My tribute to Mr. MK Gandhi, and why I accepted him as one of the wisest men in human history, despite my relations with communists.........

Where to Find Better Janitors?

Outbreak of cholera in Bangalore made us think of the same old question, if I were a minister where would I find better janitors? Would you clean roads and toilets with a smily face as a service to the nation, but not as a testimony to the casteist exploitation by the nation? And I remembered Mr. MK Gandhi again. Frankly speaking, when I came back to India after working as a janitor in the USA, I was worried that the CPIM-BJP combination would make me a janitor with the same pay in Kolkata (I did not get much better pay anyway)!

As I was riding the bus this morning, I also remembered my maternal grand-father, a not-so-orthodox priestly lower middle class Brahmin who became successful as a school teacher in Mujaffarpur, Bihar. I always wondered how he went Bihar from a very backward village in remote West Bengal. I used to proudly say that my body-structure (appearance), and calm and quiet behaviour was after my maternal grand-father; and not after my volatile-angry- discourteous father (this is unusual since the family relations should run through paternal ancestries). My reading/writing habits (often boring, tedious, scholarly, and not-so-paying) could be credited to my grandfather and my Sanskrit teacher. My maternal grandfather, dead long ago, would also be my connection to Bihar, that I claimed as my second native( I intentionally do that as I would not get along with my father). My maternal grand-father tutored me for many years, specially in language and arithmetic, and I was his 'life' after retirement. I always wondered, he being a Brahmin, how would he have treated a janitor? Of course he followed the caste system in rural Bengal and Bihar. 

This morning, as I was riding the bus to work, I remembered a Bengali poem that I discussed with my grandfather long long ago-- the poem was about a janitor [If my memory serves me right the poet was Satyendra Nath Dutta and the poem, entitled 'Methar', starts with 'Ke bale tomare bandhu asprishya asuchi (who says that, you, my friend, are an impure untouchable?)].  I  had told my grandfather that 'Methar' was a bad poem because it was about a janitor. He found me too 'insolent', and showed me how to write a very impressive precis of the poem in Bengali prose! Then I also liked the poem! I was too young to konw that I myself might become a janitor in Chicago; and perhaps school children all over even now would be as 'insolent' as I was when I was a child!

Why are janitors important? Are they only good  for public health, cleanliness and the thankless jobs they do so that the aristrocrats and tourists could enjoy finer aspects of life? Or could we be the janitors of our own homes (as the 'whites' do) to improve our quality of life?

After I went to Chicago, I experienced the 'Brahminic insolence' in me, much the same way I experienced myself in discussing the poem 'Methar' with my grandfather. The janitors in Chicago are so happy, they keep everything clean, work very hard smilingly, and work during the night hours so that visitors and other patrons/users could use the cleaned workplace/public places  during the day. Most of the janitors I knew were 'Black Americans'. Many of them rode cars. Once I met a janitor I knew on the CTA bus riding next to me; he was neatly dressed and well-groomed like any one else. Until then I was more like a bong (who could only lecture), but instantaneous I fell in love with Chicago-- was it because of its Capitalism or Revisionism? I tried very hard to keep everything clean by myself (white males did that at home anyway); but I always used to get sick and tired! I always wondered whether  there were any  limitations on my behaviour due to my family origins (caste) and upbringing? I would not be able to shovel snow as the whites do, since I was to weak! Would I ever be able to be equal to a White Chicagoan? It was long before I could even imagine that I would become a professional janitor! Since then I learned to accept Mr. Gandhi as one of the wisest men in human history, the father of modern India who knew why limited number of white protestant British could colonize the large landmass of India proud of its number of inhabitants, but not the other way?! 

SG,
Bangalore,
March 16, 2006.