The Lonely Old Reprobate

Shenkey Gohar

Shenkey, is a Tuk Tuk driver in New Delhi, he was parked outside the ‘Cottage Hotel Yes Please’, where I stayed the first few days after arriving In Delhi. I wanted to go to buy some variety focal glasses so I can see where I’m going, and I wanted new all leather shoes which you can’t buy in the UK anymore. Well you can if you can afford them, there is a company called Roan Footwear, an American company who sell all leather shoes, I think their sandals start at about £60, I might be wrong about that, but you can’t find them for love nor money, and all leather, including leather soled brogue shoes don’t exist any more, but Shenkey took me to a shopping area Connaught Place, close to India gate in New Delhi where I was able to buy a pair. I paid £80:00 for them, and they are everything I wanted. 

I don’t want rubber, nylon or plastic soled shoes because they insulate you from the earth. We are electric beings, and the earth is one big Piezoelectric motor. You might have heard about grounding? Or maybe you haven’t, but going barefoot is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself, online you can buy grounding sheets for your bed, you use them the same way as an electric blanket, which rather than warming the bed, actually earth your body while you sleep, you sleep better and recover from illness more quickly, don’t have to take my word for it, but you can look it up if you want to. I mention it because it is a thing these days, but you can’t buy leather soled shoes anywhere, and I wanted a pair for the same reason. For practical reasons we can’t go barefoot in the modern world, but leather soled shoes are the next best thing because you still pick up the piezoelectric charge which is almost as good, because they allow the charge through the leather.

Shenkey wanted to do the whole tourist thing with me, even introducing me to what he told me was ‘tourist information’, but was actually a tour guide called Moosa, who tried to sell me guided tours around some amazing places, but that isn’t my idea of what I want to do, but I liked him anyway. One thing I picked up on very quickly is the interconnectedness of how business is conducted. Shenkey, and others like him take gullible tourists who want all that to Moosa, and if he makes a sale Shenkey gets a 2% commission, so as a tourist, you are just a source of income for these guys. Tourists are there to be courted and entertained, and there are plenty of options. Within half an hour Shenkey offered me marijuana, massage, and took me to see Moosa, I twigged straight away what the game was, and I found it amusing.

Moosa is a smart guy, and he soon realised he was getting nowhere because he wasn’t offering anything I wanted. You have choices, and you pick and take what you want, the way you react is another choice, at one point I felt Moosa was getting wound up because I wasn’t biting, and the tone became a little intimidating, but not, depending on how you handle yourself, he started asking questions about who you are, where you come from , what do you do for a living, sort of thing. So, I told him I had worked in a secure mental hospital for the last 20 years, which is true, and when he asked what that was like I took advantage of the opportunity to sit him down (metaphorically speaking), and told him the guys I worked with were all mentally insane, and wanted to kill you, that it was one fight after another with guys who want to rip your throat out. Now he could take it or leave it, but I said it, and I was very laid back about it, so if he was trying it on, I showed him I wasn’t bothered. He had to consider who is this guy? An old dude on his own in a city of 19 million people, without a clue where he was, sitting there, laid back and unconcerned in a grubby tiny office, a bunch of burly types in back, and him at least 25 years younger. I saw it in his eyes, luckily for me he decided to be nice hahahaha.

Everybody here is on the make. There is no social security, no retirement plan, no pension, if you can’t work you starve unless there is someone to take care of you in your old age. You see it on the streets. The margins between the haves and the have nots is immense, and Shenkey was trying his best to get as much as he could out of it, but his English is pretty good, and bearing all this in mind what could I do, I decided to stick with it, and we became friends. I knew he was trying to milk me, but put yourself in his shoes, try to at least give him some credit. He has two teenage children, a mother to take care of and the cost of being employed by someone doing to him what he was trying to do with me. I t got to a point where I had to put him straight though, so I told him I knew his game, and I would play but if I felt he was taking the piss, I would use someone else. He got the message, and it made things easier for me. I knew he was literally taking me for a ride, but it isn’t like he was bankrupting me.

Two nights before I left Delhi Shenkey invited me to meet his family and have a meal with them. I knew then I had won his respect, so I accepted. He gave me a time when he would pick me up, and I was ready. I was expecting him to turn up in his Tuk Tuk, but he came on a scooter! I haven’t ridden any sort of motor bike for 50 years, I tried all that time ago, but I gave it up because I was forever falling off, so sat pillion on a scooter driving through the narrow streets of Delhi was well, interesting to say the least, but life is for living, and you see nothing from an armchair.

Driving from the hotel, I noticed the streets were becoming narrower, the sky becoming smaller, and the light failed to penetrate the gloom in what can only be described as a ghetto. We passed into a gated  are where anything bigger than Shenkey’s scooter could not access, another couple of corners later he parked up, and I thought we had arrived, but he led me around a further couple of corners into a street not wide enough even for his scooter. The darkness was like a shroud, children were playing as they always do, even in the gloom, and soon Shenkey turned into a narrow opening, switched on a flashlight to reveal the narrowest of staircases up to his living quarters. 

Shenkey’s son and nieces

Inside I was shown into a room with a bed, which his father, who was younger than I, had died on 6 months prior, a plastic garden chair, and a flat screen TV, it was modest by any standard, his children where there, and his mother, his sister-in-law, and her 3 children. Off to the side was a kitchenette, on the other side of the stairwell were a couple more rooms in total darkness, and Shenkey was the only English speaker. We had a very modest meal of Chicken pieces, chopped up without any recognisable pieces, in a thin sauce, which was delicious. The children were fascinated by the old English guy, and they hung around enjoying the novelty. I asked Shenkey if they had wifi, which is everywhere, even in the ghetto, and then I took out my iPad, which I had reset to factory settings and Apple Pencil, and told “them this is for you all, hopefully it will give you an advantage for education, and access to the WWW”. Shenkey’s 15 year old daughter’s eyes almost popped out of her head, I could tell how it excited her, she knew what she was looking at. Items like that are common enough for better off people, but a family like Shenkey’s aren’t in that bracket, so hopefully they can make good use of it in all the ways it was designed for.