Pritam's Blog
The Oriya Mess-waale Bhaiya
Of all those people who helped me sail through one of the toughest periods of my life, I guess, I have never mentioned one person.
It was the Oriya Mess-waale Bhaiya…
(I know his name but let’s not dwell in the trivialities.)
His food was amazing and he charged very less. But he was not at all a business-minded businessman. Unlike the other tiffin services in my locality, Oriya Mess-waale Bhaiya never asked for payment in advance. You pay him only at the end of your cycle.
But the problem was he was too shy to ask for the money even after the cycle ended. People used to take advantage of it. They would take meals from him for a whole month and then won’t pay anything. Some would even go to the extent of changing their numbers.
Sometimes, he would ask if I knew some of these other guys (who were from the same locality) and if I had their numbers.
If you tell him to be more strict about these things, he would laugh it off saying, “These are just students. Most of the times, they themselves don’t have any money.”
Although I always made the payments, I wouldn’t deny that this lack of strictness from his side worked in my favor during those two years when I was, financially, quite weak. For example, sometimes, I would pay him once in two months.
Anyway, eventually, I guess he stopped this tiffin-service (at least in our locality) and started doing something else.
Yesterday morning, he called me up. Apparently, the lockdown has devastated his business. He could have managed it but his father had had a stroke and whatever savings he had was spent on his father’s treatment. The man, his father, is now paralyzed. He moved back to his village and is now trying to get into cultivation and all.
“Bhaiya, mere paas khaney ka bhi paisa nahi hai ab,” he almost broke down as he said that he didn’t even have money to feed his family.
A man, who used to run a tiffin-service and feed hundreds of people, who never asked for the money people owed him, was now broke and asking for help.
Call him an idiot or whatever but…
This will haunt me for a long time.