New Arunachal CM Kalikho Pul, once night chowkidar, now ‘round-the-clock chowkidar of state’

“I grew up in an aunt’s house, getting only one meal for picking firewood from the jungle. One day I ran away and joined a carpentry school, where they gave me a stipend of Rs 1.50 a day,” he said.

Things became difficult when he had to take down measurements for orders from people, including Army and ITBP officers, in the shop he set up in Hawai, a township near his village Walla in Anjaw district. “That forced me to join night classes at an adult education centre. And luck was waiting for me.”

One day a minister and the district magistrate came to inspect the education centre. “I gave the welcome speech in tuta-phuta Hindi, and also sang a patriotic song,” said Pul. “I was then about 12, but in Class I. A few days later district magistrate D S Negi sent a message to the local circle officer to enroll me in a middle school. They took a test and put me directly into Class VI.”

Meeting school expenses being difficult, he found a night chowkidar’s job in the Hawai Circle Office. “My job was to lower the national flag from the pole at sunset, sit on the verandah all night as chowkidar, then raise the flag early the next morning. They paid me Rs 212 per month,” he said. “That was not enough to sustain myself. I also sold paan-tamul, beedi, cigarettes in my spare time.”

At Class VII, he got a contract worth Rs 400 to erect a bamboo fence around a junior engineer’s quarter. “I collected bamboo from the jungle and erected the fence on my own. It took three days,” he said. “Next came a contract of Rs 600 to build a one-room thatch-and-bamboo hut. The one after that was worth Rs 2,000. By the time I reached Class XI, I had four second-hand trucks. I continued to work while studying BA in Indira Gandhi Government College, Tezu, and also built my own house worth Rs 2.73 lakh in the final year,” Pul said with pride.

Describing himself as a good contractor who never compromised on quality, Pul said he built 37 government RCC buildings, over a dozen bridges and several hundred kilometres of road.

Amid studies and work, Pul was also building himself as a leader. “I was general secretary of the college union for all the three years I was there. In 1995, the Congress gave me an assembly poll ticket even without enrolling me as a member. I not only won, but also became a minister,” said Pul, who served as minister for 22 of his 23 years as MLA.

Not that everything went on as if it were predestined. “There was a time when I wanted to commit suicide,” he said. “While in Class VIII, I fell ill and needed to go to Assam Medical College in Dibrugarh for treatment. With just Rs 1,600 in hand I ran from pillar to post for money. One aunt gave me two rupees, a niece just five. Crossing the cane and rope hanging bridge on the Lohit river with that meagre amount, I tried to jump down into the river. But every time I made an attempt, some passerby would stop me,” he said.

“I then went to Tezu, walked into DC Negi’s office and told him I was the same boy he had once put into a high school through a message,” Pul said.

“The DC gave me Rs 2,500, as a loan. I asked for two months because I had to get a good price for all the goats and a mithun that I owned. I decided to see Gegong Apang, the then chief minister, who so kindly sanctioned me a medical treatment grant of Rs 2,500 which I returned to the DC,” Pul said.

“Since then I have made it a point to help all poor people in need of medical treatment. Go to my official quarter, you will find at least 30 people who have come all the way from my constituency for treatment in Itanagar,” said Pul, father of five sons, who has moved to a hotel after becoming chief minister. He will, however, have to pass a floor test within February 28.

What keeps coming back to his mind every time he sees the flag on his chief minister’s car, Pul said, is the flag that he as night chowkidar used to lower every sunset and hoist every morning in the Circle Office back in Hawai about 35 years earlier.

“Then, I was night chowkidar of a small government office,” Pul said. “Today, I have become the round-the-clock chowkidar of the entire state.”