Manoj:
Then I got a job in a hotel like a guesthouse. Especially it’s a Japanese guesthouse, most of guest were coming from Japan. And I get a job there. But still they were not paying me so much of money.
But I had a place to stay actually.
They gave me a room like really in rooftop. The building was like five floors and my room was on the top in the fifth floor.
So the room was made from a Chinese thing. I think they call it asbest. It’s like a kind of thin thing, like this … (shows with fingers) … It is like made from iron. And during the summer when the heat is, I had normally till nine duty.
So at that time I had to sleep. So it was really I could not sleep. Because when it is forty five degrees and more than that, it was really getting very hot. Very, very hot. And like the wind is like wind from this dry air. So it is most impossible to survive in the air. But somehow I did it, because how I did is: I just stay ten minutes in shower water, then go back to sleep again, again shower and sleep.
But that means twenty four hours not sleeping. Somehow sleeping maybe you know, kind of sleep, not really sleep. And then I got really also cause of not sleeping and you know, no food and stuff. So I was really getting thinner and thinner and thinner and … yeah …
So at that place I think I was getting seven hundred Rupies. So still then I was sitting same thing one time. When I rest money I was sending to my home. But then I continue with this place for, I think I worked for two years, yes two years almost like this.
And during this time, I must say, it was a hard, hard time to me … what happened actually, I felt I got fever. I got fever I had really to stay in hospital. Alone there, nobody was looking for me. It was really bad time I must say. But it was nice experience at that time, because I had no expectations at that time. I was expecting, OK, nobody will come, the doctor will come and I will see the doctor, that’s all.
That was my things all what ever is there. So I was really not thinking so much. And that’s why I think I was quite happy there – I must say. This I was not really so much like this, but I was OK.
I was happy, I mean, not too much expecting things.
Whatever is coming to me, I was just happy. Somehow I got better.

Then I came back to that hotel working. And then I met my boss from here and his wife. And they were staying in my hotel in my place. And they are – because, I told you, we had no restaurant – so they were ordering food from outside. So I always buy food.
And one they eat and the rest they put out of the door. I took it and I eat. That’s what I do there, too. And once my boss’ wife she saw me. And then, because she is a doctor too, she realised, that I’m really ill. She could see in my face, because my eyes were inside.
My stomach and everything is almost coming down, I’m really ill.
So she really came to me and she talked to me a long time for this: ‘I think, you need to see a doctor. Because I can see you, you are hungry. You are eating this food. I have seen you two times already, you are taking the rest of our food.’ She gave me some money actually and right then. And then she talk: ‘I think you need to see a doctor’, and she gave me some money to see the doctor. Then finally she asked me ‘Where are you from?’ And then I tell my all stories and she was really helpful to me. And OK, then they told me to come with them to Kerala. But at that time I said: ‘Oh, I don’t know any, you, and I don’t know Kerala. What’s Kerala? Whatever it is, so it is a difficult thing.’
At that time I was really not fit enough, to travel or think about Kerala. Because Kerala mean for me at that time, it was a different world. Cause Keralan people, different language and different culture. It’s like a different world totally. I mean totally different world. I really took a long time to learn Hindi. Then again I have to. When I come down Kerala side, find out that I have to speak Malayalam, because people really don’t understand Hindi here.
But I was, at that time, I was speaking somehow some English. And I must say, my English is not so good, because I did not learn in the school. I learned it from the people and to speak with people and to hear them and to store in my head and then that’s how I speak. So always there is may be misunderstanding, like many grammar mistakes, but I think it’s OK somehow (laughes).
And at that time was the same thing. I was speaking some little Hindi and also the English a little bit. And I must say, it is one more thing. It was strange thing for me. When I came to Delhi and I started to work in this hotel, like guest house, so the first word I learned is ‘Excuse me’. I remember, that was my best time for me to learn. I took two, three weeks to just pronounce ‘Excuse me’. Because I cannot pronounce, because it’s different. OK, I studied some in the school, but we don’t speak nothing. We just, somebody is reading from us. We just have to write little bit from the books, that’s all. But we don’t really speak at all.
And our education system at the time, I mean in my state, was very bad. I mean really the teacher was not good. The school was not good. Nobody really concentrate in study. So that’s why I did not really, we don’t really study English a lot in the school, nothing at all, I must say. And so it was really taking me two, three weeks to say ‘Excuse me’. But somehow I managed.
