I sometimes think “family man” is a term used, in India, to describe men in boring jobs.
That’s how my family physician is fondly described in most circles. I’ve known him for years, and I’ve always thought the term suited his steady, sedate life.
So imagine my surprise when, on a routine visit some days ago, he asked me a rather unusual question. “What were your hobbies?” he said.
The past tense suggested he believed I had none at the moment; and he wasn’t wrong. Everything I do collapses back into work. I read a lot. Watch mostly documentaries. Go to the gym because the body must be maintained well.
Then, as we talked, it turned out I was wrong about him! The good doctor has been learning how to tap-dance, for months. I looked at this man, who moved from Patna to Mumbai to be a doctor and spends all week in an all-white clinic, and I was astonished.
Then alarmed.
I realised with a jolt that he must think me boring. Determined to undo this impression, I said I’d like to go with him to his class one evening. It was fascinating to watch him morph into someone else, for an hour. This wasn’t a doctor moonlighting as a dancer. It was a dancer who happened to also be a doctor.
In my head though, I filed it under “charming”, explained him away as an outlier, and moved on. Until something less charming and more useful unfolded.
There is a man who has led an army of newspaper-delivery agents in my neighbourhood for years. He arrives before dawn and oversees his team as they fan out. In our many conversations over the years, it has become clear that he has a deep understanding of his business.
Once in a while, we exchange pleasantries and talk about the nuances of the delivery business, or chat about local politics. Another “family man”, I thought.
Then the results of the last municipal election came in, and his name was on the list. He had been elected corporator. He continues to run his business, just as he has done for decades. Nothing about him has changed: not his manner or vocabulary, his posture or temperament. But the ballot count has forced a correction in my mind.
That’s the part worth sitting with. People really do contain multitudes. We file them each away under the roles they perform for us. The doctor. The vendor. The teacher. The taxi driver. It’s the simplest way to navigate our circles, but it could do with an injection of curiosity.
The problem with usefulness is that it is the enemy of curiosity. Once someone reliably does the thing we need them to do, we quietly stop wondering who else they might be.
Watching the newspaper delivery agent direct his team, I suspect my surprise was not so much about the power he now has over my ward. It was that he declined to let others feel that power. He wore it softly. He could, if he wanted, let the newspapers become a formality, something delegated entirely, a story he tells at ward meetings about his humble beginnings.
Instead, he still shows up. He says nothing. He does not want a song and dance about it.
He and I talk. What I’ve now figured is that he isn’t performing modesty. There’s one version that delivers newspapers. Another version that sits in meetings and signs off on things that affects people’s lives. He will never talk about it publicly.
I was the one who needed him to announce it. He didn’t, and continues not to.
I have now stopped assuming the file is closed on anyone. I think my new hobby is going to be finding out more about the people on the peripheries of my life. At the very least I’ll have some answers for my GP, the next time we meet.
(Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on assisi@foundingfuel.com. The views expressed are personal)
