October 23 - Untouchable

Ganesh Jayaraman grew up in the village of Gopalakar in southern India. As members of the lowest level of castes, the untouchables, Ganesh and his mother eked out a meager subsistence scrubbing the floors of the Shenvi Kothari, a wealthy Brahmin family.
One day when Ganesh was 10 years old, he was scrubbing the living room floor where Casablanca had been left playing in the VCR. Having never seen a movie in English, Ganesh stared at the screen, transfixed. It was the scene where Rick and Laszlo had the argument about the visas and then Laszlo ordered the band to play La Marseillaise, which they did, drowning out the sound of the singing Nazis. Moments later, when Major Strasser ordered Renault to close the club, Ganesh was broken out of his spell and he quickly returned to work, grateful he hadn't been caught watching TV while he was supposed to be working.
All told, he had only watched about ten minutes' worth of the movie, but everything about the scene had burrowed itself deeply into his imagination. It was such an exotic language they had spoken, everyone had worn such cool clothes, the music was so passionate, it was such a different world. He was captivated and he wanted more--more of the music, the exoticism, and especially the language. He wanted to talk like they talked.
However, as an untouchable, he had no access to school and no other means to learn the language. English remained an unattainable dream for him.
He grew into adolescence, working every day and singing quietly to himself whenever no one else was around. As he was busy working every waking hour, there was never any time for him to study, and even if the time was there he had no books.
And so went his childhood.
When he turned 17, the modernization of India started trickling into Gopolakar in limited but noticeable ways. There were more and more cars, imported goods in the marketplace, and a proliferation of cell phones. The local video store caught on, too. DVD players were the new big thing; VCRs were out. As a result, they were getting rid of the VHS movies that nobody was interested in renting anymore.
Ganesh stopped by the store and poked around in one of the 25 rupee bins outside the front of the store. He picked a movie out at random and looked it over. He couldn't read any of the words on the box, but he liked the handsome suits of the men in the pictures; they reminded him of the characters from the scene of Casablanca that he had seen all those years ago. Even though 25 rupees was a lot of money to spend, he plunked the money down and walked away with the movie, giddy with excitement.
The movie was The Untouchables.
For the next few years, whenever he had the chance, Ganesh watched the movie on the VCR that the Shenvi Kotharis had given Ganesh and his mother rather than throwing out. Although Ganesh could understand next to none of the dialogue, he memorized it phonetically and, from the action in the movie and the characters' emotions, guessed at what the words meant.
Ganesh's mother passed away when he was 23, and the Shenvi Katharis told Ganesh they would no longer be needing his services.
Uninterested in staying in Gopolakar for the rest of his life, he set out for the United States, hoping to come in touch with the world he had seen in Casablanca and The Untouchables.
He worked and hustled his way across India, sneaking onto freight trains, finding work where he could, and learning about the world as everyday tasks like eating and finding a place to sleep became epic adventures.
Almost exactly one year after his mother died, Ganesh stowed away on a freight ship bound for the United States. The only thing he brought with him was his VHS copy of The Untouchables. Every day on the ship, he worked and sang and practiced his English.
He ended up in Chicago where he worked in various menial labor jobs while trying to expand his English. He did this by seeking out similar situations to those he had seen in The Untouchables. Then, using the dialogue he'd memorized from the movie, he would engage people in conversation and try to remember as much as he could from their responses.
For instance, he would go into cathedrals and kneel next to anyone who was praying by him or herself and give them a nod. Then he would deliver Sean Connery's 'What are you prepared to do?' monologue, thinking it would give the person strength and resolve like it had in the movie: "You want to know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT'S the Chicago way. And that's how you get Capone. Now, do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"
It was a challenging and thankless way to improve his language. Most people just looked at him strangely, got up, and left.
Even still, he didn't give up. His days were divided among work, singing, and seeking out situations where he could use dialogue from The Untouchables. It was a pretty fulfilling existence.
And little by little, he developed a bit of local celebrity. Somebody even recorded his morgue/hospital monologue and it found its way to the Chicago Bears, who considered using it in a promotional video to hype the upcoming season. In the end, they decided it was a bit too inflammatory to use (even though everyone in the organization loved it).
However, a YouTube version of it found its way to the eyes of the Masala Mob, an Indian American (as opposed to American Indian) rap trio, and Uncle Pradish, an Indian food restaurateur whose father had emigrated to the United States from the same region that Ganesh had grown up in.
Uncle Pradish and the Masala Mob were business partners who were creating a fledgling Indian fast food chain that would add an urban/hip hop edge to the Indian dining experience. Calling their venture Straight Outta Dehli, it was rap meets curry (as Uncle Pradish told everyone he talked to about it), equal parts subcontinental spice and hip-hop attitude.
Uncle Pradish was bankrolling a series of Masala Mob hip-hop videos that would hype their curry houses. And upon hearing Ganesh's Untouchables monologue, they felt like they'd stumbled upon the missing ingredient (so to speak) of their rap/curry combo.
They brought him to their studios, rerecorded his speech, sampled it, and enlisted him to provide background vocals to their album.
The album was a hit and Straight Outta Delhi launched successfully in Chicago. Within a year, four more branches were opened.
Meanwhile, Ganesh's English continued to improve. He still peppered a lot of his conversations with bits from The Untouchables, but by then it was by choice rather than by necessity. As he joked to his ever growing circle of friends, you could remove the boy from the untouchables, but you couldn't remove The Untouchables from the boy.
Ganesh soon became an official member of the Masala Mob, and they toured the region, with Uncle Pradesh providing a tour support vehicle that hauled their equipment as well as a mobile kitchen that his twin nieces used to cook Straight Outta Delhi food to sell at the shows.
By the end of the decade, Straight Outta Delhi had become one of the biggest Indian American success stories in years.
A Bollywood-style movie about their story is currently in production with Ganesh Jayaraman playing himself.