The Mundane as Miracle

How can cutting one’s toenails seem like an exalted activity, and covering oneself with a shawl on a railway platform bench, content to wait for the 4.30 am Titvala local be so endearing? I found out these answers only recently, since I have become a compulsive consumer of videos on YouTube created by Nitesh Shetty.

He sits, cutting his nails on a doorstep, and kindly tells a courier delivery boy to leave the package for Flat 103 with the security. Because as the most knowledgeable guy in his housing society, he knows that the family have gone to Canada as their daughter was nearing her due date. Or, as the person who has immense experience of trains and buses and is committed to public transport, he feels no regret for having missed a fast train in the middle of the night, and can stretch out comfortably on a bench, and await the Titvala at 4.30.

In fact, Nitesh Shetty is highlighting so many people among us whose worth we have forgotten, or become completely alienated from. So, people with ‘contacts’ for every conceivable service we may require, from mixie repair to leaking tanks to urgent printing and xerox requirements, people who know a lot about railway trains and time tables, people who are very proud of their particular village or locality, whether it is Mahalungewadi, Magarpatta or Balewadi, people who treat the building society premises as their own personal space, all get time in his videos. And the best part? All their qualities get seen in a spirit of pervasive cheerfulness. Nobody is showing the nastiness, cruelty and insensitivity that seem to have become the defining attributes of our times.

Since I have discovered the mundane miracles that @niteshshetty99 unfolds for me in video after video, I can feel myself healing. Healing from wounds that I cannot speak about very much, even though I know there are many fellow sufferers of these same hurts, all around me.

It always strikes me on a Sunday evening, which has always been the lowest point of my week - an accumulated sense of loss.

What I feel bad about are the things that have been snatched away from me by the changing nature of my lived experience, the abrasive nature of public discourse, the hundred forms of hatemongering.

I miss the funnies in the newspapers that were still delivered to my doorstep till 2023, and miss doing the crossword even more acutely. I mean, for many years I still read headlines in the papers that praised the PM’s oratory in some town heading for elections, but had not read the content under those headlines in all those years.

I miss the warmth, greetings and easy banter with large portions of my extended family, and the trips to places where my summer holidays were spent in childhood. My last contact with a beloved cousin was a bitter note of farewell delivered on WhatsApp, because he expressed a conviction that Ajit Doval and the PM would be able to extricate us from every conceivable danger, now and in the future. Clearly, we perceived “danger” very differently.

I miss going to the theatre in a state of glorious anticipation to see the latest Hindi film. Since “nationalist” war films, or films with the word “Files” in their titles became the default setting for the Mumbai film industry, I have avoided going to the cinema altogether.

So, it is with real gratitude that I acknowledge the difference made by people like Nitesh Shetty, Aditya Gundeti, Younus Ahmed and the unforgettable Danish Sait to my life. Shetty has obviously spent many hundreds of hours listening to people talk in trains and stations, teashops and street corners, and the housing society compound in Dombivli that he has made immortal (although he doesn’t live there). Every sketch by him makes me recognize some person, once observed or noticed in my own memory. Through his cheerful presentation of so many humans with their frailties and eccentricities, he makes humankind seem lovable once more.

As he says, in his own words, in one of his sketches, if anyone learns that you have had the poha with misal (or usal?) from Magarpatta, they will think appreciatively, “Iss aadmi ke andar insaaniyat jhalak rahi hai,” or this man’s humanity can be glimpsed inside of him.

In this algorithm-driven present, I thank God for having brought Shetty into my life, with his hundreds of “knowledgeable” people eating poha and missal, and bringing gifts of bananas for those who are in hospital. As the world grows more full of malice and murder, the mundane becomes truly miraculous.