Weight-watchers come to him, but he waits for uplift

New Delhi: The lunch crowd skirts the round weighing scale parked two feet into the pedestrian pathway opposite Palika Bazar, near Janpath. Nobody notices the dark, heavily pockmarked face and tousled white hair of the man sitting hunched beside it. Only when the springs of the analogue machine announce a customer with a mechanical creak do his eyes rise in a white, sightless flicker.
Jagdish-he goes by only his first name-has become a fixture in the life of this busy street. Many in his position earn with importunate, outstretched hands, but Jagdish has chosen silent dignity. Blind since birth and unschooled, he has earned his keep from the age of 16, when his father refused to support him any more.
"Mein jab solah saal ka thha, pitaji bole, dekh le kuchh kar sakta hai to, mere bas ka ab nahin hai (when I was 16, my father said, try to fend for yourself; I cannot anymore)," Jagdish said.
In 1967, he left his village in Sikar district of Rajasthan to find work in Delhi. He apprenticed with a cane weaver in Paharganj and gradually started earning a living. Cane chairs, stools and sofas were common in those days, and he used to be called home for repair jobs. "Indira kand ke baad se mera kaam-dhanda kam chal raha thha (work orders are decreasing around the time Indira Gandhi was assassinated, in 1984)," he remembers.
He married Lilavati, who had lost her sight in an accident at the age of six, and they have two daughters. The elder one, Dinu, was married off when Jagdish had enough work, but the younger one, Preeti, is still in her last year of school and the weighing scale pays for everything. Jagdish, now 65, can't afford to lose it any more than his black-tipped walking stick. He keeps it tied to his big toe with a piece of twine, to guard against thieves and pranksters.
Change has hit Jagdish hard many times. People's taste in furniture has changed, and there's no money in cane weaving any more. One by one, the slums-Trilokpuri, Dhaula Kuan and Chanakyapuri-where he set up home were bulldozed. All he wants now is to see Preeti married: "Sir, meri chhoti beti ki shadi ho jaye, bas, aur kuchh nahin chahiye (just want to marry off my younger daughter; I don't wish for anything else)."
So he continues making the daily trips between CP and Uttam Nagar, where he has lived since 1997, by bus number 740. Grey jhola, heavy with the scale swaying in one hand, and the cane counting out steps in the other. Rain or shine, from 8am to 8pm, Jagdish is at the service of weight-watchers.
What will he live on when he's too old to bus down to CP? He says he's had a blind person's certificate from AIIMS since 1984 and needs state assistance under a senior citizens' scheme. The weight-teller is waiting.