A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi

by Aman Sethi

  But the medicines are lethal. ‘Your face changes,’ says Kedarnath Misra, the taxi driver on Bed 29. ‘The day someone starts the MDR treatment, everyone in the ward can tell just by looking at him.’

  The first week is the worst: every part of the body feels like it is on fire, ‘like an acid eating you up from the inside’. Not many patients can handle the toxicity. They can walk, they can move, but they can’t eat without vomiting up everything forced down their throats. Now in its second month, Kedarnath’s body has grown accustomed to the medicine searing through his veins. ‘It still burns—but in a different way; in a way like I can feel it killing the disease inside me.’

  ‘The drug is like an electric shock to the brain,’ says Ashraf. ‘One shot and you are finished—ekdum khatam.’

  •

  The next day, I bring along a game of Ludo. Ashraf, Kedarnath from Bed 29, and Mustafa from Bed 31 put their masks in place and gather around on Ashraf’s bed.

  ‘We wouldn’t want you to get TB,’ says Ashraf. ‘That would be very sad.’

  Ashraf plays red, I play yellow. Mustafa plays green—but he cheats when he throws the dice. As the game goes on, we talk about life in the hospital. The drugs have eaten away Ashraf’s muscles—his arms look weak and flabby; he says he can’t raise them above the shoulder. For a santrash, this is a serious problem.

  The tools we bought last year are safe in Prabhu’s theka, but he’s unlikely to ever use them again. He could sell them, or rent them out at two rupees a chenni a day, but he can’t live off that money. ‘I’m thinking of starting a sabzi ka business. Buy seasonal vegetables from the villages near Calcutta and sell them in the city every day. I did that for some time as a child—sometimes lemons, sometimes lauki, tomatoes.’

  He seems wistful and far away. He speaks often of death, how it’s hard to stay sane when everyone has relatives who visit, friends who bring food, wives and daughters and sons and brothers who drop by. ‘My daughter’s name was Shabnam,’ he says suddenly. ‘I’ve forgotten my son’s name—he was barely a year old. I don’t know who to live for any more, Aman bhai. There is nothing but sorrow in this hospital. I try to distract myself, but all I can think of is a day when I will try to wake up and won’t.’

  ‘Think of Kalyani and her high-waisted petticoats. The way she used to lean especially low when she filled your glass. The way she would say “Ashraaaaf bhaaaai” and pout.’

  ‘I had a real chance with her, no?’ He’s grinning now. ‘She used to give so much lift. I should have done something. But interest nahi tha.’

  ‘What about in Calcutta?’

  ‘Here and there. There was this woman I met in Tangra. I was drinking chai and she came up to me and pretended she knew me from before.’

  ‘You knew her?’

  ‘Arre, I didn’t know who she was; but what she was I could tell with my eyes closed. I said I have no money and no room; she had a room and offered me a special rate.’

  ‘What rate?’

  ‘See, first time, I think she just really wanted to have sex. So it was free, because she wanted.

  ‘Second time, we just met at the market by accident. I wasn’t really in the mood, but I didn’t mind having sex with her, and she was really sweet, and she didn’t mind having sex with me. So we had sex araam se, and I paid her thirty rupees.

  ‘Third time, I really wanted to have sex with her—I went specifically to look for her near the chai shop and so she charged me forty-five rupees. After that I got tuberculosis.

  ‘But she really liked me, you know. The normal rate is at least seventy rupees.’

  ‘So have you met her since?’

  ‘I sneaked out once to Ghutiyar Market.’

  ‘Does she know you have TB?’

  ‘These things you don’t tell people, Aman bhai. Even once you get cured.’

  His loneliness has convinced Ashraf of the need to marry again. ‘At least someone will come to see me if I fall ill again, or something happens.’ He notices me smiling to myself. ‘I still get offers, Aman bhai,’ he says stiffly. ‘There are lots of women who couldn’t get married because of money problems and so their marriage age expired. Once my vegetable business takes off, the offers will come pouring in.’

  ‘What about Delhi,’ he asks suddenly. ‘How is everyone? Has Lalloo started his paratha business?’

