I just finished reading Rajat Ubhaykar's Truck de India, published in late 2019 - early into the present central government's second term (thank you, Aveek). It is a description of a young man's adventure, hitch-hiking with truck drivers across the length and breadth of India - well, Mumbai to Kashmir, a stretch through insurgent infested Nagaland, and again, Mumbai to Kanyakumari via Hyderabad. I got to learn a great deal, for which I am surprised, a little awed, and very thankful. Apart from the lovely, evocative descriptions of the road and the quick camaraderie that developed again and again between him and many of the drivers who kindly ferried him, for me, the two facts that stand out are: a) how hard these people work at great risk to life and limb to keep our vast country's economy going yet how much they are looked down upon by all and sundry in our society (even though they often earn more than a lot of naukriwallahs), as distinct from, say, soldiers, who are glorified for entirely political reasons, and b) how the 'system' grinds them under the heel relentlessly and mercilessly, by way of humiliation, harassment and bribe extraction (mostly through RTO officials and policemen, but also by all kinds of commission agents) all along the way, every time, all the time, and, despite our leaders' tall claims to the contrary, this 'brashtachaar' has been going on for ages and shows no likelihood of going away - though it seems that the introduction of the GST system countrywide and the increasing dominance of large corporate transporters who carry a lot of clout with the higher authorities has ameliorated their circumstances just a little lately. What stays with me is the common dream of so many truckers, that their English-medium educated, college graduate children will perhaps become high and mighty sarkari burra sahibs with assured, well-paying, secure and privileged jobs some day, the kind of demi-gods they have only regarded with fear and envy from an impossible social distance.
Two kinds of dark irony coloured my post-reading reflection. One - that after railing against the 'system', and the way our governments run, the writer himself has lately cleared the UPSC examination to be absorbed in the Indian Foreign Service. Should I wish him a great career, as the truckers think about it? Unless his knowledge of India fades and his conscience dies very soon, will he be able to live with himself?
The second great irony that overlaps this one: I also just finished reading Alapan Bandyopadhyay's Amlar Mon, which I bought expecting it to be something of an autobiography, but it turned out to be a review of how some great bureaucrats (ICS and IAS officers), both British and Indian, both before and after independence, have served this nation to the best of their ability, despite all kinds of constraints and obstacles in their way. Alapan-da and I once rubbed shoulders briefly, back in 1986-87, as cub reporters for the ABP group (but that is another story), but he rose to the highest pinnacle of what might be called 'success' in his line of work, ending up as the senior most bureaucrat in the state (and currently 'Chief Advisor to the Government of West Bengal', a post specially created for him by the CM following his abrupt and untimely resignation from the Service), while the average IAS officer ends up in a half way house as a deputy secretary in some obscure department or something like that, as nondescript and forgettable as anyone higher than a clerk can be - and yet, all through the narrative a pathetic angst seeps through, an unbearably dark feeling of frustration, cynicism, helplessness and lack of agency ... to the extent that in one of his last essays he advises current aspirants to aim for the 'lower' services such as the police or tax- or audit departments rather than the IAS, once regarded as the 'heaven born' service. His son, I have since found out, has become a professor of history. And I, humble school teacher and later private tutor that I have remained, am proud and glad to say that I do not feel a tiny fraction of that kind of unhappiness with the career that I have pursued.
Having read both books, what advice should I give my current young ex-students now in college who come for career counselling?
