; every murder, hanging, and encounter; north to south; east to west. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha. Sab kuch, Aman bhai—a record of everything from the number of cars in a department to the number of leaves of every Asoka tree in Lodi Gardens.’

Rehaan pauses to roll a joint; all this talking has sobered him up. I smoke silently, marvelling at how this small world in Bara Tooti intersects with a much larger universe. No one in the press wrote about the demolition of an illegally constructed room in Parliament; I’m sure none of us even knew about it. But Rehaan was there, with his hammer and his beedis, and his small pouch of marijuana tucked away in his trousers. Smoking his joint, Rehaan spent a week transporting top-secret files that reporters like me would give an arm and leg to spend five minutes with.

‘Rehaan, can I come with you to Parliament one day?’

‘You, Aman bhai? Why?’

‘Just to see what palledari work is like.’

‘I can’t take you into Parliament, Aman bhai. The security is really strict. Plus, you don’t really have the body of a palledar.’

That much, I concede, is true. As consolation, Rehaan offers to take me to a place that he promises me is as exciting as Parliament.

•

‘Attention, all passengers. Passengers please note that Train Number 5708 Amrapalli Express from Amritsar to Katihar will be arriving shortly on Platform Number 3.’ It is 3:40 pm at Old Delhi Railway Station; I am here on the directions of Rehaan and have been instructed to look out for his supervisor: a short, bald, and portly man called Babulal.

On first impression, I have to admit that Old Delhi Railway Station is scarcely as exciting as the Indian Parliament. On a scale of ten, I’d give it about two and a half for excitement, and only because the man standing next to me is arguing with a railway employee about the best way to transport a batch of live chickens. ‘Just wait till the train comes in, Aman Bhai,’ Rehaan says and slips away as he doesn’t want to be seen with a pesky journalist.

At a distance, I can make out Babulal striding along Platform 3; he looks like an unlikely candidate for the post of the overlord of Old Delhi station. But like the truly accomplished, Babulal has risen to his position of prominence on the backs of those who have consistently underestimated him. He has never made the mistake of appearing either brilliant or ambitious; but, in his defence, his job has never required him to be.

Babulal is the head foreman of one of Old Delhi Station’s bigger contractors—someone called ‘Anand sir’—and is responsible for moving more than a hundred tonnes of cargo a day. His job requires him to be steady, dependable, and relentless, and my sources at Bara Tooti insist that he possesses all three qualities in abundance.

I walk up to him and introduce myself, but it is apparent that Babulal has absolutely no interest in either befriending me, or telling me about his life, work, or interests. Babulal, it appears, is a man of few interests.

Rehaan has described railway work as perfectly attuned to the rhythms of the marketplace. The job is to load and unload goods trains as they roll through Old Delhi Railway Station. Workers can either work on a semi-permanent basis where they are paid three thousand five hundred rupees a month for a four-day week, or can choose to work on a dehadi basis for two hundred and fifty a day. Those working on contract are free to pick up dehadi elsewhere on their free days.

As a professional journalist, I obviously cannot take anything Rehaan has told me for granted without corroboration from an independent source, and who better than Babulal? Precisely what sort of work is railway work? Is it a form of azadi or gulaami? Dehadi or permanent? Is Babulal a thekedar? Or does he work for one? Maybe he is some sort of subcontractor: a chotta thekedar. An abundance of questions, but given Babulal’s reticence, and the imminent arrival of the Amrapalli Express, I’m struggling to make some sort of headway when the announcement lady starts up again: ‘Attention, all passengers…’ Already delayed by almost an hour, the Amritsar–Katiyar Amrapalli Express is due in the next fifteen minutes.

Eager to bring the train back on schedule, the announcement lady with the mechanical voice has decreed that the train will stop for only twenty minutes instead of the customary thirty.

‘Come along,’ Babulal says and hurries off down the platform. I switch on the recorder and give chase.