So also I was really scared to come to Delhi, like to Kerala, than I have to learn another language ‘Malayalam’. Which is like I knew only one word is from Malayalam is Malayalam. Cause I know the language is Malayalam, so that’s all I know in Malayalam. And so what to do?
But then I said: ‘OK, give me your card. I will come once when I feel like to. Now I cannot, because …’. I did not tell them why I’m not coming. They tell: ‘No problem, you’ll come whenever you want to come’.

OK, what happened then? Then what happened is: After few month they left, then the one I was sleeping like in top room next to my room, there was a guy from Great Britain, like an English guy but he is mixed with Indian, indian and English mixed.
But he had a nice room. Because there in the fifth floor we had six rooms. And five rooms such store room, one store room is my room. I had a small bed and everything. And the other one is a good concrete building where Air Condition is there, like AC, so that’s why he was sleeping there. I don’t know what the reason, the next day he has to leave because he has the ticket and visa and everything with him.
But I must say, he was a drug addicted. He was smoking a lot. And he hanged himself, he killed himself. This just happened next to my room. So if foreigner dying in India it means it’s a big issue. They look at pressure from their country. So then, I think he killed himself during the daytime, because I heard this sound like something falling down. But I could not really recognize. Because, you know, it’s like my dreaming. Because I really don’t sleep so much. So I was sometimes really trying to sleep. If something happens, so maybe I’m dreaming or something. I feel like that. But it was that moment when he pushed the chair. So then I did not realise. Then I was really so tired, so much tired, so then I was really again same have sleep.
And when I joined to my duty around eight a clock night time, evening … so in this place you have to pay money as every day … every day you have to close your bill. So he was the only one guy who did not pay the room bill.
And my manager, he sent me to look what is happening with him.
So when I go to see him then I can see under the bed. There is a small gap under the door, so I can see the bed. And the bed was empty, and there is no one in the bed. And there is no bathroom in this room. So how could this be? How could he go? And it was really strange thing happened. I was really shocked.
This is not in the bed. I can see bed in this much, nobody is there. Then I tried to see from the window. The window was closed, but still I can see. Then I see he was really hanging in his bed-sheet. He took one of his bed-sheets and hang on the van at ceiling. Like … (he shows gesture of hanging) … it’s horrible. I was really shocked.
I’ve never seen the real life human being hanging and like blood is coming. It was really, yeah a little blood was coming, I think, yes. And it was really horrible for me to see this moment, I mean. Then I was really don’t what to do. I was really for ten minutes I was dead. And somehow I had to come down. It took me for ten minutes just come down to stay like I was, what I’m doing. I want dreaming I don’t want to see this.
I was really got a kind of mentally shocked or something. So somehow I managed to come down and I described to the manager this is happening there. So then he has to call the police.
Then the police was worse to me: ‘What you are doing? Why you did not take care of this?’. And they really hitting me, hitting me and hitting me. But I was so lucky, that he closed the door inside. So there is no other way we can get inside this room, because there is the roof and it’s closed. There was no really window, only a small window.
So I was so lucky that somehow he closed the door when he killed himself. But then somehow, then I have to, me and some of my friends, we have to carry him down. And this was so like strange for me, my god, the dead body and I see, it’s all shocked and I have to do all this things again.
And then after what happened, then after he left this room, my boss he took out the air condition from this house. Then the door would not going to give this room to anywhere.
And then they put me in this room. And this was the most worse place then. I could not, then I said ‘This is to much for me’. Then I was looking … then I was thinking to go somewhere else. Because it is to sleep in this room … when I open my eyes or close my eyes it was visualizing his dead body. And it is impossible. And also another problem was I had to go to the police and every day to sign the paper that I’m still there. I cannot leave Delhi until this all thing is finish. I can only live in Delhi.
Because this is, I must say Indian government whatever Indian police it will never finish all my lifetime. That mean, I have to stay my lifetime in Delhi. This is impossible. Because every morning at seven o’clock I have to go to the police station. I have to stand in the queue, stand on the queue five, six, seven, eight hours, we never know. And again I have to come back to my place and work. So it is too much. And I said:
‘No, it is impossible. I have to go from this place somehow. I disappear from Delhi.’