To write this book Aman Sethi, a journalist for the Hindu, spent five years hanging out with the casual labourers of Bara Tooti Chowk in Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar, who live and die on the streets. ‘Why,’ asks one of them, ‘are you spending all this time and money getting drunk with lafunters like us? What can we teach you?’ He explains that he is trying to write a book. Who would want to read it? ‘I don’t know. I suppose my friends will buy it and maybe a few people interested in Delhi.’ But the lafunters have taught him a lot, and for its observation, sympathy and humour A Free Man deserves a far wider audience.
I still don’t know exactly what a lafunter is — or, for that matter, a chootiya, masjid or pallu. A glossary would have been helpful, but all the unitalicised and untranslated vocabulary serves to heighten the immediacy of the milieu. Some terms are explained, though: a mistry is an expert or master, and makes roughly 250 rupees a day (less than £3), while a mazdoor or navvy makes between 100 and 150 rupees. At Bara Tooti they are hired by contractors, shopkeepers wanting to knock down a wall or house owners wanting to turn a balcony into a bedroom. They have helped transform Delhi from a sleepy city into a glittering metropolis.
In their leisure hours, the lafunters smoke joints, or drink at Kalyani’s in the depths of Sadar Bazaar. What is Kalyani’s? ‘It’s a bit like… it’s a bit like a permit room but without a permit.’ An illegal bar, in other words. A favourite whisky at Kalyani’s is called Everyday, which is when its devotees like to drink it, but it is not for everyone. Some prefer ‘more bombastic brands’, such as Jalwa Spiced Country Liquor, which ‘speaks of youth, fire and passion’, or Toofan, which is ‘infused with the pent-up vigour and vitality of an impending storm’, or even Ghadar Desi, which is ‘a perfect antidote to colonial oppression’.
Life is far from easy, and fraught with danger. One may, like Naushad, be busy painting the ledge of a factory’s terrace, nudge a pot of paint, lean out to save it and fall six storeys to one’s death: ‘No one even knew who to call, and you wouldn’t have recognised his body anyway.’ One may be lured from the chowk with the promise of work, forced to undergo an operation that robs one of a kidney, given a nominal sum and thrown back on the street. Or, like Satish, one may cough one’s last in the TB ward at the Bara Hindu Rao Hospital: ‘He was a polite boy — never did danga, never did gaali-galoch…’ One is unlikely to live long.
Short of actually joining them in their labours, and sleeping on the pavement with them, Sethi immerses himself in their world with exemplary thoroughness, befriending them, lending them money, visiting them in hospital. His book is fascinating, funny and extraordinarily moving.
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