Kayare has been my friend since childhood. You can call it a superb stroke of luck; he has been with me in school, college and service. Now that we have both retired, we keep meeting at least once a week or talk on telephone for more than normal lengths of time. Kayare comes from a middle class family but when he was just about to take his matriculation examination, his father had to undergo an operation for glaucoma that unfortunately turned him blind for life. But Kayare took it in his stride.
At school, Kayare had read about some of the Gandhian principles that touched topics like non-violence, co-operation and all round development of mind, body and spirit. Immensely influenced by these principles, he quietly started practising them in life.
Like me, he was madly in love with cricket. He has told me many times that he wanted to become a cricketer. In those days it was very difficult for middle class boys to even think of playing the game because cricket was well beyond affordable limits. Nevertheless, Kayare was undeterred. He started a cricket club and asked his friends and others to join him in the fray. He promised net practice to the members for six months, from September to February, for only rupees seven, per annum! But every member was expected to collect one rupee per month from at least ten neighbouring houses. This meant that each member would bring Rs 120, plus his own seven rupees every year. Soon we had about 40 members, which meant we had an approximate budget of Rs 5,000. This was clearly three times more than the normal allocation in a good government college.
Just a rupee every month for a family was simply so meager and acceptable that they readily agreed as they thought they were contributing to a good cause. Kayare made simple visiting cards out of a blank foolscap sheet. He wrote ‘Kayare for Secretary, Raipur Gymkhana Cricket Club’ on each card, visited office heads like the chief engineer or the civil surgeon or the district forest officer or the like. He would push in his card through the peon and talk to the officer when called. He presented his case — and this is very important — in English. “Those were the days,” he recalls, “No one said, ‘no’”!
We used to take out three to four new balls everyday for nets. Every opening batsman had sufficient practice of facing the new ball, as had all the new bowlers of hurling the new cherry with pace and swing. We played cricket like real Lords! Kayare recalls, our team, for a match, carried 11 bats, 11 gloves and 11 pairs of pads and a box of six new balls, just to show off! Who says, “Cricket is the king of all the games and the game for all the Kings?” I tell him such is the level of the power in a co-operative approach!
Kayare could not become a cricketer. He retired as a professor of Physics. But he has quietly followed the Gandhian principles in life. He has not told me but I know how he managed to help a fakir get his daughter married. This fakir, I later came to know, had approached Kayare after getting to know about his philanthropic helping hand. In those days, Rs 2,000 was a big amount and he requested Kayare to help him against the papers of his hutment. The fakir promised to return Rs 100 every month. Kayare did not take the papers but collected Rs 100 each from 20 persons. He convinced them to come forward and help in a just cause. Those 20 benefactors were invited to the wedding and they were gracious enough to be there in the ceremony. After a month, when the fakir gave Kayare Rs 100 to be paid back to one of them, he told him no one wanted the money, as it was done as help and not loan.
Much later, when I asked Kayare about this wedding, he told me that this fakir was a Muslim and a mureed (disciple) of a reputable saint, a Pir Sahib (Gurudev) of about one hundred thousand of mureeds. About 300 of those mureeds, the fakir’s pirbhais (gurubhais) were present at the ceremony and the dinner of baghare chawal(rice) and dal(lentil). I thought if only each pirbhai had contributed just one rupee to this fakir, he would have had a hundred thousand rupees for the wedding.
When I asked Kayare (now I must reveal, he is a Hindu) what he thought about this, he said he did not bother about all these things. He thought he ought to have done what he needed to, no matter what.
Where have all the Kayares gone?
The writer is a retired professor of English and a freelance writer from India. He can be reached at [email protected] and his twitter handle is @khaliqurrahman