City Man

Sitting in a van early one Saturday morning, going to distribute notebooks to village schools with Dream School Foundation volunteers and some Infosys employees. Facing you, this old-ish gentleman who is a school master at a government school in Rajaji Nagar. He will take us to some of the schools, he is a native of that area.

He starts talking about his village. None of the others are paying much attention, they return to their own conversations. You smile at him so that he does not feel disappointed, and urge him to go on. He is enthused, talks at length. Obviously he loves to talk about his village, and has a sense of ownership about it.

It is so remote that no buses go there. There is no proper road for vehicles. So the last few kilometres you need to walk. At the nearest village, a bus comes twice a day. But he still loves the place, it is his own, his people live there. His descriptions paint a world so very alien to Bangalore just 30 kilometres away. We could be living on different planets, you think.

When the stories are over, you happen to look down at his feet. He is wearing cheap brown shoes. And written on them are the words - "City Man".