He first walks up to the PCO booth under the staircase and hands over a crisp five-hundred-rupee note. ‘Give me the most tattered ten-rupee notes you can find.’

He then strolls further along the platform to the slender steel girder from which hang several steel locks. ‘Harrison Seven Levers, Harrison Seven Levers,’ he mutters as he shoves his hands into the cavernous pockets of his cotton trousers and retrieves several crudely wrought keys, each capable of unlocking several different locks produced by the same manufacturer. He takes his time choosing the right lock, comparing shank lengths and the strength of the locking mechanism, and once satisfied, walks to the head of the platform where the train is expected to stop.

As a man with a press card, I cannot be wished away, but I have been instructed to stand at a safe distance and well out of the way. The Amrapalli Express rumbles in at 1605 hours. The lady with the mechanical voice announces the arrival of the train, and Babulal’s team pounces upon it. I skulk behind a bunker of wooden crates, recorder in one hand, notebook and pen in the other.

16:06 hours: Babulal leaps aboard even as the driver grinds the train to a halt. He wrenches open the lock with one of his many skeleton keys and throws his weight against the sliding door.

16:08 hours: Babulal is still struggling with the door. It seems to be blocked by boxes jammed against it from the inside. Seven mazdoors are wrestling with the handle, practically wrenching the door off its rails. I can see Rehaan hovering around at the back of the team, bouncing on his toes like a pro athlete about to take to the field.

16:10 hours: The door is finally open. Chotta, a slender, wiry member of the team, had slipped through the tiny child-sized space between the door and its frame and moved the box pressed against the door channel. The door slides open all at once even as Chotta shouts out a warning. A four hundred kilogram crate bursts out of the train car and flies in my direction, bouncing off the platform with a dull thud followed by the sharp crackle of splintering wood. Fortunately I am some distance away.

16:15 hours: Eleven more gunny-covered wooden crates have been flung out onto the platform and arranged in a neat grid. The team is running on schedule. Babulal is slowly returning to ground state; the vein on his forehead gradually subsides, the hand holding the beedi has stopped trembling. He pulls out a large pink delivery challan from his pocket and laboriously notes down the names and addresses scribbled across the crates in black permanent marker. The team scurries back down the platform and returns with a handcart piled high with identical gunny-wrapped crates with different markings. Loading begins.

16:17: hours: The train is scheduled to leave in the next eight minutes. Loading progresses smoothly and on schedule. Floor space in the bogie contracts and expands rhythmically as the boxes are arranged in horizontal terraces that start from the corners and work their way inwards like an ascending staircase which requires that every successive box be raised only one level at a time. Babulal has finished filling out his delivery challan, and is already planning for the next delivery.

16:20: hours: Panic! A large hairy man in a migraine pattern shirt rushes towards the bogie. He is shouting at the top of his voice. He is waving his hands excitedly. He is threatening to bugger Babulal and the entire team. He is Pramod, the head contractor Anand sir’s eldest son.

16:21 hours: Pandemonium. Of the twelve unloaded crates, six—marked ‘SNC’ in green permanent marker—were meant for the onward journey. They should never have been unloaded. Babulal waves the delivery slip at Pramod, as if to indicate that this was not conveyed in the paperwork—but there is no time for arguments. The train will leave in four minutes.

I can see why Rehaan is such an asset to the team. Everyone else relies on a combination of skill and physics to manoeuvre the boxes into place, daintily flipping hundred kilogram crates using their shoulders as fulcrums and their hips as pivots. Rehaan, meanwhile, is simply muscling his way through the carriage, lifting up boxes and flinging them aside with insouciance.

16:22 hours: With three minutes to go, things are unravelling for Babulal’s team despite Rehaan’s heroics. Sensing the delay, the engine driver sidles up to Babulal. ‘The train shall leave immediately, Babulalji. It would be terrible if some of your cargo is left behind.’ Babulal reaches into his pocket for the bundle of tattered notes and hands the driver a handful.