  And so I tell him. He takes the news quietly, discreetly wiping away tears from the corner of his eye. ‘Lalloo should have come to Calcutta with me. We could have taken care of each other. Chalo, everyone has to go when their time comes. Today it is Lalloo, tomorrow it could be me—who knows? I’m the last one left, Aman bhai. Everyone else is gone: Satish, Lalloo, Rehaan. But I’m still here, in a TB hospital. Dreaming of marriage; and I’m not even all that old.’

  ‘How old are you, Ashraf bhai? It’s been five years and we still haven’t finished our timeline.’ I pull out my notebook one last time.

  8

  1 August 1966—Mohammed Ashraf is born to Sakina in Guraru in Gaya, Bihar. His father works for the railways near Patna, but Ashraf has no memories of him.

  1968—Ashraf’s younger brother Mohammed Aslam is born.

  1971—Ashraf’s father dies, leaving Sakina with the two boys and a tiny piece of land that she farms and subsequently leases out.

  1975—Ashraf is in Patna; he knows this because he remembers the floods of 1975 when the city was submerged for three days. They were living in a jhuggi somewhere on the outskirts of Patna, clinging onto their mother and praying they wouldn’t drown.

  1976—Mohammed Ashraf, aged ten, comes to Dr Hussain’s house.

  December 1984—Dr Hussain is attacked by Taneja’s goons and dies a few weeks later.

  January 1985—Ashraf moves to Calcutta with his mother and younger brother Aslam.

  1987—Ashraf marries for the first and only time. Worried that I might track his wife down, he still refuses to give me her name.

  1990—Aslam stabs someone. Ashraf, his wife, and his family move back to Patna. Ashraf starts a chicken business with fifty rupees. His wife hates Patna and frequently returns to her mother’s house in Calcutta.

  Late 1990—Shabnam is born.

  Early 1993—Ashraf’s son is born. A few months later he separates from his wife and leaves for Bombay.

  1995—Ashraf leaves for Delhi and loses contact with his family back home.

  1998—He returns to Bombay but is unable to find any of his friends and so leaves almost immediately for Surat, Gujarat.

  1999—Works as a mazdoor in Surat, but hates it.

  2000—Arrives in Delhi.

  2007—Leaves for Calcutta.

  ‘That’s it, Aman bhai. Now you know everything about me—sab kuch. Like a government form: name, date of birth, mother’s name, place of residence, everything. Our faces are pasted in your notebook, our voices all locked in your recorder—me, Lalloo, Rehaan, Kaka, J.P. Pagal, everyone. Now you know everything. What will we talk about if we ever meet again?’

  We sit looking out of the first-floor balcony of the TB hospital in Calcutta. It’s late evening; around us, wards burst into light as orderlies move floor by floor through the building, snapping on the lights as they go along.

  ‘The past is done, Aman bhai. In future we will only talk about the future.’

  EPILOGUE

  If it’s a missed call at six, it must be Ashraf. I have a list of numbers that make up the Cartesian coordinates of Ashraf’s life in Calcutta: Ashraf Mustafa Bed 31 for when he’s in his ward, Ashraf Paanwallah for when he steps out of the hospital compound for his evening walk, Ashraf Dost for the one time he ran away and got drunk. ‘This is a friend of Ashraf’s,’ said a nervous voice on the telephone. ‘You need to convince him to go back to the hospital.’

  Soon after he returned to the hospital Ashraf moved to a new ward from where he called me every other day for three months. ‘We have a TV here,’ he said excitedly.

  I told him I had moved into a new a
partment. ‘How much rent are you paying?’ he asked.

  Then Ashraf was told he would be discharged, ‘around November last week’, and I found myself a new job. ‘You should be earning more with your degree from America,’ he admonished.

  The calls gathered frequency as the date of his discharge drew near. He spoke of setting up his vegetable business. I said I would arrange the money.

  One evening in October, my phone rings at work.

  ‘Sethi! It’s me. I’m waiting in the rain, but your friend hasn’t shown up.’ It’s Prithvi, one of my oldest and closest friends from Delhi. Prithvi moved to Calcutta last year and has since been helping out with Ashraf.

  The previous month, I had pleaded with him to visit Ashraf and see if he was okay. ‘I’ll go to an MDR TB ward, Sethi,’ he said manfully. ‘Just don’t ask me to do this again.’

