“A Free Man” by Aman Sethi has proved to be a creation that deals with the part of the society that has always been neglected. Daily workers as we know them work and live on the daily basis, always hand to mouth even for their minimal requirements for continuation of the biological functioning of the body.
The protagonist of the book Ashraf Bhai is a person who works as safediwala (i.e. a wall painter) lives in the Bara Toti area of Delhi. The place is known for the availability of temporary workers daily for without much ado for people who are in need of people to get things done, carpenter, masonry, plumber, painter everything at one place and flexible rate 100-250 per day. Ashraf does not work everyday because he wants to be a man with kaam and aazadi. So when he fills like working then he goes and gets some job else he is busy drinking local wine at a theka owned by a lady named Kalyani. He has worked in Patna, Surat, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata as a tailor, butch, sewing sandals, cook and now a safediwala. He has also been to college studied Biology and dissected frogs in lab practical, and yet ends up at Bara Toti. His friends like him have strange stories and reason for their arrival at the place and mysterious ways of vanishing from the place never to be seen again. He calls him I Medium type friends also he does no have a good friend only medium type. Aman Sethi tries to bring him back to his family. He succeeds to some extent for he brings him to Kolkata, but then he ha forgotten his mothers number 10 years back and also his address. He cannot read. He gets TB, the author takes him to hospital and gets well,but in vain, His colleagues have died either working or some got mad and ran after trucks naked, few through TB, the maximum being the mysterious vanishing of people.
It is really ironic that after spending years with someone on roads, working and sharing beedis and ganja, people don’t even care to find out if the person goes missing. “This is mazdoor ka life aman Bhai”, as Ashraf calls it. The language is what makes it funny but then at some places have used offensive words, like, “…aman bhai, I am mast maula, Dil dariya, Seens sandook, l***a Bandook” [A dancing adventurer, with my heart for a treasure chest and my p***s for a gun].
This is authors first book, in which he has been successful in creating an promising impression for the future.
mishrapawan 