My first time living alone and what an incredible way to start: none other than the capital of India itself. New Delhi. But I must admit my initial thoughts on Delhi were iffy at fairest and not just because of its skin cracking heat, its high crime levels and sheer lack of empathy compared to my favorite Indian metro Bangalore, but also because unlike other Indian cities the initial hustle and bustle and the clear materialistic approach to life made Delhi feel soul-less. Just another place with more malls than the rest, just another place with more hormonal teenagers than the rest, just another place with more class divide than the rest,…..just another place.
How wrong I was.
It just took one conversation with an auto driver named Moti Lal Yadav for me to realize that this city made history every day. As an economist wannabe it is painfully obvious that more oft than not the main reason for migration of people to cities is purely economic. An almost mundane feeling set in as I wrote those words. But what is so incredible and so unnoticed is why those economic conditions arose. What would force an ordinary family man to leave his family, his wife, his kids and come to the mercy of a merciless city. And this is exactly where untold epics of a third world country are written. Stories that would dwarf the empathy vehicles of even the best novellas.
Every migrant has a story to tell. One of sheer heartbreak or even breaks. And yet they move on searching for a silver lining each day. Some dream big, some dream reunion with family, some dream about their next meal but they all dream of happiness and contentment.
I met Moti Lal Yadav after finishing my tour of “just another” mall with my good friends. He had the humbling responsibility of taking a one time drama queen, over-zealous and spoiled kid aka me back to my hotel. After the initial dialectical bravados from both sides in the ever raging meter vs pre-determined price debate where he decided to charge me 100 bucks and I said put the meter on or I am leaving we set off on our way. I decided to strike up a casual conversation with the man because I did not want any hard feelings due to our initial verbal duel and I also did not want to test whether he understood the concept of displacement (shortest distance from one point to another … in this case my hotel and mall being the points) or not when he did not get his way. What followed was a fantastic story from a man that one would think had much to be humble about.
Small talk with random strangers soon becoming my forte’ I decided to ask Moti Lal to put Delhi in context of his village in Bihar. Surely the quiet, languid, and lazy life of village would be a bliss compared to working in Delhi? Surely not was the reply and all my romantic notion of Indian villages came to a grinding halt with the narration of his life. Moti Lal’s village seemed to follow a ‘misery loves company’ tune. Having come from a background of wealth Moti Lal told me he was initially an owner of a brick factory and a successful one at that with the scale of operations crossing well over 3 crores (1 million dollars) until the democratic machinery decided to exercise itself. In one of the state elections there occurred a horrific shootout between the two rival parties that were vying for votes. An opportunistic villager with a grudge decided to falsely implicate Moti Lal as one of the protagonists of the event. What followed was the brunt of the flawed Indian judicial process falling on his back and wiping out his entire life’s savings and business. To add insult to injury another false FIR was filed against him for kidnapping and murder (although the victim “miraculously” returned home after 12 years) as a consequence of which Moti Lal spent 18 months in jail.
Fighting 2 cases combined with a family to support and with no business and no the situation looked dire. The weathering of his body due to age added further limitations to his economic outreach and made farming on his land an unviable alternative. But as the apt saying goes, “life is full of irony”, Moti Lal was dealt with a stroke of luck in his darkest hour. One of his friends approached him with an offer to invest and restart the brick business with him being manager because of his excellent expertise in the field and he indeed was an expert as far as I could tell. He had complete knowledge of supply and demand, labour and land, rent and entrepreneurial might almost as if it was an intuition. A subconscious and genetic understanding that only a man from a humble village that knows the value of money and has decided to apply himself would have. But alas with money comes power and with power comes politics and he lacked political foresight. As the business after the initial run started to stagnate his investor decided to go on an austerity by getting rid of Moti Lal. Moti Lal being half the partner decided to ask for compensation for his half of the company but false accounting practices meant he would come out empty handed…again.
At this point there raged a flurry of moral questions and ethical dilemmas in my head. What is it that drives this man to still keep clawing day after day having lost everything not once but twice? How does one not retreat into a shell and shun out the outer world when the vitriolic environment of poverty, hate and corruption projects every relationship devoid of integrity? How does one heal the mental scars and what right would anyone have to judge him if he rebelled against the system by becoming a criminal, a naxalite or an anti-social element? A system that is so corrupt that you would have to lack character to not say “enough is enough” yourself. What do you tell your child when you go home? You have no friends in this world? Respond to cruelty with cruelty and be suspicious of kindness? Every day life is a rat race and only death waits at the finish line?
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