Hyderabad: In what sounds like a tale straight out of fiction, a millionaire went undercover as a pauper in Hyderabad, a city he found to be warm and welcoming. He was able to get by, however, without ever producing his ID.
Mr Hitarth Dholakia, a 23-year-old scion of a family of diamond merchants, was sent to the city to learn about the hardships of life, in keeping with a 15-year-old tradition of the family.
Mr Dholakia, who had returned from the US, arrived in the city with Rs 500 in his pocket. He stayed at working men’s hostels and survived by doing odd jobs.
He is the seventh member of his family to have spent a month in a part of the country where he is anonymous to lead an ordinary life.
Tough to get job without ID: Hitarth
Last year, his cousin won praise for completing a stint at a hotel in Kochi. After landing in the city, Mr Hitarth Dholakia headed to Secunderabad railway station in the hunt for a job. “This city gave me a very positive response. The only thing that was difficult was getting a job and accommodation without an ID. My ID would have given away my privileged position,” he said.
He convinced landlords and employers by saying that his father was a poor farmer and that he would submit his ID proof within a week.
The first job he landed was at McDonald’s. He left before they could insist on him producing ID proof. He adopted this as his modus operandi and began switching jobs every week to remain afloat.
While a majority of his employers fell for his ruse, only one of them thought that there was something fishy. “Only once did a shop owner question me about farming techniques, after getting a hint of a doubt. I quickly decided to not take up that job,” Mr Dholakia said.
He said he had stayed in multiple lodges in the city, at Secunderabad, Ameerpet, Jubilee Hills, and Madhapur. This is disconcerting because it reveals how easy it is to remain undetected in a city which has been the target of terror attacks.
Mr Pintu Tulsibhai Dholakia, another one of the sons of the family, began this tradition of going undercover in 2002 when he visited Jaipur. “There wasn’t so much stress on the need for identity proof then. Things are much tougher now,” Mr Pintu Dholakia said.
He said that the family was worried about Hitarth’s safety because they weren’t in touch with him on a regular basis. “During one call he said that there were CCTV cameras everywhere, so we were relieved,” he says.
A senior vigilance officer who was informed about the boy’s mission a month ago said, “His experiences provide us good feedback on the security system. I am glad that even the smallest of places now insist on identity proof, which shows that miscreants cannot get away easily.”
Mr Dholakia was touched by the plight and the resilience of lower-middle class workers. “They may be poor, but they have the kindest hearts. We lay body-to-body in a crammed lodge, but the spirit in everyone was to survive it all,” he said.
