For livelihood people pursue different vocations. It could be manual labour, farming, enterprise or a profession. In the 30s and 40s, jobs were not easy to come by like the present day. While educated in those days could find clerical or supervisory jobs, the less educated, like those of lower or higher primary, could find jobs where they have to be trained with some skill before they can become employable.
To this category belongs T. Krishnaiah alias Krishnappa, 80, who worked as a driver all his life, retiring from KSRTC in the year 1988 without pension. He belongs to Nagarath Shetty community. In Bangalore there is a business area named with Nagarathpet where this community used to conduct business and so the name.
Just a few days back, while on my morning walk, an old man wearing a monkey cap greeted me very humbly as I walked past him. Soon I perceived that he was keen to talk to me as well. So I looked back and found him following me hesitantly with the intention of talking to me. I obliged.
To my utter surprise, I recognised him as the one who used to come to my office in Saraswathipuram in the 80s to give prasadam and the sacred ash from Mantralaya, where he was going every day as KSRTC bus driver. I enquired of his family and health and was delighted to find everything going fine for him. He attributed it to the blessings of Guru Raghavendra of Mantralaya and Sri Manjunatha of Dharmasthala, to which temple town he was taking the KSRTC bus as a driver for many years.
He seemed to be anxious to pour out his experience and achievements and I allowed him to talk. As a driver he was the recipient of many awards including the one for driving without any accident in KSRTC, where he worked for more than 24 years. In appreciation, he was given the Chief Minister’s silver and gold medals. The Rotary Club of Mysore West too had honoured him for his accident - free driving. His father N. V. Thimappa Shetty was a Palace Sharoff who at Rs. 30 salary per month was managing a huge family of two wives and 10 children. Krishnaiah was born on 03. 02.1929.
It is interesting to know that he was not able to get sufficient money from his father to pursue his education in Sharada Vilas School and therefore he took to distributing Thainadu and Janavani newspapers and got 25 % commission per paper. Knowing his difficulty, the proprietor of Ananda Bhavan hotel in Makkaji Chowk, to whom he was delivering the paper, gave him Rs. 5 every month for his education. However, he could not go farther than 5th standard. Our former MLA Vedanta Hemmige was his classmate, he remembers.
Later, a cycle shop owner Ramanna, from whom he was hiring cycle to deliver papers, thought this poor-good boy Krishnaiah deserved help and got him a conductor’s job in a private bus. Soon he, on his own initiative, learnt driving. There were no driving schools those days. He recalls K. V. Motor Service, Gandhi Square, buying an army truck in auction for Rs. 1,500, converting it into a bus which he drove from Madras to Mysore as a youngster feeling very proud.
I am sure that the life of a person like Krishnaiah will indeed inspire our poor and uneducated youngsters to find their own destiny and succeed in life. These are the ordinary people with extraordinary tenacity and determination to succeed against all odds.
Courtesy: Star of Mysore
