Meet an Avengers-Loving, Bollywood-Hating Kabaadiwaala

Our Do-Gooder series introduces you to the nameless, almost faceless, force helping us, our homes, and our cities survive despite our best efforts to destroy it all.

After the last round of cops had vanished from Mumbai’s Carter Road, we decided to sneak back to the sea-facing promenade we were shooed away from. It was a Saturday, my two friends and I were a little too drunk, and it had been an emotional week—all of which made some wind-in-your-face #tooreal talks by the beach imperative.

Around 4:30 in the morning, as we sat uncomfortably discussing which friends we loved more and why, 20-year-old Raju Sheikh walked past, hurriedly trying to extract scrap from one of the many giant moulds of crap in one of Mumbai’s coolest outdoor hangout spots. The dude was rocking a cream shirt which would've stopped being cream a while ago from the stains of his scrapping. It was an interesting deviation, we learned later, from his usual favourite colour black, which he loves because it doesn't get dirty as easily. Slowly, he started picking out plastic bottles, food delivery boxes, anything with remotely any plastic in it, with a mission to shove it all into his wagon.

Every morning after azaan, Sheikh spends four hours—from 4am to 8am—picking up scrap, which he then loads into a wagon, and sells to a bhangaarwala for Rs 500. On lucky days when he’s able to find 30 kgs of it, he makes Rs 600. In his free time, he uses his saved-up money to watch Marvel movies in theatres, and care for his younger sister. “I saw Thor’s new hammer in the Infinity War trailer. Bilkul mast hai,” he told me. Sheikh, though, missed watching the movie in the theatre as he couldn’t muster up the cash. He's vowed to watch it somehow.

The movies he doesn’t like, though, are Bollywood products. “Ek baar shooting dekha tha Mumbai Love Point mein aur phir picture dekhne ka mann hi nahi karta. (One time, I saw a shoot in Mumbai and after that, I don’t feel like watching a movie at all),” he told us, nice enough to not particularly mind being interrupted during peak work hours. “Everything was fake—from the actors hitting each other to the dialogues. They took one hour to shoot a scene of a person walking. I stood watching for an hour and they managed to just take one step in that hour. It was insane."

Born and brought up in Sealdah, Kolkata, Sheikh started working after his father stopped providing for his younger step-sister. His mother died of cancer when he was nine, after which his father stopped driving his autorickshaw, and shacked up with his “chhoti maa”. He’s been scrapping ever since, mainly to provide for his step-sister’s education. “Bombay Bombay suna tha, toh aa gaye station. (I had heard so much about Bombay so I just came to the station),” he said of his big move. Sheikh’s ultimate dream is to be able to pay for his sister’s education, and for whatever she might require post that. If he can save enough, he wants to open a clothing shop, for he thinks he will enjoy being a tailor.

One of my friends asked Sheikh about his love life, but the young man insisted that he has learnt from his father’s mistakes. “I won’t do anything till my sister gets married,” he said. “So what if I am beautiful—I am what the creator has made me. Sometimes, I cross paths with girls but then I retract. I feel that if I do bad with someone then someone else will do bad to my sister.”

We spoke about football for a bit, owing to West Bengal’s obsessions with the sport. He used to play goalkeeper in a team with his friends but doesn’t miss it much. It was around 5am when he finally got pissed with our line of questioning, deciding to walk away and look for scrap in a less secluded area, carrying around 6 kgs on his shoulders.

Follow Parthshri Arora on Twitter.