Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A woman with a big white sack landed heavily on the lower step. Her daughter was with
her. Together they upended the sack. Flowers and small pots tumbled out, along with what
looked like disposable food trays: the leavings of some devotion performed elsewhere,
which would only be completed once they had drowned the ritual scraps. Another couple
overturned a bag of charcoal. Hydrocarbon rainbows spread across the water. A pair of
boys standing in the river immediately started picking out the hunks.
But coins and charcoal were not the only things that got fished out at Ram Ghat. At the
top of the stairs, we met Abdul Sattar, sitting cross-legged on a small rug he had rolled out
on a shady bit of the parapet. He was in his mid-forties, and wore a black sweatshirt and a
pencil mustache.
Sattar was the self-appointed lifeguard of Ram Ghat. By vocation he was a boatman,
like Ravinder, but that was auxiliary to his real passion, which was pulling attempted sui-
cides out of the river. He had been doing it for more than twenty-five years.
With Mansi translating, I asked him if a lot of people tried to kill themselves there. He
waved his head emphatically. “Bahot,” he said.
A lot.
We were only a week and a half into
March, and there had already been two attempts this month.
“I didn't let it happen,” Sattar said. “I can see them coming in. They generally look dis-
tressed.” He had a crew of youngsters who hung out by the river. Whenever he spotted
someone who looked upset, he would direct his helpers to follow the person around, so a
rescuer would be close at hand in the case of a suicide attempt.
Sattar provided his services for free. And why not? All he had to do was sit in the shade,
greet passersby, enjoy the view, and occasionally save somebody's life. But he told us his
family didn't like it. They didn't like that he would invariably rush off to the river when
called, even in the middle of the night.
“Are people upset when they realize you've kept them from killing themselves?” I
asked.
There was a faint smile on his face. “Usually the women get very upset. But the family
is grateful.” He said there were a lot of students who tried. There was always a rush after
exam results came out. Others were motivated by family disputes.
“Do people kill themselves because they can't marry who they want?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes. There are plenty of love cases. It's mostly students and lovers.”
He was staring at the barrage. I asked him whether he had ever lost anyone. He nodded
without hesitation.
The defining moment of Sattar's lifeguarding career had come on a cold, foggy Novem-
ber morning, nearly fifteen years earlier. A crowded school bus had come across the bar-
