As part of my effort to relate to them, I have been trying to get them to wish me "good morning" when I open the door and then say "thank you" as they walk away with the garbage bag. It has gone fairly well, except one day when one of them got the order wrong: he began by saying "thank you" and was hugely embarrassed on realising his error. He made it up when, on another morning, as I was out on my walk and he was biking to work, I heard a cheery "good morning" whiz past me.
The problem they faced in not having learnt to read and write early became clear when I tried to get one of them to learn how to write his name in English. (I thought it was better than beginning by trying to teach meaningless alphabets.) I made no progress; after I realised the mental block he had to overcome, I did not pursue the matter.
But it was another story with the young man, in his late 30s, who swept the street before our complex leading up to the main road. He was obviously educated, from solid middle-class stock and carried all the psychological baggage that came from the mismatch between his occupation and his background. I thought I would chat him up, get to know him and find out why he was doing this job. Initially, he spurned my attempt to start a conversation.
So it remained, until the mere fact of passing each other every morning broke down his reserve; now he was helping me with the phone numbers of higher-ups in his hierarchy whom I wanted to contact every time I found some part of the conservancy work in the neighbourhood fall down. Many a time, our conversation ended with him saying: "You can try so and so, but probably nothing will happen." Our bonding was finally complete when I wished him "happy new year" and he smiled for the first time.
So life went on till I realised I had not spotted him for some time. Finally, when I did, I had to congratulate him on his new French beard with just a few salt-and-pepper strands. He brushed aside my remark and explained that it was a necessity. He had hurt himself in the chin, had to go in for a couple of stitches and could not shave for a couple of weeks. When I tried to insist that he looked good, he brought me down to earth by flatly stating that a person with his station in life could not sport an "intellectual" look.
I could not resist the temptation of telling him the story of how surprised I was to find decades ago some bearded sardar safai karamcharis in the northeast. It seems they were second-generation converts to Sikhism whose Dalit fathers were inspired by B R Ambedkar to discard caste-ridden Hinduism for a more egalitarian faith.
But this experiment did not work. It was soon realised that a cleaner had perforce to keep himself personally clean and a Sikh's beard got in the way. Subsequent converts among Dalits opted for Buddhism. However, the second generation did not want to discard the adopted faith of their fathers - hence the strange sight of some of them speaking Assamese as to the manner born and sweeping the streets of Shillong, so far from Punjab.
But when I tried to argue that he was obviously well lettered, he shook his head and said these days nobody had any respect for education. Someone who had passed Class VIII acted as if he had nothing more to learn, he complained, and had scant regard for the likes of him. He said he would cut off his beard as soon as his chin was OK and, remembering the problems of the Sikh sweepers of Shillong, I agreed - adding that in some professions there was an added need to look personally clean. It was then that he took the words out of my mouth and said: looking neat and clean gave a sweeper a sense of "self-respect" - the expression was uttered with clear, correct pronunciation.
As I walked away, I could not figure out how all his education had made him better off than the young man who mixed up "good morning" with "thank you".
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