The lean man, bearing a rope about an inch thick and longer than his length of some five and a half feet, looked intently at us. Almost at the same time, his eyes of variegated colours deftly flitted, scanning his immediate horizon. His tan hide, possibly burnt by sun and frost at that altitude of some 6,000 feet, suggests he plied regularly in that busy thoroughfare of Mussoorie, waiting expectantly for tourists to use him.
Without the facility of language, his visual engagement won him a job with us. With that single rope, his hands and his front teeth, he dexterously strapped together all three of our luggage weighing some 80 kg. He, a human being, was used as a beast of burden where man-made machines, that is, taxis were deemed not robust enough to climb the slopes to reach tourist lodges. I’ve never dreamed of being in the land of a thousand tongues; not for 10,000 reasons, but just one – I simply never thought of it. But I believe it was written in my destiny as this trip was made on business and on a rare opportunity, we took a side trip for leisure. I was not meant to travel on my job, but the exit of a colleague opened up this window of opportunity for me to peer into the worlds that I never eyed to enter. My heart ached as I surveyed the silhouette of that man trudging on with our burden. I quaked to learn that he was paid a mere 50 Singapore cents for this back-breaking errand.
Mussoorie is a small, quaint hill station, north of New Delhi. Tourists come and go, looking for things Indian and exotic. In the town centre, carriages drawn by horses were paraded and suspiciously embarked on. On the periphery, kids made a living, selling balloons and barbequed corn-on-the-cob on a little brick, instead of going to the little school on the hillside. While I relished the thought of chomping down a basketful of wild cherries for a mere dollar or two, I prayed that I could meet that man who bore our burden. How, where, when? I had no clue. Meanwhile, I was content to gulp down a bowl of hot goat milk, freshly churned in a wok five times the size of traditional Chinese woks, to keep myself warm in the cold Himalayan air.
On the day of our departure, we were commercially transported downhill to the main thoroughfare where we hailed another cab to take us to Guwahati, another northern Indian town which boasts of an IIT where we were headed. And right smack where we alighted, I spotted that man. Thank you, Lord. You heard my cry. I gave the man whatever cash I could afford, though we could not communicate in words. Lord, someday, I hope I could bring education to these people and equip them for a more decent way of living and a better life. I hope the boys of the IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology) whom I once hosted would remember to take up this challenge. It's been more than a decade since.
