to a wonderful person called Kakda...
He was one of India's teeming masses. But he was very special to all of us who knew him when we were trying to get a school up and running under the most trying of conditions. The Admin Assistant Ravi, a singularly amazing person, brought him and another worker, Baliya, to the school as workers - their job description: any kind of work. Kakda was the leader of the two. The conditions, as I've said, were dreadful (an understatement) and our little team was trying to work a miracle out of nothingness...there was no time for us to worry about the nitty-gritties of daily life. Kakda and Baliya seamlessly moved in. Clean the rooms - Kakda; tea - Kakda; meals - Kakda; help in getting the rooms ready for the kids - Kakda; clean the toilets (when the housekeeping staff decided to play hooky) - Kakda; for pouring balm on jagged edges - Kakda. For everything it was Kakda. He would not speak much, but there was always a ready smile for everyone - no matter the time of day. He would be dropping with tiredness, having run around all day, even then if there was a crisis - large or small, the first person on the scene ready to help wherever he could was Kakda, and Baliya of course. He never waited for anyone to tell him what to do - he just went wherever he felt there was a need and plugged the gaps. His purpose in life was to look after people and do whatever was needed for the looking after. When my DD and her husband came to visit us, there was no way I could look after them, as I would have wanted to. There was so much to do, and we were pulling and heaving against odds and time. Kakda ensured that their meals were on time, that there was nothing lacking in hospitality for them - all without even being told. And he did the same for everyone. Even after the school started, with inhospitable weather adding to every other calamity, Kakda was there when there was no water in the taps, or the electricity supply got cut, or whatever, whenever...And where he could not be, he would depute Baliya...
He stayed on in the school after my husband and I, and the rest of the team left - he had stayed on because of the money - and as he knew the ins and outs of the school, he thought he would be of assistance. One day, not long after we had gone, Kakda and Baliya appeared on Ravi's doorstep - they had left. After a lot of coaxing the truth was out that they had been ill-treated, demeaned, and insulted by the owners of the school. Money or no, it was too much to bear - their spirits had been wounded. For the rich in India, incidentally, the poor are not human - they are nothing, and to be treated as such. Ravi helped them to get jobs. This was some years ago - but till date, Ravi, who has kept in touch with us, said that they always talked about us with great fondness - all because we treated them as human beings - workers in the same organization that we were working for, and we made them know that it was thanks to them that the wheels were moving without squeaking and groaning. And we all remember them with great fondness.....there is no price tag on what Kakda did.
He passed on night before last...I have no words, and the tears will not stop for this singular person.....what a magnificent spirit.....