The Grief and Tragedy of Ram Mandir's Idliwala anna

    What can be said to a person who has experienced grief to an extent words may fall short to measure it? What can be done to ease the suffering of those who continue to suffer every living moment of their existence? I find myself staring at this blank blog post, trying to find a way to express, to comfort, to lighten, to help find a coping mechanism to reduce his suffering. But alas, I can only sympathize with his tragic tale and perhaps through these words offer to share his story with as many as possible, for by the collective consciousness of our empathy, the Universe may alleviate his suffering; perhaps there will be a sliver of hope after all.

     I make my way back home after a strenuous gym session. It is Saturday, a weekly work off, where time and schedule those two luxury items, are squandered away by countless hours on social media and nothingness. I look up from my phone and there I see him.

    He is standing next to his parked bicycle, surrounded by many individuals waiting patiently for him to hand over paper plates containing idli-medu vadas, poured with sambhar and chutney. He has started to look older to me; his beard nearly white and the little bit of hair, visibly crushed under his cap, flecked with grey lines. His attire has remained the same over the past fifteen years, a half-sleeve shirt and a pant with a phone tucked in the shirt pocket. He sees me approaching him and a broad smile lights up his face.

    'Tony, how are you?' he asks me, 'I barely see or your siblings these days now!' 

    'Yes, we live in a different place now,' I reply, noticing the fine lines on his forehead, cracking through the dried vibhuti; crow's feet around his eyes and yet the light has not diminished in them a bit.

    'Good, Good!' he exclaims. His hands, dexterous as ever, moving purely through muscle memory as he packs a parcel for the woman and her child on their scooter. This will be the tiffin for the kid. Like this child, he keeps feeding a multitude of folks in the Ram mandir, Goregaon west, Best Nagar and Jawahar Nagar areas. There are those for whom he is the staple breakfast guy, for some their source of delicious evening snacks and for many mothers, a source of relief as it his food which feeds their kids during their tiffin breaks and their husbands when they wake up in the mornings. Like many, my days would not begin until I had eaten my breakfast which comprised eight idlis and three vadas.

    'How are you doing, Anna?' I ask him. It had been ages since I had met him. I always have a huge fondness for any person who feeds me and I owe a big sense of gratitude to this man. He is the reason we survived initially as we navigated early adulthood. I decide to strike up a conversation with him.

    'So, how are you anna?' I repeat. I move to the back of his cycle, away from his area of movement as to not disturb or hinder him. I watch him pick out dosas from the container on the side, idlis from the huge plastic bags at the front and pour chutneys from the two containers attached to the front wide carrier bags. It felt admirable to see him expertly maneuver, unfazed by the group of customers around. It was truly remarkable how he never once made a mistake in handing out any of the orders - each customer was served their order correctly and in the sequence the orders were placed. I was inspired by his presence of mind and sharpness with which he went about conducting his business.

    'I am doing good, how are you all?' he replies with a question asking about the well-being of my siblings and I. This was typical him; always expressing concern for us. Sometimes, you can make out falsehoods when they occur, but not here, not with him. This man had seen us navigate the death of our father, shift from multiple houses on rent and seen us grow from teenagers into young adults and now again, as age & life have started to take a visible toll.

    'We are fine as well, thank you,' I respond chirpily, 'How is your son?'

    At this question, his face fell and I could sense the energy shifting in him. He turned his face towards me, an expression of genuine surprise on his face,

    'He passed away in 2019,' he said, 'I thought you knew.'

    A sense of deep shame washed over me. How on earth was I not aware of this? I have seen this man for years and years, cycling through the roads of Ram mandir and selling out his wares. We had stopped eating from him, but it definitely would have not hurt to stop by once in a while to check up on him. I felt miserable rooted to the spot, unable to make any movement or break eye contact with him. 

    At an utter loss for words, I respond feebly, 'Sorry Anna, I was not aware of this. I am so, so sorry.'

   'That's alright,' he waved my apology away with a smile, 'So much happens in life and we cannot do anything about it, can we?'

    This philosophical sentence broke me out of my reverie. What he said is true. Life plunders on relentlessly, the clock ticks on and on and suddenly, you realise so much has transpired in the moments you did not pay attention. You take a break and find yourselves out of the loop - be at work, in your social circle, with your family, with the world. We blink and find how AI has now made huge strides in technological development. We breathe slowly for a second and the Milky way has travelled 630 kilometres already in space. I stop interacting with Anna for some years now and find out now that such a huge personal tragedy has altered his life. 

    It is truly a thing of bewilderment - this relentless march of time.

    'How did it happen, if I may ask?' I question, thankfully aware there were no customers around him.

    'Well, it is all so sad when I think about it,' he said, 'My son completed his engineering studies in 2015 and was about to move back to Mumbai. The house I had booked for him & his wife to stay in Virar was unfortunately demolished due to not following the CIDCO regulations, so he had to stay put back in my village. Thankfully, he got a job in a nearby town and soon we got him married in 2017. But then a severe illness got hold of him sometime in 2018 from which he would never recover at all. I think when his wife left him (she refused to care after his sick body), his spirit broke completely and he died in 2019. We cremated him in the village. My son was just 26 when he died,' he chokes up a bit, 'I can never go back there now. You know I did everything for him, ran pillar to post, cried and begged for help with our local politicians and doctors to figure out a way to stop his illness, but it seems nobody - no man or Gods had no intention of saving my child'. There was a slight force with which he dropped the ladle in the chutney container.

    I did not know what to say after listening to all of what Anna just said. It is often said, we never know what battles every person is fighting daily, but to see it become a reality as an example like this was not at all what I had expected to see on a random Saturday afternoon. 

