Dear Liftman,
My first memory of feeling for your kind was ten-eleven years back, while accessing the lift at Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Southern Avenue. As we squeezed in that cage-like steel-box, I looked at you, old man. You must have become old catering to people going up and down the same building. I don't know why, I felt very bad for you. What must be your life like, old man?
Your fraying hair, your shabby stubble, your tattered uniform shirt, and your demanding children at home. Yes, I always imagine your kids must not be too old than I am, yet much different. Not understanding where their father procures the municipal school-fees from, and tutions and travels to and fro, and the packets of chips they listlessly bite into. How must your wife be like? She must have hundreds of silent complaints against you. Do you hold onto each other when you fall asleep? Do you at all fall asleep together anymore? Do you sleep in a room where you do not even share your bed with your wife? For a person who is always with people, do you feel lonely most of the time? Are you together, old man, with any one?
How do you while away your time in this routine of pressing 1-2-3-4 for ten-twelve hours, everyday, old man? Do you imagine stories about the lives of people who enter your lift-kingdom? Do you imagine yourself to be the king of that tin-box? Do you gather that I thought out a story around you? Gradually, your memory only strengthened, you know. In all lifts I enter, I compare and contrast your life with the king of that domain.
The college I currently work in, has someone relatively younger than you inside the lift. He has to handle five floors of girlish giggles at any given point of the day. Sometimes, when I used to find him alone, it was him reading the Hanuman Chalisa. I gave up using the lift inside two weeks of my employment. I never quite understood why a liftman is required, anyway. Ya, I do understand the logic that it will be made dirty and misused by all the educated, insensitive people using it. And, if you weren't inhabiting it, I would never get to write you this letter.
I must confess, even though I feel for your kind, I too am not any more kind than that occasional, or, is it the habitual 'thank-you' I leave the lift with, so, sorry. However, apart from having you in my memory to facilitate my sensitivity at will, I would like to mention that it is your professional boundary that inspires me to stick to mine. For you, only with vertical movements at your disposal, have become good, old and I believe, figured out a way to survive it. I tend to forget how blessed I am, each time I complain about being ill-at-ease.
Your fraying hair, your shabby stubble, your tattered uniform shirt, and your demanding children at home. Yes, I always imagine your kids must not be too old than I am, yet much different. Not understanding where their father procures the municipal school-fees from, and tutions and travels to and fro, and the packets of chips they listlessly bite into. How must your wife be like? She must have hundreds of silent complaints against you. Do you hold onto each other when you fall asleep? Do you at all fall asleep together anymore? Do you sleep in a room where you do not even share your bed with your wife? For a person who is always with people, do you feel lonely most of the time? Are you together, old man, with any one?
How do you while away your time in this routine of pressing 1-2-3-4 for ten-twelve hours, everyday, old man? Do you imagine stories about the lives of people who enter your lift-kingdom? Do you imagine yourself to be the king of that tin-box? Do you gather that I thought out a story around you? Gradually, your memory only strengthened, you know. In all lifts I enter, I compare and contrast your life with the king of that domain.
The college I currently work in, has someone relatively younger than you inside the lift. He has to handle five floors of girlish giggles at any given point of the day. Sometimes, when I used to find him alone, it was him reading the Hanuman Chalisa. I gave up using the lift inside two weeks of my employment. I never quite understood why a liftman is required, anyway. Ya, I do understand the logic that it will be made dirty and misused by all the educated, insensitive people using it. And, if you weren't inhabiting it, I would never get to write you this letter.
I must confess, even though I feel for your kind, I too am not any more kind than that occasional, or, is it the habitual 'thank-you' I leave the lift with, so, sorry. However, apart from having you in my memory to facilitate my sensitivity at will, I would like to mention that it is your professional boundary that inspires me to stick to mine. For you, only with vertical movements at your disposal, have become good, old and I believe, figured out a way to survive it. I tend to forget how blessed I am, each time I complain about being ill-at-ease.
This is all I wanted to convey. Of all those who have used your services innumerable times, or just once, one person does remember you. I know, knowing it would matter nothing to you at all. Your perseverance is legendary. And though it is something which is inconsistent in me, it is indeed a lesson learnt. Old liftman, forgive me, for this letter would be read by everyone but you.
Believe me, I think of you.
K.
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