Love is the Greatest Power

I was travelling back to my home from office on my scooter. It was 8.20 pm and was already dark. My mind was completely whirling with opinions since I came out of my Editor Mr Abhinav’s cabin. It’s my ultimate ambition to do something colossal in my career.

For past one year it’s ‘True Voice’ newspaper agency for which I was working as a junior reporter. My last project of exposing Patel Engineering firm for employing children as labours went fuddled. Despite of my stubborn efforts to collect proofs, in the end I was unsuccessful. Besides Mr Patel is a powerful man. Going against him could prove a bit risky for me. So Mr Abhinav called me in his cabin and told me to hand over the case to a senior reporter.

The thoughts about those children’s future were continuously distressing me. I was feeling hopelessly sorry as I couldn’t do anything for them.

Suddenly I saw a grey haired man working in the middle of the road. It looked so astonishing as he didn’t look a waged labour.

“What must he be doing, so late?” I murmured to myself.

I took a U-Turn from the signal and came back to the spot the man was working.

I parked my scooter at the side of the road, put my helmet in the dickey below the seat and took a walk avoiding traffic in the middle of the road towards the man.

He was an aged person, wearing half sleeves shirt and trousers. He wore sandals in the feet and had gloves in his hands. He had put barricading sings on the road around the pothole.

He was so busy with his work, he didn’t notice, so I called him, “Hello uncle ji, may I ask you whether you have the permission letter from the municipal authorities for working so late?”

“Ohh. So are you from the authorities or a local leader?” he spoke in very loud and rude tone.

I got startled with his counter question, “I am neither, but do you have the permission to work so late in the middle of the road,” I persisted with my question.

“Why do you care if you are neither from municipal authorities or local leader? You want a selfie or something with me? I don’t have time for that! Just go away and let me do my work!” he was very angry, so I came back to my scooter and waited patiently for his work to finish. it was sure that he has some unusual drama in his life.

He poured some soil and fine gravel in the pothole. He maintained the level slightly above the surface, and then he started to hit the soil with a hand tamper and didn’t stop until it levelled.

It all took half an hour to complete his job, and I was still waiting by the scooter. When he finished his job he came beside the road and called on phone to somebody, “I’m done here, leaving now!”

He noticed me standing there looking at him, “I thought I made it clear that I am not interested in selfies!” his tone was still very angry.

“I am sorry to bother you sir, but I am a junior reporter at ‘True Voice’, and I was just curious…

“oh ho.. ho.. ho…” his condemning laughter interrupted my introduction.

“So, you are a reporter! You want some news, just because you are not getting one and to you I look stupid enough to fool into a spicy story. Am I right? May be you were scolded by your senior for not getting any good news and if you don’t get any you might get fired. Otherwise who has so much time to enquire and idiot like me.”

I kept staring at him and he already left in his three wheeler!

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed to myself! There must be some terrible catastrophe behind his anger, or maybe he was born like this! But I was surely going to dig it out, despite his lack of co-operation. If I can occupy my forty minutes here, I can spend more, but I will get to the bottom, no matter what it is.

It was absolutely not easy to find that man. He didn’t share his address or number, or even his name, so only way to locate him was to find him on the roads.

My plan worked and I tried to be casual to him. After a couple of times of refutations, he gave me his name, number and address and invited me to his place. So I visited him on next Sunday.

It was a medium size hall, where he was sitting on sofa. There were photos of Hindu deities on the wall. There was a photo of a young man looking about of the age of twenty five hanging on the wall with a garland on it.

As I approached he asked me to sit. As I seated on sofa in front of him, a middle age woman entered the hall with a tray of tea.

“She is my wife.” He said.

I greeted her with, “Namaste!”

“Namaste child!” she replied. Then she offered the cups of tea to both of us and put the tray on the table in the middle. She also took a cup and got seated on sofa beside.

“So, what do you want from me?” he asked me.

“Sir, as I have told you, I am a reporter. But I am young in this field and sometimes I fail to deliver justice to whom we are supposed to as publishing media. We fail because we don’t have enough proofs, and the people against whom we go are very powerful people.” I told him to get his indulgence.

