Rajat is a young IIT grad who chose not to be recruited by the Googles of the world. Instead he hitch- hiked on trucks throughout the length and breadth of of India to write his debut account. He took me along on an engrossing journey. I met truck drivers like Jora and Jagdish whose hearts are large and who fight private demons, bhukki (opiate) and loneliness, on long hauls. I learnt the jargon of police corruption, with the use of words like “mechanical” to charge penalties, and the power of the dalals (middlemen). I learnt about politics and distribution of power, state sanctioned communalism and discrimination based on religion and its manifestation in the poor infrastructure that folks in the targeted regions experienced. I ate dhaba food, witnessed sandstorms, suffered the heat and the excruciating long waits from bureaucratic delays.
Truck drivers emerge as heroes everywhere, but especially in India where they risk their lives everyday, working under impossible conditions hauling food, staples and cement in overloaded vehicles, so we can all indulge in all-season foods and live decadent lives with nary a thought or appreciation for how we get to live the way we do. He makes the point that truck drivers, who are vulnerable to abuse by many masters, disproportionately bear the burden for our indulgent lives! It’s a highly intelligent, thought provoking read with great insights about the fabric of Indian society woven from its feudal and colonial past to the entrenched unjust, social structures of today. The writing could be a bit more polished (sentence structures etc) but that does not take much away.
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