  Today he finds himself waiting in a downpour for Mohammed Ashraf to show up and take the five thousand rupees I had promised him on his discharge from the hospital. As a banker he is surprised at being kept waiting by someone who wants to borrow money. Creditors keep debtors waiting—not the other way around.

  ‘Should I leave or stay?’

  ‘Give him another ten minutes, no, Prithvi? Please?’

  He calls back an hour later. ‘Ashraf’s taken the money,’ he says. ‘He says he’ll call you.’

  That was six months ago. Since then I have been fielding calls from his friends.

  Mustafa called first. ‘I can’t find Ashraf. He got drunk and groped my landlord’s daughter! So the landlord threw us out. I moved to my brother’s house, but Ashraf just ran down the street with the whole mohalla giving chase and I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘You know how he is, Aman bhai,’ said Mustafa in a subsequent conversation when I called. ‘I heard he has taken up a house near the airport. Some people went looking but they couldn’t find him.’

  ‘His tools are still with me. He hasn’t come to collect them,’ said Prabhu the bootlegger. ‘Both Veeru and I miss him very much; he owes us a hundred rupees. This is how people repay kindness and gratitude.’

  Mustafa still calls every few weeks; he hasn’t given up. ‘Any news, Aman bhai? I checked back at the hospital—nothing. I checked in Raja Bazaar; they haven’t heard from him either.’

  I tell him not to worry. Ashraf has my number, I’ve written it on every piece of paper in his sling bag. I’ve given him my visiting card. I’ve left my number with Dr Bannerjee at the hospital; Prabhu has it saved on his phone. Ashraf will find us when he wants to.

  He’ll probably call at two in the morning, his voice thick with whisky and laughter.

  ‘Aman bhai,’ he’ll say. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you. You should come see me sometime.’

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  It is hard to offer an accurate glossary of the slang spoken on Delhi’s streets, particularly since it is drawn from dialects all across north India and the same word carries multiple, context-specific connotations that are opaque to unfamiliar users. Bhai, for instance, is an honorific indicating “brother,” a term of familiarity to describe social parity—though it can be a diminutive if used to indicate excessive familiarity with a social superior. Bhaiyya means “brother” as well and is subject to the same rules, but it is also used as a pejorative in Mumbai to describe working-class immigrants from Uttar Pradesh. Equals address one another with beedu.

  The city’s slang is coarse, vivid, and strewn with expletives. “Dialogue-bazi” is the favorite sport of the Dilliwallah, or Delhi denizen; bazi is the Urdu word for “sport,” so dialogue-bazi is to speak in dialogue, like from a film. Patang-bazi is to fly a patang, or kite, and laundi-bazi is to play with a laundi, or young woman, and could imply anything from sex to romance to eve-teasing (that is, catcalling).

  If you were living the mazdoor ki zindagi, or laborer’s life, in Delhi, you would spend your free time smoking beedis, or hand-rolled cheroots; drinking desi sharab, or country liquor; and eating paneer, or cottage cheese, at the mandi, or marketplace. But then, if you are reading this book, you are probably an angrezi murgi, or white hen. Angrez was originally used to describe the English, but is now a stand-in for generic “white person.” When Rehaan and I first met, he called me an angrezi murgi to stress the distance between us. Gradually he started calling me Bhai, but never came around to calling me Yaar.

  You must be careful when you speak with a Bhai, but a Yaar is the sort of close friend you can call a Bhenchod, or a sister fucker, in a fit of exasperation. Because unlike the other chootiyas, or pussies, you encounter on the streets of Delhi, a Bhenchod knows that we are all basically haramis, bastards, who work like gulaams, slaves, during the day, smoke a chillum of weed at night, and dream of laundiyas.

  When dreaming of laundiyas, you could do worse than fantasizing about Aishwariya and Sushmita, those two chamak challos with their swinging hips who became Miss World and Miss Universe way back in 1994 but are still so hot that even a gaandu, an ass-fucker (pejorative for homosexual), would know who they are. Chamak challos are special—they aren’t randis, or whores; they are the sort of girls who are coy enough, yet wise enough, to drop the pallu of their sari just enough to reveal a shapely bosom clad in a racy blouse that makes a man’s heart race chaka-chak chaka-chak chaka-chak like the train from Patna to Calcutta.

