Narayana One man's inspiring journey from a manual scavenger to a mayor - Mysore
At 16, he didn't have a dream. A manual scavenger at the Mysuru railway station, he would scoop the excreta from the railway track, carry it in a bucket on his head and dispose it of. Even on his way home from work, the stench kept him company—an invisible wall blocking his view of the future. "My eyes welled up the first time I picked up excreta. The smell was stomach-churning," recalls Narayana, who was born in the scheduled caste Madiga in Karnataka.
"Both my parents were safai karmacharis [cleaning workers] and they struggled to make ends meet. In the evenings, my mother would work as a maid. In case she got some leftovers, we would have it for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we would have just one meal a day," says Narayana, a class ten dropout .
Today, Narayana, 60, is the chairman of the Karnataka State Safai Karmachari Commission. He draws a salary of Rs1 lakh a month and has been given a sprawling air-conditioned room at the commission's headquarters in Bengaluru and a Toyota Innova. He is also a former mayor of Mysuru.
Owing to his eight-month stint as a manual scavenger, Narayana is able to relate to their condition. His pay then was Rs180 a month. Later, he got a job at a factory making Ideal Jawa motorcycles, as his mother knew the public relations officer there. But before the job offer, he was asked to work at the officer's home for three months. "My duties included cleaning the toilets, sweeping and mopping, bathing the dog and taking it out for a walk," says Narayana. He would get food, but no salary. The officer was a Brahmin, and the women in his family would fling food at Narayana. He also worked in a silk factory to earn some money.
Narayana, who went on to become a corporator and mayor of Mysuru in 2000. And, life, as he knew it, changed. "After I became the mayor, I once had lunch with one of the women—who threw food at me from a distance—from the Brahmin family I worked for. We ate at the same dining table," he says.
As mayor, he led the Dasara procession on a horse. Dasara celebrations are a grand affair in Mysuru.
Full article in the link below
Ravi
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