I met the boy near the furnaces. He walked out through a cloud of dust and smoke, with a red band around his head, struggling to support a long and heavy metal handle in his hand which he used to stir the molten contents of the furnace. He smiled and wearily, and without warning, started talking about Joint Entrance Examinations, the IITs and everything else. Slightly taken aback by this, I asked him to tell me his story. It went somewhat like this.
He hailed from a decently well-off middle class family in Bihar. The family was well-off till about some months back- that was when the father, a senior official in the Indian Railways, fell very seriously ill, and was to gradually lose his job that also paid quite well. Then, the elder brother, a trained pilot from Georgia town, USA, happened to be on the same flight that crashed in Mangalore, killing almost everyone on board. Very cruelly, his brother survived and is currently bed-ridden at a hospital in Bihar, having lost both his feet and his cherished dream. All his money is stuck in the bank, inaccessible at the moment by some devious ploy of the devil. The mother, distraught at her husband's misfortune and elder son's tragedy, was helpless throughout. And it was in the middle of this calamitous time that the boy received his entrance exam results, and came to know that he has got a rank of 2246 in IIT-JEE.
The boy came to Delhi to his relatives' house after that, in order to get him some work to earn some money so that he could afford the counseling fees. He got himself a call-centre job during the night, and looking for something for the daytime, landed himself this odd-jobs labour at the steel plant. I was gutted to hear all this, but also incredulous to a certain extent. I asked him a lot of questions, sympathizing with him but showing my skepticism from time to time. But he cared not for my belief as he went about his work, carrying sacks of silica and limestone, knocking down furnaces and re-building them and all the time being ordered around by people who in all likelihood would never have been to high-school, let alone be on the verge of joining the best institution in the country.
I had to recover quickly and ask him more, to make some sense out of this senselessness. Surely there had to be some government grant? Some financial aid for his brother? Some kind of assistance for his father? He couldn't answer any of this with clarity, but he said that he had no qualms whatsoever at doing any work that he could, no matter how menial it was, to earn himself a temporary livelihood and get into IIT without major hindrances. He had to be telling the truth, I told myself, no matter how unbelievable his story might seem. So here he was, a young lad still in his teens, waging the battle of his life all by himself, making sure he could carry his family and his own self out of this ruin without any further scars. This would easily have destroyed a lesser man's resolve. He didn't ask me for money or any help at all, except to tell him all about the IITs that I knew.
After this most remarkable story of the boy with the red band, the old man's tale would seem quite unspectacular, and almost tame and commonplace. The elderly were a suffering breed all across the length and breadth of this nation with the best culture and tradition in the whole world. The present tale was a sad one though- the daughter died early, the wife died soon after, the sons are lost in Asgard, the property is lost, the land is lost and all the money is lost- only pride and honour remain intact. Not willing to ask his fellow villagers for money or a source of livelihood, Baba came to the city and ended up as a labourer quite in the same mould as the boy at this steel plant. He smiled a toothless smile, blessed me with all his heart, and expressed hope that the boy would escape from this hell, realize all his dreams and save his family in the process. I shook hands with him and left, not having any words to say or indeed any expressions appropriate to show on my face.
This is my story of the day. I have learnt a lot about metal processing, alloy making, furnace functioning, fire-cutting, continuous casting and roll milling in fair detail in the last few days. But I realized while walking back home that my real education began only today, in the most unlikeliest of ways and forms possible.
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