Rickshaw Number 885

Some of us like to read biographies. Here’s one.

Young Ali was a bright student at school in a sleepy town near Salem. Always among the top three of his class, his favourite subject was Science. His father was a labourer at Salem and he lived in a small house with his mother, three brothers and five sisters. Life was not easy, but he rather enjoyed school.

When he reached ninth grade, his father commanded him to back out of school and begin to earn. Ali was extremely put out, but did as he was bidden to. He joined a mechanic’s shop as an apprentice and began to learn how to fix cars. The owner shortly had a nasty run-in with the police, and Ali got frustrated with the whole set-up. He ran away to Salem and from then on to a place called Byculla in Bombay, the City of Dreams. It was 1971.

Bombay was large beyond his dreams. For nearly ten days he roamed hungry in the by-lanes of Byculla, until he was picked up by the police. He spent the next one month in the lock-up, not daring to believe his luck that he would actually get a meal every day in there. He preferred this life to life out on the streets. Soon, he was called up to the bada sahib, for questioning. When it was learnt that he was merely a runaway from Salem, the sahib released him from prison with a warning to not get involved in illegal activities in Bombay.

Hungry and alone again, Ali made his slow way north and reached a place called Mulund. A cycle-repair shop took him in to fill tires with air for a meager sum of eight annas a day. It was enough to buy him a vada pao and tea. He was bright, worked hard and was talkative and polite to customers. Within three days, his seth raised his salary to two rupees a day. Ali continued with his old diet of a vada pao and tea every day. Saving became a habit by default. By the end of the month, he was earning a princely sum of fifteen rupees a day. He worked at the cycle shop until 1987, and then flew to Saudi Arabia in search of a job. In the meantime, he had got married to an orphan girl in Mulund. He worked in Saudi for five years as head mechanic in a factory, returning home once every year during the holy month of Ramzan.

Tiring of life away from his now-growing children, Ali returned to Bombay and started driving an auto-rickshaw for a living. He carried on until 1997 and his thirst for adventure was rekindled. He made his way to Rome and from there to Egypt, all the while working as a mechanic. From Egypt, he went to Libya. He was an efficient and hard worker and Libya treated him very well. In 2002, he got home-sick and decided to visit India once again. He missed his flight back to Bombay, and was told that his visa had expired and was not renewable since he was over fifty years of age. Ultimately, he managed to make his way back to Bombay, but now he was tired. He brought out the old rickshaw again and has been riding ever since.

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The man is Mohammad Ali Shaikh, the 61-year old driver of auto-rickshaw number 885 from Mulund (as he made me note, for future reference). This was his story, which he narrated over a journey from Powai to Mulund one rainy afternoon last week.

His oldest son completed his MCA last year. He works for a monthly salary of 40,000 rupees in an Indian firm in Andheri. His youngest son, Mohammad Idris (named after the King of Libya, Gaddafi’s predecessor), is now in the ninth grade. Idris is a bright student, scoring “ninety-five-ninety-eight” marks in mathematics and science. Here is one ninth grader who is going to continue his education for sure.

Ali is a born story-teller, with expressions and voice modulation to suit (with a very faint Tamil overtone to his pucca Bombay accent, interspersed with chaste English). Yet his eyes remained on the road and his rear-view mirror (Mumbaikars will appreciate how rare this is), as he explains at the Powai signal, that he didn’t switch lanes then, because the traffic police would have booked him for what he called a “blind cut”. In one breath, he expresses bitterness that he couldn’t study enough and then proceeds to explain that he had been to Libya (“L-I-B-Y-A”, he spells out. “No, no… not in Africa. Africa is a continent. That’s different.”). He points out that he is older than he looks (“I have dyed my hair black, you know!”) and still going strong as a man ten years younger because he has lived an honest, hard-working life.

In another four months, Ali will retire from driving the auto-rickshaw and return to his home-town near Salem. Life will come full circle for him.

He explains that honesty and hard work are important.

Stay away from addictions, he advises.

Above all, he says, education is most important. Don’t ever forget that, he says. Study well, he says.