Back from hell

The 33-year-old comes across as a man at peace with himself as he sits in his nondescript office in Tardeo. This is the place where he has been reporting everyday for the past four years,as a trustee and member of a community-based organisation — Atmasanman (self respect) Trust — that helps youngsters stay away from drug addiction. The members,all former drug users,spread awareness on narcotic abuse and provide rehabilitation therapies.

“Since I have been through it all,I know all the usual places where you get the stuff and all the subtle workings of the trade. That puts me in a better position than those who have only a theoretical or bookish knowledge of the situation,” Revdekar says.

He reports to his office at 9 am and works till 5 pm,perhaps the only mundane aspect of his job. Every day,people trying to kick cocaine,brown sugar or charas show up dutifully at his office to be injected as part of their substitution therapy. Every couple of days,he gathers people for informal group sessions,wherein each one speaks of their experiences in frightening detail. And often,he chats up with drug users in the evenings at their usual hangouts. “I talk to them as an equal,and make it a point not to give them lectures,” he says. “I never listened to them myself.”

Revdekar speaks about his darkest experiences with addiction with incredible ease — his first brush with brown sugar at 19,his dismissal from a job at a private factory and his subsequent descent into stealing and trickery. “I could not perform the last rites of my father without drugs in 2002. Without it,I was not even in a position to stand properly.”

It was on July 26,2005,the day of the deluge,that his road to recovery began. With roads flooded and the city coming to a grinding halt,there was simply no way he could get his hands on his daily dope. His aunt — his closest living relative — took him to GT Hospital after withdrawal symptoms paralysed him. It was the same hospital where Revdekar later saw one of his friends die of a drug overdose. “Yeh to gaya uparwale ke paas,agla number tera ho sakta hai,” he recalls the stern words of Dr Aslam Malik,also a family friend. Four years on,Revdekar has his own flat in Naigaon and a regular job — working with people who are going through the same ordeal.