even for a cigarette. But, being a proud person, I have never gone down in front of anybody for anything. I prefer starving. And those were my starving days. Since that time, you know, I have only one meal a day. That meal is at night. I never eat in the mornings. I have only coffee.
‘One of my maternal uncles used to visit me at that time. Twice or thrice a week. He was absolutely poor, but he used to take me to a hotel.’ The word ‘hotel’, as used by Mr Raote, and pronounced
ho-tal
, was more of a Marathi or Hindi word than an English word, and meant a restaurant, usually of a simple sort. ‘He would give me a meal. Poor food. And a cup of tea, and a cigarette.
‘One day my father-in-law didn’t come home. He didn’t come home the next day either. We began a long search for him. After four days he came back on his own. We found him in the road. He had had a road accident, and he had been discharged from the hospital. After this he became “psychiatric”. He used to harass everybody. So I had to stay away from my mother-in-law’s place during the day. I was quite homeless. I used only to sleep at my mother-in-law’s place.
‘Then one of my father-in-law’s friends offered me a place in East Dadar. We went there, and it was there that my second son was born. During all this tormented time my wife was pregnant. In East Dadar I got settled nicely. I had a peaceful life. I used to get there at 11 in the evening, after my work for the Sena. This was in 1973–1974.
‘This period of my life lasted four years. I used to walk kilometres to take the Sena meetings. I never grumbled then. When, later, I was elected to the Corporation, and began to talkthere, all that I poured into the speeches came from these years I’ve been telling you about.’
What had supported him? Had he felt ‘guided’?
He had felt guided. He had a guru. In what I had thought of as the holy corner of the sitting room there was – not far from the small shelf of devotional cassettes – a large, perhaps more than life-size picture of a handsome, bearded man, just the face. I had seen the picture as I had come in; but with the feeling I had had that the corner was holy, and private, I hadn’t looked at the picture more closely. That man – with features of almost unnatural regularity and beauty, in the picture – had been Mr Raote’s guru.
It was of religion that now, near the end of the morning, Mr Raote wished to talk. He took me to his puja room. It was next to the sitting room. The shrine was a deep, chest-high recess in a wall. The images were freshly garlanded; there was a husked coconut with a tuft of fibre or coir at the top. Right at the back of the recess, and fitting the back, was another picture of the guru, perhaps trimmed to fit the space, but similar to the picture in the sitting room: the devotee, and the shrine, would be held in the gaze of the guru. Fresh flowers were placed on the shrine every day; the coconut was changed every month. Mr Raote spent an hour and a half every morning on his puja. He sat on a deer skin. The skin was then rolled up and placed on a high shelf.
Some days later, when I went to see Mr Raote again in his flat, I got the rest of his story.
At the end of that four-year period of starvation, good fortune came to him quite suddenly. In the garage of a friend, right here in Dadar, he began to make furniture. It was a new turn for him; but he wasn’t absolutely a novice. At school he had done woodwork and furniture-making as a special technical subject. Now, in the friend’s garage, he began to make sofas, tables and chairs; and he sold the pieces he made. He discovered he had talent.
He had made much of the furniture in his flat. Against one wall was a special table he had designed. It was like a Pembroke table, with two fold-down flaps on either side of a central plank. But in this design the central plank was very narrow, about eight inches, making it ideal for the small, multi-purpose
‘One of my maternal uncles used to visit me at that time. Twice or thrice a week. He was absolutely poor, but he used to take me to a hotel.’ The word ‘hotel’, as used by Mr Raote, and pronounced
ho-tal
, was more of a Marathi or Hindi word than an English word, and meant a restaurant, usually of a simple sort. ‘He would give me a meal. Poor food. And a cup of tea, and a cigarette.
‘One day my father-in-law didn’t come home. He didn’t come home the next day either. We began a long search for him. After four days he came back on his own. We found him in the road. He had had a road accident, and he had been discharged from the hospital. After this he became “psychiatric”. He used to harass everybody. So I had to stay away from my mother-in-law’s place during the day. I was quite homeless. I used only to sleep at my mother-in-law’s place.
‘Then one of my father-in-law’s friends offered me a place in East Dadar. We went there, and it was there that my second son was born. During all this tormented time my wife was pregnant. In East Dadar I got settled nicely. I had a peaceful life. I used to get there at 11 in the evening, after my work for the Sena. This was in 1973–1974.
‘This period of my life lasted four years. I used to walk kilometres to take the Sena meetings. I never grumbled then. When, later, I was elected to the Corporation, and began to talkthere, all that I poured into the speeches came from these years I’ve been telling you about.’
What had supported him? Had he felt ‘guided’?
He had felt guided. He had a guru. In what I had thought of as the holy corner of the sitting room there was – not far from the small shelf of devotional cassettes – a large, perhaps more than life-size picture of a handsome, bearded man, just the face. I had seen the picture as I had come in; but with the feeling I had had that the corner was holy, and private, I hadn’t looked at the picture more closely. That man – with features of almost unnatural regularity and beauty, in the picture – had been Mr Raote’s guru.
It was of religion that now, near the end of the morning, Mr Raote wished to talk. He took me to his puja room. It was next to the sitting room. The shrine was a deep, chest-high recess in a wall. The images were freshly garlanded; there was a husked coconut with a tuft of fibre or coir at the top. Right at the back of the recess, and fitting the back, was another picture of the guru, perhaps trimmed to fit the space, but similar to the picture in the sitting room: the devotee, and the shrine, would be held in the gaze of the guru. Fresh flowers were placed on the shrine every day; the coconut was changed every month. Mr Raote spent an hour and a half every morning on his puja. He sat on a deer skin. The skin was then rolled up and placed on a high shelf.
Some days later, when I went to see Mr Raote again in his flat, I got the rest of his story.
At the end of that four-year period of starvation, good fortune came to him quite suddenly. In the garage of a friend, right here in Dadar, he began to make furniture. It was a new turn for him; but he wasn’t absolutely a novice. At school he had done woodwork and furniture-making as a special technical subject. Now, in the friend’s garage, he began to make sofas, tables and chairs; and he sold the pieces he made. He discovered he had talent.
He had made much of the furniture in his flat. Against one wall was a special table he had designed. It was like a Pembroke table, with two fold-down flaps on either side of a central plank. But in this design the central plank was very narrow, about eight inches, making it ideal for the small, multi-purpose
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