Anwar and Me

Currently, I sit in my over-expensive coffee shop in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Earth. This Valley saw the largest wealth creation in the history of the world, that we now call the software/dotcom bubble. I sip my now-cold cappuccino and lick the three-dollar foam from the rim. Anwar's memory haunts me. A year and a half has passed and I wonder how tall he has grown, if he is starving, if his sister is alright.

Anwar is another faceless entity in the emotional morass that is poverty in India or anywhere. I think about my arena of privilege and am utterly humbled by the memory of his smile - the broadest, most earnest smile on the planet. So contagious and touching, that it dragged me out of severe field-work related trauma. I smiled back for Anwar; in a smile that reached my eyes after a long, long time of having nothing to smile about.

I smile now as I think of him. And I am suddenly content. The constant trauma of two years dissolves for an instant and nothing is more real right now than my memory of Anwar. I am suddenly ashamed that this life in which I have so much to smile about, I spend most of my time grieving, obsessing, thinking, over analyzing, spending myself on people who do not deserve it. Self-indulgence is a luxury.

The more topsy-turvy your life becomes, the more perspective you gain. I find this to be true. And in my darkest hour of trial, for some reason the one person whose story I keep returning to is a beggar-boy from the streets of Guwahati. There must be a reason for this. And so I share....

Anwar came into my life briefly for a very short span of time - two months, to be precise. Yet every time I think of him my heart gets really heavy, but that heaviness is tinged with another strange emotion - warmth.

Anwar was bright-eyed, sprightly, energetic and cheerful. He was always dressed in the same dirty, ragged shirt with half its buttons missing, had no shoes on his feet and nursed a new scrape or bruise everyday. I saw him the first time I walked into the Cafe Coffee Day at Dighli Pukhuri in Guwahati. He had come scampering up to me and laughed and pointed at a small pan-shop across the street. He had been muttering in Assamese/Bengali and I had not understood. I had ignored him like a fine bourgeois woman must, but he had continued to tug at my kurta and smiled like the devil. I had found myself smiling back and had asked him what he wanted. He pointed at the shop again. I walked with him to it. He pointed to a bag of Kurkure. I bought it for him. I asked him if he wanted something a little healthier - like a packet of biscuits. But he settled for the Indian version of Cheetos.

I went back into the CCD and ordered my expensive coffee.

I was to see Anwar everyday for two months, since I used the CCD as an office. I had discovered that my Tata Indicom USB internet modem did not work in Guwahati and had also discovered that my MacBook was powerful enough to catch a wifi signal called "default". I was hooked and became a wardriver. Plus the coffee and sandwiches sustained me. The cooks at the guest house often confused me asking for vegetarian food as asking for fish, which I am allergic to. Apparently "veg" sounds like "waayyyzzz" and fish also sounds like "phayyzz" to some people in Assam. Hence the confusion.

Anwar was a regular fixture at the CCD. He would appear late in the afternoon and run errands for some of the customers fetching cigarettes, water, lights. The moment he saw me come in, he would abandon whoever he was haunting and point at the pan-shop across the street. I would feign an eye-roll and walk across and buy him whatever he wanted. I remained busy leeching of "default" and wrote and scheduled interviews, dealt with severe alienation and basically just worked day and night. I didn't know anyone, met very few people and always sensed that I was being assessed. My views were always under scrutiny. By the end of my stay I had made some really good friends. I would walk down the street to the NDTV office and hang with the rather awesome couple, Kishalay and Gayatri, who ran the show. I learned a lot from them and they continue to be very good friends. I remember being worried about them and their daughter, Bambi, when Guwahati exploded on 30th October. I had driven to Bodoland with the Minorities Commission that day and had been spared the chaos that ensued. The first to go had been the SMS and phone lines.

Anwar interested me more and more as my awareness about Assamese politics and society grew. He was Muslim. Poor. And spoke a different language which I judged to be Bengali. He was not Assamese. One day he came and sat on the floor next to the outdoor table where I was busy scribbling in a Moleskine. Without looking up I said, "You're here. What do you want today?" "The usual", he had said. "First", I had said, "Tell me where you live?" He had gestured vaguely in the general direction of Latashila Pavilion. "Do you go to school?" "Yes", he had said. "Why aren't you in school then?"

"It got over early."

I had looked into his smiling face and been disappointed in the knowledge that he was lying through his teeth. If my reading was correct, Anwar was a Bangla migrant who was on the streets or in a slum with his family. The questioning went on.

Who is at home?

Mom and sister, smaller than me.

Father?

He is dead... long ago.

I had not known how to react to this bit of information.

What does your mother do?

Works in other people's houses.

