🍨I was drinking hot saké in a cheap bar in San Francisco, hoping the world would end soon. Maybe this will be the year; one can only hope. That was January 1, 2025. We’ve had enough grief and pointlessness over the years. There’s some happiness in remembering those who are gone. I thought of my uncle, Jaggu Boss. His name was Jagdish Sinha, but we called him Jaggu Boss because he had a rare kind of swag.
ܫLet this, then, be a letter to him or to anyone who might still remember him. Or perhaps an obituary for a man who lived and died just like that. I remember him because he wore white shoes and didn’t care what people thought of him. And sometimes, he didn’t care about money -- that’s what made him special. He would sit for hours on the terrace of our old house in Patna, where his ghost might still linger because the almirah still has his clothes. Some were never even worn. He was fond of dressing up.
ꦗIn summers, winters, and through the monsoons, he would sit there, just staring at the street, never saying a word. On some nights, when he was drunk, he’d play sad songs and talk about how unfair life was. In those moments, he was loud, almost desperate. But then, life’s never fair. He understood that much, and he had the courage to question the unfairness, even knowing it was all futile.
ꦰHe had wanted to be a police officer but didn’t make it. He got into the truck business but gave up, and then he dabbled in many other ventures. He never married. He made some money, and when he was in the mood, he’d buy the girls in the family gold earrings and take everyone out for dinner. He’d give generous tips to the waiters, and, in those moments, he was happy. He was kind and sometimes he was cruel. He didn’t have a legacy mindset. He was simply who he was.
Born somewhere in the middle of 11 children, he got it into his head that he wasn’t wanted. He rebelled often, making people wary of him. He drank a lot. I remember Jaggu Boss’s rants about being a ‘rangdar𓄧’ (neighbourhood toughie). The concept still eludes me, but he was convinced he was one. He took pride in being irreverent, so much so that it worried others. He never followed social templates and wasn’t afraid of sadness. In fact, he celebrated it in his own way.
🃏I guess he was lonely, but loneliness ran in the family, too. Lately, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. You don’t remember the good people as much as you remember those who wore white shoes and wore them confidently. Fashion speaks volumes about a person, and Jaggu Boss had style. Sometimes he’d change clothes three times a day.
🔥I think we don’t often admit that we are haunted by those we didn’t fully understand then. Now, I do. He wasn’t perfect. In fact, he was far from it. But he was so fragmented that it made him very human.
🎃He died in July 2014, while I was in the US. He had been in the hospital for days and passed away somewhat lonely. He had lived life on his own terms. He was stubborn. His white shoes, and there were many pairs, stand as a testament to that. He was lean, and sometimes he abused everyone, but I guess he struggled with belonging. He never truly belonged anywhere except to himself.
൩I remember he once bought my sister a doll. He noticed things. His room is still there, intact. He lived in a small room on the second floor before moving to the room above the garage where I grew up. It had a small staircase leading to a bathroom, a kitchen, and a room with three doors, four huge windows and a balcony.
He had this Philips Powerhouse with two speakers with built-in woofers that was launched in the 1990s. I remember he played songs by Pankaj Udhas and Jagjit Singh and always at full volume. There was another Kishore Kumar song, Yeh lal rang mujhe kab chhodega, that was his particular favourite. Neighbours complained, but I think they eventually liked the songs more than the barking of the dogs in the neighbourhood. The dogs still bark and our neighbourhood has changed over the years. Our old house is now a shrine to the many fabulous people who once lived there and are gone, like my Badi🥃 Mummy, who baked cakes for me. I think she loved me because she had her own nickname for me.
𝕴Jaggu Boss was in love once. When the woman he loved but couldn’t marry—because of mundane barriers like class and status—died, he couldn’t handle the loss. I wasn’t there when he passed away. I hope he was dressed well, as he always had been.
𒁃Memory is all we have—the only source of truth—and it cannot be tampered with. It’s sacred, the most sanctimonious gift we possess. Jaggu Boss wasn’t always a good person, but he was stylish and wore white shoes like he was on the moon.
ꦚAnd when I remember him, the white shoes that he wore, shine and take up the frame. That night, as I sat in the San Francisco bar, drinking and thinking of him, I realised that in our inconsequential lives, being ordinary doesn’t make us inferior. Instead, it makes us like stars—unafraid of white skies—because all stars wear white shoes and hop across galaxies.
Jaggu Boss was a star.
This appeared in print as 'The Man in White Shoes'
(Gyanendra Sinha is based in the United States and works as an engineer. He grew up in Patna and feels the old house is an anchor and a character in his story)
