The man who waited for the Up lift

The idea of standing in a claustrophobic little box hanging by a cable over an abyss several hundred feet over griund zero filled Seshadri with dread. Representation pic/Getty Images

I can still vividly recall my first meeting with the hapless Seshadri - not surprisingly, outside a lift. It was close to 5 pm and I was leaving my office on the 17th floor of a prestigious Mumbai high-rise building. As we passed the 9th floor, I noticed a nondescript fellow gesticulating frantically in my direction. His wrist was held stiffly out, forefinger at an angle, pointing upwards.

I do not know what made me get off the lift and accost him but that is how I met Seshadri, an ordinary Indian who could never get clear directions to any place in any city.

There are Seshadris wherever there are high-rises with elevators. He is the morose man never fortunate enough to board, always reaching the elevator just as the doors slide shut. He is the one who gets squeezed out when the lift is overfull. He presses the Up button repeatedly when everyone else is going down, or gets off on the wrong floor, where he will wait another quarter-hour.

Yet Seshadri is the epitome of utter faith and hope in the face of overwhelming odds and statistics. As the full lift passes him aloofly by, his face will unfailingly light up. His wrist will shoot out, the forefinger pointing tremulously upwards. In a quavering whisper that no one will acknowledge or answer, he will ask nobody in particular, "Going up?"

As the lift doors close you may glimpse Seshadri, unanswered, nodding to himself, as though everything was as he had suspected all along.

This was the man waiting I met. "Sir, it has taken me all day and I still have not reached my floor. The lifts going up were full, so I kept taking the ones going down. And now here I am, sir, on the 17th floor.

Still so far from my destination, the 9th floor."

Feeling pity, I took him to a coffee shop, where I heard his harrowing tale.

It was as a lad of 18, selling carbon paper door to door that Seshadri had first entered a lift. He was terrified. The idea of standing in a claustrophobic little box hanging by a cable over an abyss several hundred feet over ground zero filled him with dread.

"I realised early, sir, that there would be a big challenge: when a lift's doors open, there is no way an ordinary man like me can figure out if it is on its way up or down. The lift is stationary when its doors open."

To resolve this, Seshadri took to addressing polite enquiries to the occupants.

"But no one was interested in answering me," he said. "Some would deliberately mislead me, causing me to travel in the opposite direction. Eventually, however, I grew philosophical about it and began to study the Vedas, hoping for illumination."

It was there, at age 33, that he found the words: The fool searches in darkness; but the wise man seeks where the light is brightest.

Seshadri, imagining that people in cars might be more inclined to answer his questions, took to standing along the traffic lights along the Queen's Necklace, with his thumb held out stiffly. As vehicles stopped at the signal, he would approach them and ask, in the same tremulous voice, "Going north, sir?"

Did this improve matters?

"Far from it, sir," he croaked. "Not once in five years did a driver answer me."

In the process, Seshadri became a wreck. His forefinger and thumb were reduced to stiff stumps. Worry lines creased his face. He had no job left because all jobs, according to him, consisted of "either mounting buildings or being mounted by them".

His children graduated. His wife left him and returned to her parents in Changanacheri. He lived alone.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" I asked him. "Your fingers are devastated. Your mind is a mess. Is it so important?"

"Yes!" he screamed. "The world has ignored me too long. I must be answered!"

I had an epiphany. Revenge was what Seshadri needed. I pondered the matter a moment and did a small calculation of the usable fingers on Seshadri's hands.

Forefinger - useless.

Thumb - stiff from overuse.

Little finger - dead through neglect.

Only two fingers remained of which the fourth was a relic anyway. That left one.

Today, Seshadri is a happy man - well, as happy as he will ever get. He may be seen in any of the high-rises in downtown Mumbai, waiting in the elevator lobby. He no longer wants to know if the lift is headed up or down.

As the lift doors open at his floor, he makes a warbling sound, calculated to attract every passenger in the lift. Then, with a deliberation born of years of frustration, he raises his wrist and carefully sticks out the middle finger, in the time-honoured proctal suggestion.

Before anyone can react, the lift doors hiss shut. Seshadri wins every time.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.