I shoot these guys .I dont know his name and I pass him by several times in the day..he works without complaining , he smiles when he sees me and I repay him for this kind gesture by taking his pictures. And he is a migrant from Uttar Pradesh , not that Uttar Pradesh that is a full page ad in newspapers that touts 3 years of Akhilesh Yadavs government .
He is from Uttar Pradesh where the lords that ruled hardly did anything about building jobs infrastructure , so these guys with dreams in their eyes came to Mumbai ..1000 km away because they knew that many of their village people had made it in Mumbai ,,Those who ruled Uttar Pradesh built hideous parks , built statues humiliating the poor man and stupid elephants and destroyed the true essence of Adab Tehzeeb and flavor of Lucknow .. the next lot gave a free hand to crime and to sectarian violence and the only thing they did was to make Saifai as famous as Bollywood ,,on the dead bodies of the victims of Muzzafarnagar and a big fat wedding..that bought no succor to the poor ..
And they come to Mumbai in hordes , go to Charbagh when the Pushpak leaves for Mumbai and see the long line of youngsters standing to get a seat in unreserved compartment ad the Railway Police with his fat ugly belly who openly takes money for his service ,, getting them a seat. Everyday every Mumbai train will be packed with these job hunters job seekers .. they come to a heartless city the main city of migrants that takes them in happily as laborers ,kabadiwalas , dhobis , barbers , fruit sellers vegetable sellers , fish sellers ..and he does more menial jobs that the jobless Marathi Manoos will never do in his lifetime.
And he does all this without arrogance laid bare humility , and as time passes by he has his own ricksha , his own taxi , his kids studying in convent schools and his own house in the slums .
And I am not essaying their cause simply stating what I have observed , my dad too was a migrant living in the Kurla slums when Mumbai was more happily known as Bombay ,, and he slogged as a tailor a master cutter and finally gave us a house over our heads first at Wodehouse Road and than at Strand Cinema Colaba ,,so the people of North India made Mumbai their homes with the sweat of their brows ..to be finally called Mumbaikars of today ,, and my dad and my mom are buried in Mumbai soil a city they loved cherished more than Lucknow.
Every politician in Uttar Pradesh never did much for the state . and that is why Maharashtra is million times better than dying in Uttar Pradesh.. this is my personal wish.. as a son of a once North Indian migrant ..who came to Bombay when he was 14 years old ,,saw the Dockyard blast and worked compatibly with his English couturier bosses.
Sometimes even a Dhobi ironing a crumpled trouser takes you back into time ,,and I could have left this post blank textless too.