    I try to imagine his face, the day he had to carry the corpse of his son to the funeral pyre. All of his hard work, his reason to live - now laid lifelessly on a straw mat, borne upon his shoulders and those of his family, their cries must have been piercing through the air that day. A parent having to bury their child is perhaps the single most devastating thing a person can experience in this life. Never in a million years did I ever thought this man had to bear this cross and now carry it through his life on a day-on-day basis. 

    'I just do not know what to say right now,' I muttered in a low voice, staring at the paver blocks beneath my feet. What do I say to him now that would lessen my guilt and express solidarity in that moment. I stood in silence as I continued to watch him hand out three more plates to some new customers in the meantime. I felt horrible. To make his relive that day was not my intention at all.

    Pulling myself back and thinking of changing the subject, I asked, 'What happened to the money you invested as down payment for the house in Virar? Did you get it back?' 

    'No', he responded flatly, 'That is lost now. The builder raised his hands up, stating "I cannot do anything as I have a court case against me". Many folks like me have their savings money stuck and we too are fighting it out in the court but to no avail. There seems to be no end to this nightmare honestly, These multiple hearings to-and-fro with the courts - just no end in sight. Initially, I could do it, attend the sessions, but then had to stop as I would lose a day's worth of income and all the prepared food goes to waste. I cannot pressurize my parents any further -'

    'Hold on,' I interjected, 'Your parents?'

    'Yes, my mother and father,' he said, 'They help me with this,' pointing to the containers. He then launched into sharing details of his daily schedule. 

    His day begins at 5 am to prepare the batter for the idlis and the vadas, while his parents chop the vegetables required for the chutney-sambhar. This has to happen simultaneously as he stocks up the daily water supplied at the same time. He then leaves home by 8 am, making his way through various residential pockets in Goregaon before reaching Ram mandir around afternoon, all the while his mother keeps making more of the food and his father replenishes the containers with the fresh batch at regular intervals. He then heads home, takes a nap of two hours, followed by a quick trip to the market to buy ingredients & vegetables for the next day. He then begins his evening rounds which continues till 10-10:30 daily, finally calling it a day by 11 pm.

    He has followed this rigid schedule for the last sixteen years as far as I have known him.

    'Wow Anna!' I exclaimed in awe of him, 'It is humbling to learn how much effort and hard work you do every single day. You should hire somebody to help you out with all of this'.

    'Haha,' he chuckled, 'I wish I could. I do not save enough money now to hire someone externally. Whatever I do manage to retain from my income goes towards the medications of my parents. They cannot live without them at all now. Thankfully the rent of my shanty has not gone up either for which I am grateful to my landlord'. 

    I ask him how old is he and he mentions it to be 51. I ask him about his wife and he states he is a widower, having lost her fifteen years ago.   

    I lapsed into silence. Here I was, having the privilege to work out in a gym on my work off day, while this man has not taken a day off in the last sixteen years. It is not that he does not want to; its just he cannot afford to have one. I wonder what his desires are, the places he wants to visit, the experiences he wants to go through in life, the plans he had for his son, the future that never came - all of these thoughts died in my throat. 

    Was I feeling pity for him? To some extent, yes. From my viewpoint and the context of what I consider as thresholds of a successful life, it does not hold water next to his perspective and his lived experiences. But again that is coming from a place of arrogance and privilege on my part. No two lives are the same. In these fifty-one years of his life, how many harsh lessons life has cruelly taught him. How many days he must have felt suffocated, unable to escape the reality of existence breathing down his neck, I grim realisation dawns over me - even being depressed is a luxury to a man like him. 

    What do I tell him now? What do I say to this man who has weathered so many significant storms in this one lifetime when many would have been crushed, died and buried under it. There are no words in any known language of man which can offer some comfort to him. 

    We decide to part ways. He gets a call from someone checking if he is still in the vicinity and can do some home deliveries. He agrees to it and takes the bicycle off his stand. 

    'So, when are any of you guys getting married?' he asks me jovially, 'It is high time you all should be married by now'. He says this in a tone reminiscent of those pestering elders. Smiling to myself, I bid him farewell, before snapping a quick selfie.

    I turn around ahead and watch him pedal away. I look at the back of his head as he disappears into the distance. The man, whom I had known only as the 'Idliwala anna' till date now looked different to me. He no longer appears as the greying old man. 

    Grief has taught him a thing or to as the way it does to all of us who have experienced it in our lives. However, to make it into a strength and push hard against such an adversarial fate is the true face of courage and resilience. He mentioned he has no faith in anything, no Gods or Universe or fate or luck - none of it matters to him anymore. And I do not blame him a bit. I can only empathize with his pain of losing his wife and only child, but can truly never understand or feel a shred of the real pain he has experienced; the one which twists his heart on a daily basis as he garlands their photos every morning after his bath. I cannot help him figure a way out to manage his business that requires round the clock planning and execution. I wanted to hug him and wondered if he has someone with whom he shares his grief with, his emotions, the anger he feels against the unfair and unjust way life has treated him.

    Perhaps it is the unjustness of it all that feeds his quite strength. 

    He will continue to get up at 5 am the next day and the day after the next and power on through his schedule without missing a step. He will continue to do the work, not because it is required of him, but because he knows it is the right thing to do for him and his parents. There is no guardian angel coming down to assuage his suffering, no sudden shower of wealth, no epiphanies - he simply has no other choice. Perhaps this is his way to fight against the system that cheated him, against the fate that lead to the death of his child, against the Gods who listened to his prayers, his cries for mercy and yet, turned a deaf ear towards him. This is his way of not giving up. 

    One day, I hope I learn to be strong just like him. 

The End