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Local hero Shanti Lal

The 35-year-old man pulls a rickshaw in Karampura, Moti Nagar and feels proud earning Rs.100 per day for his bread and butter. It was not easy for him to take up the job though. “I had lots of problems initially to ride a rickshaw with one hand. It took me months to have a grip on the vehicle and maintain the balance while turning,” he says. People were also hesitant to take a ride on his rickshaw. “Many people used to turn away seeing me ride one-handed, but gradually they began trusting me, and I have my set of fixed customers, who insist on taking my vehicle,” he explains, while waiting for his passengers, at the Moti Nagar Metro station, with a cell phone in his hand.

Lal fell from a Jamun tree at the age of 12 at his hometown in Uttar Pradesh. The doctors performed a surgery and he lost his right arm forever. He ran a tobacco shop in the village which did not do quite well, so he came to Delhi and opened a tea shop in Chandni Chowk. But the shop was taken away by the MCD.

He moved to Moti Nagar, and decided to pull a rickshaw. He is now the local hero of the area, and inspires the locals. “Shanti Lal is a living example for those who give up at the time of crisis. He does not like it when people tend to sympathise with him. By pulling a rickshaw he has proved to the world that where there is a will, there is a way,” says another rickshaw puller of the same area.

ANISHA RALHAN

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