Where is Dadus? : From the X Factor

Where is Dadus? L!!! or Dadus’ Journey

“Where is Dadus?” will be the first question any XLer, coming back to campus, will ask! The Chapter 4 of Abhijit Bhaduri’s Mediocre But Arrogant describes how a certain Fr Hathaway (or good old M… oh, we all know) was responsible for Dadu’s presence on the campus of Management Institute of Jamshedpur. The excerpts: “The story goes that Father Hathaway had gone to the hospital to pray for a patient who was dying of kidney failure. Just as he had said “Amen”, he had found a pair of dark eyes willing him to look their way. It was Chittoranjan Das’s wife, Debi. She pleaded with him to come to her husband’s bedside for only one minute. Father Hathaway stood by his bed and asked, “What is the matter?” and then repeating it in Oriya probably to make him feel comfortable, “Ki houchhi?”

Chittoranjan was too embarrassed to ask a stranger for help. But his wife’s insistence, “Gora Sahibs are always the people who helped the poor. They had been the rulers of this country after all” and poverty, which does strange things to people, gave him the courage to explain his plight to the gora sahib. The rains had failed for three years in a row. Chittoranjan Das was forced to sell off his land to the moneylender and walk to Berhampur railway station to catch the train to Kalimati station.

His wife and their two little boys, the younger one who was barely a year old had sat on the painted tin trunk, on a hot and crowded platform for almost six hours. Debi kept looking at her husband and wondered if he would find a job in the Steel Company. …The train reached Kalimati station the following day. Chittoranjan and his wife stood outside the huge factory gates looking for work. After waiting for five days, he got work as contract labour in the Blast Furnace area of the Steel & Iron Company. A month later, just as they were feeling a little settled, he slipped and broke his thigh bone. He had been in the hospital for a month now and the situation was getting desperate. . …Chittoranjan could not get himself to ask for help. But Debi was desperate. She explained as best as she could.

"Listen Chitto-run-john… I will give you a shelter in my institute. But remember, this is only a temporary arrangement. You cannot stay there forever. The moment you have earned enough to pay me back and buy your family a return ticket to Orissa, you have to leave. OK? Bujhi gela?" Father Haathi told Chittoranjan and loaned him Rs100/- to set up a tea stall. The rest as they say is history, at least for us…”

…and Dadus’ continued, and his ‘temporary arrangement’ became a permanent feature in lives of countless XLers… But for all these decades, Dadus’ was technically ‘outside’ XL!!! …initially on the other side of the road, and then behind the campus wall. So, isn’t it great that, Dadus’ has finally moved inside the XL campus, has a place of its own next to where it belongs… the hostel J