His name is Mahadeva. A thin, dark man, so dark that it is difficult to see where his skin ends and his thick, curly, black hair and beard begins. And in that darkness live two huge eyes that never look directly at you, or if they do, hastily scuttle away with their startling whiteness as if not to offend or defile you by the untouchability of a direct stare.

Mahadeva is what we call a scavenger. He cleans our road and the outside of our houses of all manner of dirt, debris, waste, sometimes even excreta: animal and vegetable, but mostly man-made.

Every morning, the gentle, rhythmic swish-grritchh of the stick-fronds of the broom scratching the dust heralds Mahadeva's arrival.

A few months ago, a rat fell into the open water tank at the back of our house and drowned. I found it floating on the surface of the water in the morning, a tiny little grey-brown thing that I almost mistook for a bit of coconut tree debris that often falls into the tank.

Naturally, I didn't remove it, for to touch it, even vicariously with a stick or a plastic bag would have been tantamount to defiling myself. Rats were the lowest of the lowly, were they not? Dirty, disgusting creatures that carry and spread horrific disease. Scavengers really, to be feared and shunned.

Which meant that there was only one way to dispose of it.

"Mahadeva," I called out to him over the swish-grritch of his broom. "Amma?" he answered and came and stood at a quiet, respectful distance away from me, head bent.

"There is a dead rat in the water tank. Will you remove it?"

The question was a rhetorical one, a command really, because it was unthinkable that he'd say no. As I spoke, a thought skipped across my mind. If I was forbidden to touch and handle the carcass of a rat because it would corrupt me, what was the immunity granted to this man that he could? Perhaps two untouchables make it right? Fortunately the thought was is a great hurry and didn't stop for an answer.

Mahadeva removed the rat efficiently and quietly, and I tipped him 10 rupees.

Tip, was it? Or the wages of untouchability? Maybe even conscience money, as if to say - look, I know it's your job and you have to do it anyway, but I'm saying that I'm sorry you were born to do it and grateful that I'm not? More silly thoughts that I brushed away like the flies that would have gathered around the rat if I had left it there long enough....

There are some days when Mahadeva doesn't turn up. After getting over the irritation of having to shovel my own er, shit, I was willing to concede that the job satisfaction of harvesting garbage can't be something guaranteed to make someone bounce out of bed with a cheery song on their lips, no matter how many leftover packets of slightly off-the-boil lime rice and pickle and an occasional hand-me-down pair of jeans you'd get.

But I sanctimoniously preferred to put it down to the usual tardiness of his kind - lazy good-for-nothings who will live and die in the garbage can of society where they were born.

Till I discovered that the real reason for Mahadeva's frequent French leave. Early one evening, I noticed a man lying across the street. "That's Mahadeva," the neighbour's maid told me cheerily. "Is he ill?" I asked worriedly. "No," she said cheerily, "just drunk."

From her smile, it seemed to be a natural state of being for Mahadeva. "Shouldn't we do something?" I asked.

"Give him some buttermilk, Amma," she said.

Buttermilk?

"Yes," she said happily, "nothing like a bartan of buttermilk to wake up a drunk."

One lives and learns, I muttered to myself as I filled an empty jam jar with buttermilk. After quickly and gingerly placing it near Mahadeva's head, I rushed away to stand at a safe distance away and holler at him to drink it and go home.

He did, but only after staggering to his feet in post-buttermilk sobriety and swearing profusely passionate, slurred promises of how he'd never touch another drop and may he fall down dead if he did.

Mahadeva hasn't stopped drinking. And he hasn't fallen down dead either. His binges are funded by his garbage collection fees and whatever he earns from other jobs - trimming an overgrown hibiscus or pomegranate tree, clearing the roof of dead neem leaves...

Because for all his untouchability and fondness for his tipple, Mahadeva is a very good worker, doing the job with a sincerity and a single mindedness that you wouldn't have expected - well, of an untouchable drunk. Actually, in all fairness to him, I've never seen Mahadeva drunk on the job.

A few weeks ago, his son came to our gate one evening. A small boy of some 11 years with his father's eyes, except that instead of the untouchable's downcast, apologetic look, they stared directly at you with a child's clear, shining, uncluttered gaze.

He was clutching a small pile of what looked like playing cards in his hand. He gave one to me - putting it directly into my hand, not keeping it reverentially on the gatepost for me to pick up, as his father would have done. His fingers touched my skin, equal to equal.

"My sister is getting married," he said in a low, expressionless monotone. "My father said to tell you to please come for the wedding." I realized that what he had put into my hand was a wedding invitation. My mother asked me to give the boy some money. I did, speaking to him in a loud, slow voice as is he was mentally retarded or deaf or both, telling him to go straight home and give it to his father and not to lose it.

He looked at me - again that clear, direct gaze - and said, again expressionlessly, "I'll give it to my mother because my father will drink it away." I nodded and this time it was I who shifted my gaze away and down, a trifle shamefacedly.

As the boy walked away into the evening gloom, my mother and I examined the card. It was a pretty little card that even the cheap, shoddy printing couldn't ruin, printed in unusual, delicate golden yellow picked out in a peach and brown filigree design.

On the flap of the card was a neatly etched drawing of ---now who else would grace Mahadeva's daughter's wedding card-- but his namesake, Lord Shiva. Mahadeva. Maheshwara. Nataraja. The Cosmic Dancer. Being garlanded by his divine consort, Parvati. The four corners of the card were smeared with neat smudges of sacred, auspicious turmeric.

Inside, the chaste, high-class Kannada said, "Srimati Neelamma and Sri Mahadeva invite you to grace the occasion of the wedding of their eldest daughter, Chiranjeevi Sowbhagyawati Sowbhagya with Chiranjeev Murugesh and beg you to participate in the Vivah Mahotsava and bless the young couple.....".

Nowhere in the card was there anything which indicated that this was the wedding card of the daughter of a man who cleaned people's dirt for a living. I was unnerved, almost affronted. I mean, shouldn't the card in someway indicate that Mahadeva was not like us, but one of the ragged, low-class fringes of society? Shouldn't there be some mark, a sign by which people would know the difference between the wedding card of a low-caste's daughter and that of people like us? And what right had he, a poor, unlettered, uncultured untouchable, to elegance and good taste? For that matter, where the hell did he get it from?

I still have that card on my desk. To remind me that who you are has nothing to do with where and to whom you are born and what you do for a living. In that little card was more dignity, more self respect, more class and more self-worth than in all of the wedding cards that I had ever received. Cards that would have each probably cost more than what Mahadeva earns in three months, inviting me to the weddings of the daughters of people at least three times higher-born than this poor untouchable called Mahadeva.

The wedding is over and Mahadeva is back on the job. Swish- grritch goes his broom every morning. But somehow, it's not the same anymore. Every time I look at him, every time I pass him my pail of garbage, I am reminded and humbled by a little golden-yellow card on my table. And I wish that I had the capacity to make so much out of so little....

Ratna Rajaiah is sanctimonious no more

Illustration: Lynette Menezes

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