Being Free !

Few years ago in KL, Malaysia, I used to dine daily from a small South Indian Restaurant, where I enjoyed talking to this guy from my home town who worked as a waiter there. He was probably 35 then, he doesn't know where he was born. What he knew was that, he was always in a Lodge in the city (Trivandrum), where he worked as a janitor then a room boy, later as caretaker and was very near and dear to the owner of the Lodge. He was having best days of his life, with zero tensions and most of his needs were taken care by his boss. Although I am not sure if he was educated enough, although he seems to have done at least middle school. He should have made a lot of friends over there, but many of them would have felt bad about his life and how his manager would be underpaying him. And with help of trade unions, his friends urged his boss to give him compensation (bigger and better one time amount) to account for all the work he has been doing till then. That probably happened when he was 18 years old . He had to leave work (only thing he knew ) and after years of protest he got his money (probably Rs 200,000 ), he moved to Chennai where he got married . And then somebody fooled him taking almost all the money and promising him a job in Singapore. Now he ended up in Malaysia, getting payed less than what he would have been getting when in Trivandrum . I always made sure I put few Ringgits more as his tip, but he never took it . He dreams about going back to India , living with his kid and wife and may be visiting back Trivandrum. I am sure, his life would be far lot better now :)