One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The lunchtime rush is over. A few customers are still lingering over chai. Others have drifted out into the afternoon heat.

Ayush Kumar finally has a few spare minutes. For the past year he has worked as a waiter at this neighbourhood café in Central Delhi. He is tall, lean and dressed in the café’s red polo shirt and a black cap pulled low over his forehead. At 19, Ayush’s face still carries traces of adolescence. He tends to be cordial with customers but never too friendly. He speaks gently, as though careful not to take up more aural space than necessary.

These days, as the country once again debates education, Ayush has his own reasons for thinking about it. Two years ago, he passed Class 12 with 79 percent in PCB, meaning Physics, Chemistry and Biology. (Mathematics, he says, was never his subject.) Yet after finishing school he did not join college. Looking back, he says he lacked guidance. He had no clear idea what he wanted from life and nobody seemed able to help him find one.

His younger sister, he says, is more focused. Saloni is in Class 12, studying the same subjects, PCB, and she wants to become a doctor. He hopes her journey after school will be clearer than his own.

Soon after finishing school, Ayush’s father suggested that he enrol in a basic computer course. He duly completed the six-month programme but says it left him with a certificate rather than a direction. Eventually he joined his father’s workplace. His father is the café’s chef. He became a waiter.

Ayush’s job begins at eight in the morning. Before the customers arrive there are dishes to wipe dry, milk supplies to receive and tables to prepare. Then the orders begin. Trays move from kitchen to table. Empty glasses return. Bills are settled. Polite conversations are exchanged with customers. He takes a break between four and seven before working again until eleven at night.

Ayush says this is not where he wants to remain. His plan is to study nursing, but he isn’t certain. He is also concerned about AI swallowing a variety of jobs. Education, he nevertheless feels, is still the correct route to the life he imagines. He wants a comfortable home, a car, and a profession that offers stability. Responding to a specific query, he says Delhi’s pollution and politics do little to make him want to stay. If the opportunity came, he says, he would rather live abroad. He believes life in a foreign land may demand harder work but reward it more honestly.

A customer now asks for a lemonade. Ayush excuses himself and disappears into the kitchen. Later another lull arrives. He stands beside the café’s glass door, looking at the traffic outside.

[This is the 633rd portrait of Mission Delhi project]