Kaleecharan, not the cricketer!

“We are Yadavs. Tending cattle and farming come naturally to us,” said Kaleechanran, the 1999-born long haul truck driver from Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, in a telephonic chat from Chennai on an early January 2025 morning.

We never met, but he was the chosen Smart Driver — a weekly ritual at SWIFT Road Link I consult — to celebrate smartness among truck drivers. By the way, he is no contestant in the Smart Driver Awards-2 underway.

The charioteer (sarati) Krishna of Mahabharat also comes from the same Yadav clan.

The Yadav kinship issue came up while probing his family background. A science graduate, he took to truck driving to support his family as white-collar jobs were unavailable.

How did he get named after the famous West Indies cricketer Alvin Kalicharan? “My parental grandpa named me!” He has no idea about the cricketer.

What about his grandpa? “Woh kabhi cricket ka naam bhi nahi suna hai,” cracks the SWIFT driver. Does he play any games? He negates.

Long-haul truck drivers, particularly from the Hindi belt, are farmer-cum-truck drivers. They drove farm tractors to till their land, where they learned to drive, not from any driver training institutes.Their main source of sustenance comes from their land. The grown paddy, pulses and vegetables meet their daily needs yearly, and the surplus is sold in the market. The cattle they tend provide milk, curd, paneer and fuel (cow/buffalo dung cakes). Here again, the excess reaches the nearby market. They own chicken for eggs and later as food; sheep/goats, too, supply milk and become food when the need arises.

In summary, these truck drivers are more than self-sufficient, and their earnings (Rs.50,000 a month) are an extra source of income — although they would never admit that. The logic is simple: The Uber/Ola drivers ferrying homo sapiens, as against truck drivers ferrying materials, return home daily with a net of Rs.1,000, thus clocking Rs.30,000 a month.

On a recent parivar connect yatra in the boondocks of Uttar Pradesh, the prosperity of long-haul truck drivers did not surprise me. I could not forget to recollect the filmy dialogue and (in real life, too) of one of the characters boasting, “See, my property extends up to that tree which you cannot even see without a binocular.”

Prosperity is written everywhere when you visit their abode. With everything (food grain, pulses, vegetables, meat/mutton, eggs, milk, curd, paneer, etc.) readily available at the doorsteps, do they shop in the nearby town?

Yes, they do. “We don’t make fabric and jewels. So we shop (to buy these items),” tells the better spouse of a prosperous long truck driver-cum-farmer while feeding us delicious food cooked with all homegrown ingredients. Yeah, it tastes differently!

Another lady in Jhumritelaiya, Jharkhand, cheekily said she spends money on “masala and matchbox.”

Imagine living in a pollution-free ambience nestled in a hamlet of a maximum of 100 houses with no matchbox-stacked skyscrapers anywhere in sight.

Yes, drivers crib a lot like their masters. Please show me a profession without pluses and minuses! So take it with a pinch of salt — homegrown or bought!