One evening, he came to my quarters. I was lying on the cot reading a book. I got up and offered a chair to the unexpected visitor. To my surprise, he started talking in English — the clear, chiselled English used by professors in their lectures. One may say, perhaps with a slight Tamil accent. Suddenly he asked me in Tamil whether I was a Malayali. From thereon he carried on in part-Tamil, part-Malayalam for some time. Then fell back to English. He told me his real name was Seshadri and that he was an Iyengar from Tiruvayyar, near Tanjavur, where the saint Tyagaraja had lived. I noticed that when he spoke he unknowingly brushed the sacred thread under his shirt. I was still reeling at the thought of an English-educated Iyengar working as a mali in that wretched place. But by then he had abandoned his line of thought and had started asking me about myself. I don’t remember what I said. He closed the day’s programme with that and bid me goodbye.
What he told me the next time he came was even more unbelievable. Seshadri told me that till recently he had been teaching English literature at Banaras Hindu University. He had got fed up with the politics and student agitations there and resigned from the job. It was quite difficult to believe all that, but my mind was by then too exhausted trying to distinguish between the truth and imagination and had given in to his stories.
From then on Seshadri would drop in every now and then. He helped fill the intellectual vacuum I felt in that desolate place where I had no one to talk to other than the engineers and the workers. We talked about books, history, politics — everything under the sun. Whatever the topic, I realized that Seshadri had some knowledge of it and also a view of his own. I remember once when we were discussing the freedom struggle of the country, he offered the opinion that the communists who could never come out of the shadow of the Soviet Union as well as M.N. Roy who broke with them had both equally betrayed the Quit India movement.
On Sundays we went for long walks in the forest, venturing beyond the project roads on to the tracks and trails used by the local tribal people. Since the boulders and rock outcrops were heavily laden with iron and the surface soil cover was thin, the top of the hills did not have much vegetation. Trees grew on the slopes and in the valleys where the surface soil washed down from the top had accumulated. The trees growing on iron were hard like the metal, I would joke, and he would always be ready with a quick response.
Fast was the rise of Seshu in the company. He told me that he had divulged his Brahmin origins only to me. It was true; everyone else took him for a professional mali from upper Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. But the managers soon realized that he was educated and possessed the acumen to carry out more skilled jobs than those of a mali. He was appointed a work assistant, then a supervisor. The company was only too happy to exploit his abilities to the maximum.
It was then that it happened. The company was in need of some additional workforce. In those days of the Five-Year Plans and intense construction activity, labourers used to be recruited through local agents and brought in large numbers from the rural areas of Rajasthan, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh to the worksites. Seshu convinced the management that he had contacts in Orissa and could easily bring nearly a thousand workers from there. The management saw no reason to distrust him. Seshu, accompanied by Abhayshankar Kulkarni, an accounts assistant, was immediately deputed to proceed to Orissa to fetch the labourers. Kulkarni was naturally entrusted with enough money in cash for the purpose. One fine morning the duo set off for Durg, the railhead of the worksite. A month passed and there was no sign of either Kulkarni or Seshu. The management began to get worried. They informed the police and dispatched their own people in different directions to investigate. But nothing more was heard of Seshu or Kulkarni. I left the company the year after and moved on to other assignments.
The forty-five-year-old part of Seshadri’s story ends here. The latter part has now resurrected in the form of an emaciated frail man laid out on a stretcher in this Delhi hospital, hailing me in corridors. I do not know why an inexplicable element of fear crept into my mind when I stepped into that part and contemplated meeting him the next day.
Many giant companies have come up in the past decades, dominating the construction arena, but my information was that the Mehta Company still survived, perhaps in the role of a subcontractor to the big sharks, thus avoiding being swallowed by them. The chances of anyone there who would still remember the Seshu episode is, however, remote. Stories of deception and fraud are in any case not unknown in business. And I myself have long since left the service and the profession and am a free bird now. Seshadri does not have to justify his conduct to anyone any more. What this man might have to say about the whole incident, therefore, is only of idle interest.
Thus assuaging my unease I arrived at the hospital the next day. I went straight to his room, which I found was in the pay ward with all modern amenities. Seshadri was not there. He had been taken out for an emergency operation, I was told. I felt guilty for not having met him the previous day, and so I made haste to the operation theatre. He had already been taken inside. I was told that it was a major operation and would take about three hours.
I returned to the hospital after finishing some chores in the city, well before the three hours were up. A patient coming out after a major operation might not be in a condition to talk, but I decided to wait, as some urgency inside me insisted I do. Wasn’t there a similar urgency in the words of that fossilized man when he had asked me to meet him in his room without fail the previous day?
I spent my time in the waiting room reading newspapers and occasionally dozing. The controlled chaos among the staff indicated that everything was not right. The three hours stretched to four and then to five. Finally a doctor came out of the operation theatre and called my name. I went to him.
He opened the conversation with, ‘What is your relationship with Mr Iyengar, sir?’
‘He is not related to me,’ I replied. ‘An acquaintance, that is all. I had known him for a brief period, some forty-five years ago. What is the matter, doctor?’
‘Strange man,’ the doctor said, as if to himself. He turned to me. ‘I am sorry sir, the operation was not successful. We could not save him.’
‘My God,’ I muttered.
The doctor looked at me for a few moments. He was perhaps debating whether I needed comforting or not. After exchanging glances with the nurse who stood by his side, he spoke. ‘Well,’ he hesitated, ‘in any case he had left instructions, before being taken into surgery, for donating his organs as well as the body for medical studies.’
He was telling me indirectly that I need not worry about the cremation of the body.
‘Do you want to see the body of your friend?’ the doctor inquired.
I did not reply.
‘They will be bringing it out soon,’ he said, making the decision for me. ‘Mr Iyengar has left a written message for you. He specifically told me to pass it on to you in case he did not survive the surgery. Sister Meera John here will bring it to you, once we are done in there.’
The doctor went back inside. Eventually Seshadri’s body was rolled out on the trolley. The attendants peeled the sheet back from his face for me. Then they covered it again and took the body to the mortuary. It must have been an empty shell after removing the organs according to his instructions.