Delhiwale: ‘Earnest Hemingway’

The man, in fact, calls himself Fakkar Baba. “I picked this name myself…because I’m a fakkar (read ‘fakir’).” He explains the meaning of this word: “One who has nothing… I have nothing.”

Isn’t he a Hemingway lookalike? Perhaps because of his beard, or his cap, that greatly resembles the iconic fishing cap that the great American writer would wear.

Fakkar Baba and his long walks through NCR.

The man, in fact, calls himself Fakkar Baba. “I picked this name myself…because I’m a fakkar (read ‘fakir’).” He explains the meaning of this word: “One who has nothing… I have nothing.”

The man is sitting by a shuttered store in a central Delhi locality. He raises his right arm, pulls back his shirt sleeve, and shows a tattoo — AS Rathi. “My real name… A stands for Anand.”

In his late 60s, the man talks of his life’s primary passion. “I love walking. I keep walking from morning till evening… I walk across Delhi, I walk in Gurgaon, Faridabad… So many things you see on the way as you walk…things that cannot be seen on television.”

His daily outdoor soirees keep him away from his tanhai (loneliness). “The people who used to be closed to me have either drifted away or died.” He says he has siblings scattered across Delhi and Gurugram. “But relations between brothers and sisters do not remain the same after parents are gone.” Rubbing his hands together, he mutters: “I’m totally alone.”

Pointing at the bag placed beside him, he explains that it is filled with empty bottles. “This is how I earn… I walk and walk and pick up things that people throw away on the road.” He sells these to a recycler. The money he earns helps him pay his bills.

Responding to a query, he confirms that he doesn’t have a single friend. With such an utterly solitary existence, loneliness is inevitable, he concedes. “But I have a solution,” he says, his eyes twinkling.

“I love singing old Hindi film songs of Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey and Narendra Chanchal…. Whenever I feel tanha (lonely), I start to sing.”

That’s what he does next. He breaks into the Muhammed Rafi song ‘Hafiz Khuda Tumhara’. The rendition is beautiful, though there is just one person, and a street dog, for an audience. He later poses for a series of photo portraits but urges to use for print a picture in which his face is not visible, “so that my brothers and sisters don’t get embarrassed”.