Mahesh the one armed milkman and his German grit…

He cycles 44 km back and forth from Maran Mau village to distribute milk in Lucknow everyday, plays a bansuri which he made for himself, writes poetry and eats a ball of surreptitious looking leaves which cost five rupees. But there’s something about this five foot three inch 26 year old bachelor, his dirty red cap which he wears turned backwards, disheveled hair, unshaved face, piercing black eyes and the stump which is all that he has for a right arm, make Mahesh the milkman more, than just another dairy hand.

In an accident in 1993, Mahesh Kumar Gautam’s right fore-arm was sliced away in a fodder cutting machine, all that remains is a stump till above the elbow, he survived in

spite of the immense blood loss. “Time stopped for one hour, the other laborers didn’t know what to do, then Pappu unwound the blades and tied the remains of my arm with his towel and rushed me to the hospital”, he says, shivering in the memory of the pain and the recuperation that followed. After months of nursing, he was reduced to lifting handfuls of hay at the farm.

His mother, fondly called “Neta” because of her vociferous ways, thought it was all over for her youngest son, “What can a mother do when she sees her brightest son disintegrate?”. But inspiration was only a story away, Mahesh’s employer, Late Brigadier Pritpal Singh could not stand a young man wasting away. Mahesh lights up as he remembers him, “He is the reason why I can look the world in the face today, I had wasted away because I thought I was a lesser man, just one arm. What work could I do? But I did have a little spirit, to continue working and earn for myself, Sahib noticed this”.

Mahesh who had passed his 8^th standard had dreamt of joining the armed forces one day, had always been in awe of his “Badde Sahib”. Brig Singh took it upon himself to change this man’s helplessness and insisted he work like a young lad and not a “cripple”. He was made to clean the cow sheds, feed the cows, cut fodder-again, and face his fears. Today as he travels the distance between the village and the city he has an air of confidence and purpose in him. Today he is just like any other bachelor from the village, “I make friends on the road and take my time cycling back and forth between the village. Sometimes I stop at the tea stalls and play my bansuri, they often serve me free tea and love to hear my poetry”.

He remembers how a local village lad had inspired him to play the bansuri, “Bajrang used to play the bansuri and I was always in awe of him because the school girls and the girls from the local tailor’s workshop used to be friends with”, he laughs. “I taught myself how to play and make my own bansuris, my mother doesn’t like bansuris because she doesn’t like my Romeo image in the village! So I hide the bansuri in my friend’s house every evening before I return home.” Smiling he plays with the bansuri and looks around at his admirers, a group of young children who want to learn how to play the bansuri from “Bansi walle bhaiyaa”.

“Badde Sahib related to me a story about an angrezi pilot, he had lost his leg in the war and he continued to fly for the army, he played sports and even climbed mountains.” The angrezi pilot Mahesh innocently remembers is the famous German pilot, Hans Ulrich Rudel, who flew 2,530 combat missions which is a world record, being shot and force landed (often behind enemy lines) 32 times yet somehow always managing to escape capture despite Stalin himself putting a 100,000 rouble bounty on his head. He went on to become the most decorated soldier in Germany and wrote two books “In spite of Everything” and “Memoirs of a Stuka pilot”. As Mahesh sits on his cycle playing his bansuri, people stand and watch this one-armed fighter trudge through life with the grit of a German pilot who once said, “"Lost are only those, who give up themselves".

In The Express:- http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=190868