Anwar's mother was a maid somewhere in the middle-class community that surrounded Dighli Pukhuri. They lived in a small hut somewhere in a slum in the vicinity. Anwar, who I could never tell went to school or not, frequented the CCD for freebies and occasionally some money. He entertained himself, didn't have any friends.

I remained busy, bustling about the city collecting interviews, forcing people to talk to me and buying books. I explored the city by myself, trying to shop for mekhla-chadors and failing miserably. At the back of my mind remained one tiny thought, about Anwar. The sight of his unshod feet had bothered me from day one. And I had done nothing about it. As my stint in Guwahati drew to a close I found myself obsessing about buying him a pair of shoes or slippers. I finally went to the Big Bazaar (hate those places) because I was right outside it and proceeded to maneuver my way through hordes of over-eager weekend shoppers, their kids, ancestors and shopping carts to the shoe section. I realized I did not know how big Anwar's feet were. So I made an educated guess.

I bought a pair of sneakers for Anwar using my thumb and middle finger to span an imaginary shoe-size for him. I paid for the sneakers. Then I thought hard about it. By giving him a snazzy pair of sneakers was I going to expose him to local violence within his slum? Anwar was small, other kids may pick on him for his shoes. Slums weren't exactly pretty places. I didn't want to be the angel of consumerism in his life. I wanted him to not expect similar gifts from everyone like me. And I mused the shoes would solve his problem for about two months until he outgrew them. Was I over thinking everything?

I told myself I was. Being used to overanalysing everything to earn a living, I was projecting my theories of sensitive development on to a boy who simply needed a pair of shoes.

I bought the shoes and tried to find Anwar the next day. He did not appear. I waited past my self-imposed 5 pm curfew.

6 pm.

No Anwar.

I went back to the police guest house at Ulubari.

At night I watched the usual programming schedule. Big Boss on some channel, tried to work up an appetite, but the 15 pound weight loss project was underway. I had pretty much stopped eating about a month into the field. I fell asleep with the lights on as usual and thought of how washing my hair was an ordeal. The water was brown with rust. But it cured me of my OCD. Sometimes life teaches you to appreciate the simple things. Like the fact that water sometimes does come out of a tap, even if it is full of rust, and can be heated in a geyser.

The next day was my last in Guwahati. I said goodbye to a few friends - Rakhee and Kishalay and Gayatri. I went as usual to the CCD and began writing and transcribing. Anwar showed up at about 3 pm and made a beeline for me. I was sitting on the patio, melting in the heat to escape the uber-pumped up air conditioning inside. I smiled at Anwar, reached into my bag and pulled out the parcel with his shoes. He took it.

I asked him to try them on. He did. They didn't fit. But he tried to shove his feet in far, so he would not disappoint me.

I told him not to worry that I would get him a bigger pair.

He tried to clean the shoes with his hands. He feared he had soiled them. The shoes had cost me about 500 Rs, 10 US dollars. I spend more than that on so-called fair trade coffee in the US everyday, at bourgeois places pretending to be rebellious as hell. Che-style rebellion, to boot.

I told him to keep the shoes and I caught the first overcharging autowallah to take me back to the Big Bazaar (did I mention I hate big departmental stores?) I fetched a larger pair of shoes and got a pair of 'floaters' for backup. Reached the CCD to find that Anwar had disappeared.

I never saw him again.

I waited until much later that evening and finally walked up to one of the CCD employees and asked if he could give the shoes to the 'beggar boy' Anwar.

Anwar? Is that his name?

Yes, I replied. Anwar.

He is such a nuisance.

No, I said, he is a pesky sweetheart.

Yes Ma'am. We will give him the shoes.

I walked out of the CCD with some amused discussion behind the counter in Assamese about the strange woman buying shoes for beggars.

I didn't look back. It is not in my nature to look back.

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Post script: Six months later, in March 2009, I was in Agartala replicating my research design for Tripura. I was being hosted at the Salbagan BSF encampment on the outskirts of Agartala. Ten minutes away from the encampment as one approached the city, a CCD existed in the perimeter of the Ginger Hotel. On days that I was allowed to get away from the BSF encampment with an escort, I would ask the uniformed and armed driver to make unscheduled stops at the CCD. I REALLY wanted my coffee. The first time I walked in, I ordered my coffee from a barista who wouldn't stop smiling at me.

Finally he said - Ma'am its good to see you. How is your research going?

I did a double take.

He said - I was at the CCD in Guwahati. We remember you there. You left shoes for Anwar.

My heart skipped a beat. I frowned in feigned anger, leaned towards him and said - Tell me you gave him the shoes.

He said - yes of course we did!

Sach much (really?)

He said - Yes ma'am.

Life tasted better for the next hour!