“When I saw you on the road I thought there must be some story behind your act. You didn’t look like a normal labour working on road. So sir can you please clarify to me that why you are doing this job without any contract?” I approached to the point.

He started with a sigh, “Do you see that photo with garland hanging on the wall,” he said with a sad tone and pointed towards a photo. Even his wife’s expressions saddened.

“Well, he was my son. I lost him in a road accident three years ago,” his tone deepened.

“The accident happened due to a pothole in the road,” I listened to him with utmost attention.

“He was my only son and I was devastated after this incident. My wife had a mild heart attack. That accident acted like a tornado and uprooted the tree of our family. Things scattered. There remained no objective for us to live.” He stopped for few moments. There was an encumbering silence in the room. He sipped the tea from his cup. So did me and his wife.

“So, I decided to go to the municipal department, and present them with an application for repairing the damaged road where my son died,” he continued.

“Everybody sympathised, but nobody worked on my application. Days passed and then months and then an year,” his tone grew angry.

“On the first death anniversary of my son, I pledged to take the responsibility on myself and start repairing the road. I lost my son, I don’t want anybody else to go through what I am going.” He finished the tea and put the cup in the tray.

I was so disheartened to know his condition! “Sir, I had a feeling that you have some blue past, which you really have. I have tried to do good for people in my career, but I couldn’t in absence of proofs.” I kept my cup in the tray.

“Sir do you have the copies of the application you gave in the municipal departments?”

“Yes of course! I have the copies. But what are you planning to do?” he asked with reluctance and a huge question mark on his face.

“You have suffered a lot sir. And due to scorching corruption in government departments, officers don’t work if they can’t find any personal gain in the job they are doing. So we will use an opportunity to repair not only the particular road where your son died, but all the roads in the area.” There was a confidence about what I said and sympathy for him in my voice.

“There’s a local election ahead. So you just give me the details I need, rest you leave up to me. I am sure I can bring the justice to your son.

On Monday I went to Mr Abhinav with this story and the photographs of the documents.

“Sit!” said Mr Abhinav after listening to me and engaged in dialling some number on his mobile. But surprisingly I was still standing because this was first time he asked me to sit in his cabin.

“I said sit Sushant!” he asked me again and this time I sat without wasting a moment!

“Manav…” he spoke on his phone, “I have something special in my hand. I need your help to put this on the top over others. We are going to make use of election time in this stuff. I will talk to you in detail later when we personally meet. See you… bye!”

“Sushant, you really have a very good story. What did you tell the name of this man was…?”

“Raghav sir. Mr Raghav,” I replied.

“Yes, Mr Raghav has really suffered a lot and shown a great determination in bringing justice to his son. This story has a wonderful potential, so now do as I tell you here afterwards…”

I kept becoming more and more cheery with his each instruction. After he was finished I knew I have found the first potential story of my career!

After three days the story was published in ‘True Voice’ with Mr Raghav’s photo working on streets. I also made his videos and distributed on social media with the help of my friends. Story of a father repairing the damaged road in the memory of his dead son went so viral on social media, that the story soon became a heated talk of the town. After some time even random people also captured his pictures and videos and were shared on social media.

After a week I went to the college where his son went and also to the workplace where he worked and contacted some people to organise a candle march on the spot he died. The photos of the candle march were spread like jungle fire. Mr Raghav was also invited in the candle march. He turned very emotional in that moment. His emotional video spread even more briskly. He said, “I lost one son, and got so many children! Thank you Sushant!” he couldn’t control his tears neither could the other people in the group.

Soon the story was roofed by other newspapers and also by some local TV channels. It didn’t take much time by the local leaders to come forward and promised upkeep of the not only one road but the roads of entire area, just for the sake of taking advantage in the elections.

Soon there were tenders for repairing the roads and all the works started on urgent basis. Within two months all the roads were repaired.

Mr Abhinav threw a huge party for the success of this story not only in terms of TRP but also on the ground level.

Now Mr Raghav roams around the roads with his three wheeler, but he can’t find a single pothole to repair!