The Hindu Business Line : GenBehind

Not one Budget proposal touched them, including the grandiose 8 per cent GDP growth as the number meant nothing beyond leaving one's village to live in a slum in Mumbai and earn the scorn of the Mumbai middle class.

If there is anything which sucks the purse and soul most it is trying to put fresh paint on one's 505 sq. ft home. For about 15 days and more, one has been buying discomfort as the work force of the contractor rubs, scrapes and ruins a previous existence to set up a new style of living. "If you don't spend money for repairs every five to six years, the place will fall on your head," warned Rama, while one was deliciously slurping a morning cup of dark brown filter coffee. One felt like reminding her that the roof could collapse on her head, too, but held back having lost too many scraps with the female of the human species.

The four-man team deployed to put lipstick and rouge on the old walls and broken windows of my home land up early and work late into the evening and they are none other than bhaiyas from Uttar Pradesh.

The team comes from Gorakhpur and goes by the names of Ram Singh, Ramavtar Singh, Sitaram Singh and Hanuman Singh and are all Class 8 pass.

If there was no Tulsidas Ramayan more than half the population of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would go nameless.

"Kyon nahin age pada (Why didn't you study further)," one asked Hanuman Singh, being the vocal of the four. His intended reply dissolved into a broad smile as they spread out on the floor a sack full of freshly minted Budget editions of general and business newspapers from Mumbai, which are mostly looked at and rarely read. This writer has yet to spot a newspaper vendor reading the newspaper or magazine he sells. They stomped and squatted on the front pages full of the Budget being unaware of the existence of our Thirrukkural-Thoreau - Vivekananda quoting Finance Minister and his financial masterpiece.

"Malloom hai ye kaun hain (Do you know this gentleman?)," one asked and their heads gave a collective nod in the negative. Not one Budget proposal touched them, including the grandiose 8 per cent GDP growth as the number meant nothing beyond leaving one's village in far away Gorakhpur to live in a slum in Mumbai and earn the scorn of the Mumbai middle class. They do not have a bank account or an ATM card, they do not own a mobile, they do not flaunt a credit card, they are not humans on par with the city-Mumbaikar. For the city-Mumbaikar, the Railway Budget begins and ends with the price of his railway pass, while he does not look beyond personal income tax rates in the Union Budget.

The four Singhs from Gorakhpur and their ilk come a few notches below the city-Mumbaikar in the social scale and have no such concerns. They walk every day from their single shack in Kandivili to their work place and back to earn a daily income of Rs 150 per day with a free lunch and a tea dropped in. The contractor ensures they do no splurge at the lunch table. "Saab, abhi kya karen. Sab din naukari nahin milti hai tho aur mushkil ho jaata hai (Saab, What to do. We do not get a job every day and life gets that more miserable)," Sitaram Singh told me chewing a roll of tobacco.

Even P. Chidambaram may not order the Chairman of Direct Taxes to go after them. They neither know Sonia's pasta nor Chidambaram's idli (no Indian politician debunked idli for pasta to impress the Italian Lady presiding over this great nation). They regularly chomp dry chappati dipped in a watery dhal with a cut of onion. They are not GenNext but GenBehind and their women folk live far away in a world of smoky wood fires in dank kitchens.

For 60 years now, Budgets have been cleverly extending the day when they also can buy pasta and the sharper's game will surely last for another 60 years. Rama made tea for them and they sat before the TV watching Dhoni bang ordinary Pakistan bowling over the ground. They have picked up a few technicalities of one-day cricket and when Dhoni hit the ball into the stadium, Ram Singh softly exclaimed, "Six." My friends love their men from U.P. doing well for India like R.P. Singh, Kaif, Raina and many others.

Ram Singh inquired of me, "Achcha khelte hain na (They are playing well)," and one said yes having got sick of Mumbai and Karnataka players crowding the Indian cricket team. Seemingly a neighbour has a colour TV and Sunday evenings are spent watching Hindi films free. One afternoon Ram Singh sang for us the Kishor Kumar song, "Ek ladki bheegi, bhagi se," from the film Chalti ka naam gaadi and did it well.

In a couple of days, the painting work at home will be over and the four Singhs will leave, work somewhere else, lost in the crowd. The family having decided to dispose of my old and unwieldy easy chair, my friends have put in a bid though one is not sure how it will fit into their single shack in Kandivili. "Aaram karne ke liye achcha hai (It is good to relax in)," Ramavtar Singh told me. They will get the easy chair at no cost.

P. Devarajan

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