Aug 18, 2011, 01.11AM IST
Checkered shorts and a Gandhi topi is a fashion felony. But 29-year-old Shailesh
Saraf doesn’t care; he has never blindly followed a popular trend. Currently
on “FL or fasting leave”, Saraf, a vice president of a global bank, is down from
Hong Kong to campaign for the Jan Lokpal bill.
Saraf was among the 72
protesters who were fasting for the second consecutive day at Azad Maidan; two
new recruits joined the fast on Wednesday. At the maidan, Saraf intermittently
checks his Blackberry, not for investment updates or market movements but for
news of Anna Hazare’s release. For the most part, he sits on the stage,
listening to people unspooling long speeches about the corruption they’d faced.
“When I was in India, I used to evade taxes. I don’t even try that in
Hong Kong. Here, I used to jump signals, I don’t do that there,” he confesses.
“What I’m getting at is that I am the same person-I still want to reach my
office quickly, still make more money. But there is a system I must follow.
India needs to have a better system in place and the Jan Lokpal draft is the
best piece of legislation drafted in India.”
Saraf, who lives in
Kowloon, says he dreams of a cleaner India to which he can one day bring his
children back. “There isn’t a magic wand, but this is as close as we can get to
root out corruption,” he says.
And then there was 60-year-old Ramji
Rathod, a retired BMC safai karmachari who was worried about the weeds in his
housing society. “I have cleaned the city for years, but haven’t managed to get
the BMC to clean up our society (BMC colony, near Arthur Road),” he gripes.
Many of those fasting solved crosswords, read books on corruption, wrote
shayaris, prepared speeches or asked volunteers to photograph them. Some just
slept.
There weren’t many women in the crowd, but housewife Anita Singh
from Panvel says she’s supporting the Jan Lokpal Bill
simply because she wants to be a part of this historic revolution. Nanda Mandlik
(52) from Vashi was driven by another motive. A single mother, Mandlik drove an
auto to earn a living, and raise her sons, but she routinely encountered bribery
along the way, and she was there to lend volume to the collective voice.
Prem Shah (72) was among the oldest of the lot on day 2 of his fast. His email-unreasonableman.prem@gmail.com says a lot about him. “That’s how I have been perceived by others; for I have done nothing wrong, not even paid a bribe,” he says, a copy of John Perkins’ Confessions of An Economic Hitman in his hand. Shah says what brought him there was government inaction with regard to illegal wealth stashed in Swiss banks.
At the other end of the age spectrum was
18-year-old Ranjit Bharadwaj who repairs air-conditioners and makes around Rs
2,000 a month. “No one listens to small people like me,” he complains. “But
there’s no hierarchy here, and I want India to be just like this-the kind Hazare
dreams of.”
While Bharadwaj believed his was a lost voice, 49-year-old
Chandrashekhar Patil chose, of his own volition, to keep quiet. Patil, heavily
diabetic and suffering from high blood pressure, was ordered by his doctor to
avoid speaking because voicing his views could get him agitated.
Lastly,
US-returned Nitin Makhiya who has also been fasting since Tuesday says he misses
food. “But hunger is better than the bitter aftertaste that an act of corruption
leaves behind.”
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Each letter of the first name rules 9 years of life. Ages 27 to 54 are ruled by the sum of the fourth, fifth, and sixth letters of the name.
Shailesh Saraf
9 (i is the 9th letter of the alphabet) + 12 (l is the 12th letter of the alphabet) + 5 (e is the 5th letter of the alphabet) = 26
So the number 26 rules his ages twenty-seven to fifty-four.
26 = Popular. In the news. Making headlines. Photos.
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using the number/letter grid:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
Where:
A = 1 J = 1 S = 1
B = 2 K = 2 T = 2
C = 3 L = 3 U = 3
D = 4 M = 4 V = 4
E = 5 N = 5 W = 5
F = 6 O = 6 X = 6
G = 7 P = 7 Y = 7
H = 8 Q = 8 Z = 8
I = 9 R = 9
Shailesh Saraf
18193518 11916 54
his path of destiny = 54 = Interviews.
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find out your own numerology at:
http://www.learnthenumbers.com/
numerology behind the news 