  Back home, every basti, or neighborhood, has its chamak challos, but in Delhi we are all ajnabis, or strangers. Some mazdoors are seasonal workers—barsati mendaks, rain frogs who come to the city for short visits between sowing and harvest—but for many, the paanwallah, who sells betel nut, beedis, and chewing tobacco, or gutka, is their first and closest friend. But how many close friends can the paanwallah have? For him, you are just another restless wastrel, a lafunter, who works when he can or simply shows up for langar, or free food, handed out by Sikh devotees after prayers at their Gurudwara, the Sikh place of worship.

  It is true that the city is a hard place in which to live, but remember this isn’t just any city. This is Delhi, where everyone is a baazigar, or gambler, and a man too timid to risk kuch bhi—anything—may lose sab kuch: everything.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity and companionship of everyone at Bara Tooti Chowk, Sadar Bazaar. Lalloo, Rehaan, Sanjay Kumar (Kaka in the book), Munna, Lambu, Satish, Kalyani, J.P. Singh, and Bhagwan Das not only tolerated my persistent and intrusive presence, but made me a part of their lives and quests in the city. I am grateful for their patience with a lafunter like me.

  I first began working on this manuscript on the suggestion of Aarti Sethi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta who read all my articles, essays, and drafts on Bara Tooti. Their intelligent and close reading of my manuscript kept me honest as a writer. Jeebesh Bagchi profoundly influenced my understanding spaces like Bara Tooti, and helped me think through ways of seeing, perceiving, and writing about Ashraf and his friends.

  Rana Dasgupta read through the final proofs, smoothening out sentences and gently disentangling mixed metaphors. I thank him for his incredible generosity.

  I thank Bhrigupati Singh for wading through my early drafts and helping vary the pace of the narrative. Prithvi Chachra helped me out in Calcutta and visited Ashraf as he struggled with his illness. I also thank Akshaya and Ishan Tankha, Shiva Bajpai, Shovan Gandhi, Tushar Bajaj, and Anirvan Sen for their deep friendship and constant support through the years.

  This book began as a project for the Sarai CSDS Independent Research Fellowship programme. I am grateful to everyone at Sarai for their generosity and camaraderie.

  Chiki Sarkar’s tireless editing has made this a much better book than I could have hoped to write.

  I am indebted to Mohammed Ashraf, his stories, jokes, admonishments, and reminiscences. Thank you, Ashraf bhai.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Aman Sethi was born in Bombay in 1983. He studied chemistry in Delhi, and journalism in Chennai and New York. He is
currently the Chhattisgarh correspondent for The Hindu. This is his first book.

  More Praise for

  A Free Man

  “[Sethi] is a smart and wily reporter, a dogged listener, a digger. . . . Fascinating.”

  —Thomas Larson, Los Angeles Review of Books

  “Important [and] powerful.”

  —Mridu Rai, San Francisco Chronicle

  “The experiences of a day laborer are revealed with compassion and surprising humor by a young Indian journalist.”

  —Abbe Wright, O, The Oprah Magazine

  “Vivid and funny narrative nonfiction about an Indian day laborer—and about the slippery relationship between a journalist and his subject.”

  —Molly Fischer, Capital New York

  “[Sethi’s] portraits are colorful and sharp, and his descriptions of various aspects of lower-class Indian culture . . . are unfailingly lucid.”

  —David Hammerschlag, Bookslut

  “Incredibly entertaining . . . deftly written. . . . [A Free Man] reads like an adventure.”

  —Subashini Navaratnam, PopMatters

  “[A Free Man] fixes its sights on a single individual: Mohammad Ashraf is a mazdoor—a construction worker—living on the streets of north Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar, forever either recovering from a hangover or drinking his way into one. . . . Sethi allows Ashraf’s trenchant voice to flood the book, and Ashraf rarely lets him down.”

  —Samanth Subramanian, Bookforum

  “A darkly comical and eminently readable work of narrative journalism that brings readers into the heart and soul of old Delhi.”

  —Colleen Mondor, Booklist

  “A moving and irrepressible work of narrative reporting.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Alternately sad, defiant, carefree and understated, this journey into a world hidden in plain sight is well worth taking.”