76. People Review : Kamelsh Puri Goswami - My constant companion

I first met Kamlesh in 2010 and it is very important for me to write about him because he has been a tremendous influence in my life during my prolonged stay in Mumbai. I was struggling at the time when we met as I was new in the film industry and I was working in one film where officially I was production assistant but later I was thankfully burdened with responsibilities of an assistant director and art director too. Not that I was given those responsibilities but I took those responsibilities because I just wanted to work as much as I can on sets and understand filmmaking in a better manner. I had the best time of my life working on that film and I met some of the good people there who became my good friends later. One of them, and most important of them was Kamlesh.

Kamlesh’s full name is Kamlesh Puri Goswami and he is a Marwari. He can speak four languages fluently- Marwari, Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi, and now he speaks English as well. He is good at accounting by birth because he is a marwari but unlike other marwaris he does not have a great business sense. Though he has done a lot of businesses and owned lots of tea stalls for himself but he is just a novice, still, who is trying to understand the world better and keeps on trying new things. I love that thing about him. Kamlesh has gone through his series of struggles to become the kind of man he is today, successful. Yes, he is very successful, in terms of where he started and where he is today. He started from selling tea roadside and today he is an executive producer. 

Kamlesh had a hard childhood. He used to work and study in the same span of a day. He once told me that since he belonged to a poor family his mother had sent him to his distant mama’s house once where he used to work like a slave whole day and night and have to squeeze his time to study in between. His mama had a flour mill inside his house and Kamlesh would do all the work whole night with his bare hands which is either done by a bull or by a generator elsewhere but since his mama couldn’t afford it, he used men for that work. He was just a kid at that time. I was moved by his story because in my childhood I was pampered like a prince and never had to do anything which could come close to be called hard work. My hands are so soft and devoid of hard work that one of Kamlesh’s friend once shook hands with me and told me without knowing anything about my past that my father must be holding some high post, when I asked him how he knows that, he told me that my hands are as soft as a girl’s hand, which they were and are still. I never noticed the softness of my palms till then.

Still, in school, Kamlesh came to Mumbai with his uncles from village to work during his school vacations. His uncles would own cheap tea stalls at different corners of Mumbai and his job was to serve tea to customers, wash glasses and bring stuff for his uncle. He has for months slept on foot path and bathed himself under municipality water, from which he had to fill in containers too. Municipality water comes for a very short period of time at a very slow speed so they had to do everything in that time. He has shown me places where he had slept and worked when he first came to Mumbai. Today all those people with whom he once worked treat him like a king. It makes him proud. They couldn’t believe that someone among them has touched such heights to live in 1 bhk house with his wife and kid, and live a posh life, compared to them.

One story that Kamlesh told me which really moved me emotionally and every time I imagine it, it makes me feel so blessed to be who I am. Kamlesh once asked me, “ Hey Shitiz, do you know what present I used to take from City for my cousins and neighbor kids in village?”, I asked him “what” and he said “Polythene bags” and I was like “whattttt !!”. I was surprised as any other guy from the city would be. I had never heard such thing before. He told me that there are very few polythenes in his village so while his two-month stint in the city during his school vacations, he would collect as many polythenes as possible and would take them to his village where they were treated like gifts just like we city kids treat cards from Archies gallery, gifted to us by someone. Frankly, in my life, I had never seen poverty. I mean have seen it but the truth about poverty is that unless you experience it yourself you can never understand the depths of it.

When I met Kamlesh he used to wear same clothes everyday but still he wasn’t dirty. There was something about Kamlesh and his personality that was bound to make him a success. The most important personality trait of Kamlesh is that he is always smiling and never gets angry, except on his little brother. When I see him angry on his younger brother, I would wonder how he does not feel connected to this world like other people do. He does not think that anybody in this world will tolerate his anger. He gets angry but he always contains those emotions inside. The only person he feels whom he completely owns and can do anything with is his brother, Pappu. Kamelsh is good to everyone and never tells his problem. He knows through his hardships that no one is going to solve his problems. To him it is him versus world. Kamelsh is that guy who will always put hands in his pocket first when you are buying cigarettes. He never gives importance to money. Unlike a typical Marwari he never keeps accounts of who is spending what. If he and his family is enjoying the time, he will spend all the money he has in his pocket on other people just so that he could enjoy the moment.

What compels me to write this article about Kamlesh is one more interesting anecdote. I have recently shifted to Kamelsh’s house from my small apartment. He is making his house in village and not just his own house, his brother’s house as well. He is extremely responsible person. But before his wife and kid were shifting to the village, I decided to go and meet them. I was in a state of frustration at that time because nothing was working in my life, what was not working is a different blog post altogether which I will tell you later. So I went to his place. His wife, Suman, was sitting at one corner sadly because she doesn’t want to move. His son, Meet, also doesn’t want to move so he is doing his naughty stuffs to distract them. Bhabhi is pregnant by eight months and Kamlesh wants to have that baby in his ancestral place where he feels she will be well taken care of. So Kamlesh is doing all the packing work and there was a funny banter going between two. Meet is in his own world doing his own things. Kamelsh made chai for me. All this while Kamlesh is getting calls from production as he has two shoots lined up and he has to book hotels for the entire crew and make other arrangements too. He is also doing production for an interview shoot for “Badrinath ki Dulhania” and he has to manage that as well. Amidst all this, he gets to know that Bhabhi’s medicine has ran out for next month and there is only shop that sells them. We went there and bought medicines because those medicines have a long course and they are unavailable in the village. He is also side by side calling his relatives in his village because has to look over the construction fo the house as there is no one in the village he can trust with this thing. Throughout all this, he has a smile on his face and he never, even for a single moment complained about his life to me. All my frustrations and problems started to appear so petite in front of his problems. He was living in a city with his family in an expensive house for which he has to pay rent every month which is twice my room rent. He has to feed two mouths and send money to his parents every month. He has to take care of his younger brother too who does not do any work and the man is still in the great mood and positive about life.

          

It charged me up and it motivated me like hell. A part of his positivity gets rubbed on me. How can one man do all these things? On one side is me, a guy from well to do family who has a fallback option that if his money runs out he can call his parents. I don’t have to send any money to my parents and my life has pretty much no problems at all. The problems I have are all the ones that I have made for myself. And on the other side is Kamlesh, who used to sell tea on streets, who was once afraid to enter inside Mcdonald’s because his English was not very good, who has to take care of his family in an expensive city like Mumbai and has so many responsibilities on his young shoulders and yet who never stops smiling. That made me rethink about my life. I can say that whole day when I was with him, I started seeing my life from a very different angle. Good people have that effect on you.

I feel so fortunate that I have met a man like Kamlesh. He is a best friend that any one can have and I feel so fortunate to meet this gem of a person in Mumbai where most people are ready to back stab you. There have been so many times when I have stopped talking to Kamlesh, because of my stupid nature that I feel things very easily and take them to my heart, but Kamlesh would never do that. He would come back to me if he knows I am not talking to him, keep poking me till I vent out my anger and keep pushing me till I start talking back to him, and till I do that he won’t leave. He came to my brother’s wedding last year leaving all his work and spend a fortune of money on clothes and dresses, helped everyone in my family in the wedding preparations like it was his own family just so he could enjoy that time and be with me. I felt proud that I had a friend like him. He didn’t have to do it but he was present during all the ceremonies. I love him, may be I will never be able to say that to his face, but I do. He is the best companion I ahve found in my life.