Invisible : The sleeping Tamilian, Yelahanka

 

It was a winter morning. Packed in a sweater and warmer jacket, I was busy clearing the cheques to be sent to Bank on my desk. Every day, routinely we had to clear a minimum of thirty to fifty lanks worth of cheques before eleven before Government offices and courts begin to work. Along with financial services, the company also functioned as a northern region headquarters with all the burden of liaison and public relations works. Situated in the middle of Delhi in Connaught Place, the office also attracted a lot of bureaucrats, public personalities, retired defence officials and others, thanks to my boss. On that day, while I was digging deep into office files, cheques and others, it was also a time a software update was being carried out in the office, a frail and thin four feet high old man wearing only a dothi and black torn backpack walked into our office. It was only a couple of months since I've joined the office. He walked in and went straight to my boss without asking permission from the receptionist. A very snobbish person, Rao usually didn't interact with anyone whom he considers are not dressed well, highly polished in behaviour and rich. In about five minutes, he called me to introduce this old man to me. Rao seemed very respectful of this old man and the room was filled with a smell of camphor and vibhoothi. He introduced me to him as Krishna Bhagwan and as I sat next to him, he opened his torn backpack and started taking notes from his bag and from his clothes. There were almost three and a half lakhs on the table. Our accountant took almost half an hour to straighten the notes and count them. He was a Sadhu just returned from his trip to Nepal. Rao was helping him to invest or rather safe keep his money. He had more than eight lakhs of rupee investment with the company in violation of all banking rules. As he was always on a move, he had no acceptable identity or address proof to open any financial deals. Kindly remember this was in 1996 when ITC MD's 8 lakhs salary was a piece of big news. Interestingly, he didn't even have a name; the name Krishna Rao was a gift from my boss. When he bought an additional three and a half lakhs, Rao got a little scared and wanted to sort out the mess before it becomes a serious issue. The story of this Sadhu was the whole year he would roam around the Himalayas and other Hindu religious places and whatever earning he makes, he would come and invest with Rao. He was introduced to Rao by a former cabinet secretary. A beggar looking Krishna Bhagawan, as a Sadhu in fact had very high-level socio-political contacts. Out of three and a half lakhs rupees, two lakh was a gift from Nepal royalty. To make things worse, the day he came to our office was part of his moun vrath month (month of abstaining from talking). Keeping aside all our other works, myself and one of my assistant had to scan through all his bag to find some identification for him. There were a lot of papers in his bag along with some small gold and silver idols. Although most of the papers were religious looking texts, finally we found an old torn family photo of an army man from the pile of paper. Also, an identity card of a soldier from the Indian army- of one Selvaraj, from Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. Despite our persisted probing, he remained aloof and refused to respond to our questions. He sat there patiently looking at our work without any response. The only time he had shown some reaction was when we touched his gold and silver idols. He immediately took them to the washroom to wash them before tying them to his dhoti. At the end of the day, as he was a devotee of Udipi Sri Krishna, we've made a settlement with him to invest in God's name and Udipi Sri Krishna became a depositor in our company. Over the next three years, he came to our office with some more money and once he took back around six or seven lakhs to gift it to VHP's Ram Janam Bhoomi temple. As I moved on from that company, I also moved on from the Krishna Baghawan story. I saw a similar person in Yelahanka when I reached here ten years back. After reaching Yelahanka, as I had not many friends and have nothing else to do, every Sunday I used to roam around Yelahanaka and nearby places on my Cycle. In one of those wandering moments, I met him on the roadside. I found him sleeping on the pavement with his head resting on a worn-out green backpack. There are some food carts around the place and he was sleeping a little far from them. Day 1, I saw him in that position, day 2; same, day 3, day 4 and finally after four months. Anytime and all the time, you will find him sleeping there. After four months, one day I bought a little food for him from the food cart and gave him. Without lifting his body, he took it, kept it near him and without any change of expression went back to his sleep.

After this routine continued for a few days, the food cart person reluctantly told me "sir, why do you buy food for him, he has money, he buys it from me anyway". Somehow suddenly he resonated our Krishna Bhagawan at the back of my mind. I took my drawing book, went up to him and asked his permission to draw him in my limited Kannada. As a strange coincidence, he replied to me in Tamil! over the next many months, I did a lot of drawings of him. Later on, when my family joined me and became busy with work and home, the frequency of my meeting came down drastically. Occasionally when I pass through that place, I would go there to say hello to him. In the last 9 years, I had never seen him in any other position than sleeping one on his bag on the pavement and still, he was able to manage his life and food!. Even as we interacted many times over the years and had exchanged food and some profile sketches, we never actually had any conversation other than a hello here and there. I don't know his name and neither did he ask mine. I don't know his whereabouts but on the first day itself on our first interaction, he knew I am not a Kannadiga and thereafter I knew he was a Tamilian. After the first lockdown when I went to check about him and I found him missing. I never saw him after that. Like Krishna Bhagawan in Delhi, this nameless Tamilian went missing from my life without entering into it. Of course, there are a few drawings here and thee and images here and there