Ashok Da, as he is fondly called, is visually-challenged. He has been drawing customers to Chalantika, a food stall in front of Academy of Fine Arts for the past 13 years. Anyone who visits this place from 2 pm to 8 pm will come across Ashok shouting “tasty fish roll, fish cutlet, chicken pakora, veg chops” to woo customers. Chalantika is run by the Society for Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services to physically handicapped persons in India, an NGO.

Ashok is a good Rabindra Sangeet singer. He is a regular in some of the reputed choir groups of Kolkata. His job ends at 8 in the evening. And then his world of passion with music beckons him. An admirer of Paul Robson, Hemanga Biswas and Ruma Guha Thakurata, Ashok provides free music lessons to many boys and girls in Belanagar and Uttarpara, his home town.

“I love music and recitation. To me life would have been a drab desert without music,” said Ashok. His job with Chalantika is a result of his passion. “I was chosen for this job as I had a good voice and could recite well,” added Ashok.

Ashok lost his sight when he was barely two-and-a-half years old. “I lost my eyesight after suffering from chicken pox. I was a victim of wrong treatment,” said the thirty-two-year-old man. He passed his Higher Secondary examination from Louis Braille Memorial School for the Sightless in Uttarpara, Howrah.

He has completed his fourth year in Indian Classical music from the same institute. Ashok’s father, Amarnath Mondol, and twenty-five-year-old brother are factory workers. Fighting poverty was not easy with Ashok’s physical disability as an added pressure which was the result of a wrong treatment.

“I had to earn my living and support my family comprising my parents and siblings,” said the gutsy man. Travelling a distance of 30 km from Belanagar to Kolkata is a tall order for a visually-challenged person like Ashok. His job at Chalantika is from 2 pm to 8 pm —- the time when Nandan is most crowded.

“It is difficult for a blind person like me to understand the presence of a customer. I can do so by sensing his nearness through his voice,” said Mondol. Ashok has been working at Chalantika for the past four years. His colleagues, Dipak Moyra, Bablu Pradhan and Tapan Pradhan, call him the “customer service executive.”

For college students like Sumanta and Trishit, who are frequent visitors to Nandan, “Ashok Da” is an essential part of Nandan, as it were. “The mouth-watering fish rolls and fish chops of Chalantika are, to say the least, simply fabulous. But perhaps the best part of Chalantka is Ashok da. Sometimes we crowd around him to hear him sing,” says Debashis Biswas, a third-year student of Jadavpur University.