Author: Hemali Chhapia
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 18, 2011
URL: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-18/india/29900278_1_fasting-anna-hazare-bmc
Checkered shorts and a Gandhi topi is a fashion
felony. But 29-year-old Shailesh Saraf doesn't care; he has never blindly
followed a popular trend. Currently on "FL or fasting leave", Saraf,
a vice president of a global bank, is down from Hong Kong to campaign for
the Jan Lokpal bill.
Saraf was among the 72 protesters who were
fasting for the second consecutive day at Azad Maidan; two new recruits joined
the fast on Wednesday. At the maidan, Saraf intermittently checks his Blackberry,
not for investment updates or market movements but for news of Anna Hazare's
release. For the most part, he sits on the stage, listening to people unspooling
long speeches about the corruption they'd faced.
"When I was in India, I used to evade
taxes. I don't even try that in Hong Kong. Here, I used to jump signals, I
don't do that there," he confesses. "What I'm getting at is that
I am the same person-I still want to reach my office quickly, still make more
money. But there is a system I must follow. India needs to have a better system
in place and the Jan Lokpal draft is the best piece of legislation drafted
in India."
Saraf, who lives in Kowloon, says he dreams
of a cleaner India to which he can one day bring his children back. "There
isn't a magic wand, but this is as close as we can get to root out corruption,"
he says.
And then there was 60-year-old Ramji Rathod,
a retired BMC safai karmachari who was worried about the weeds in his housing
society. "I have cleaned the city for years, but haven't managed to get
the BMC to clean up our society (BMC colony, near Arthur Road)," he gripes.
Many of those fasting solved crosswords,
read books on corruption, wrote shayaris, prepared speeches or asked volunteers
to photograph them. Some just slept.
There weren't many women in the crowd, but
housewife Anita Singh from Panvel says she's supporting the Jan Lokpal Bill
simply because she wants to be a part of this historic revolution. Nanda Mandlik
(52) from Vashi was driven by another motive. A single mother, Mandlik drove
an auto to earn a living, and raise her sons, but she routinely encountered
bribery along the way, and she was there to lend volume to the collective
voice.
Prem Shah (72) was among the oldest of the
lot on day 2 of his fast. His email-unreasonableman.prem@gmail.com says a
lot about him. "That's how I have been perceived by others; for I have
done nothing wrong, not even paid a bribe," he says, a copy of John Perkins'
Confessions of An Economic Hitman in his hand. Shah says what brought him
there was government inaction with regard to illegal wealth stashed in Swiss
banks.
At the other end of the age spectrum was
18-year-old Ranjit Bharadwaj who repairs air-conditioners and makes around
Rs 2,000 a month. "No one listens to small people like me," he complains.
"But there's no hierarchy here, and I want India to be just like this-the
kind Hazare dreams of."
While Bharadwaj believed his was a lost voice,
49-year-old Chandrashekhar Patil chose, of his own volition, to keep quiet.
Patil, heavily diabetic and suffering from high blood pressure, was ordered
by his doctor to avoid speaking because voicing his views could get him agitated.
Lastly, US-returned Nitin Makhiya who has
also been fasting since Tuesday says he misses food. "But hunger is better
than the bitter aftertaste that an act of corruption leaves behind."
