A Delhi woman officer once thought Bhoj was just a local thug in a poor Bihar district—but she was stunned to discover that he had once been…
Part One: The Posting
Shruti Sharma had not imagined that heat could have a sound.
She was twenty-eight, an IAS officer of the Bihar cadre, daughter of two JNU professors from Delhi who quoted Amartya Sen at the breakfast table and considered air-conditioning a moral failure. She had grown up in the leafy lanes of Shahpur Jat, done her MA in Political Science from St. Stephens, and cleared UPSC in her second attempt with Rank 32. Her interview answer about decentralised governance had been quoted in Vision IAS pamphlets.
And now she was posted as Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Sadar, in Jamui district, Bihar, in the last week of May.
The temperature on the dashboard of her Bolero read 47 degrees. The loo, that hot, dust-laden wind that blows across the Gangetic plains, was rattling the windows of the Collectorate. Outside, the sky was white, not blue. Inside, the ancient ceiling fan turned with the enthusiasm of a tired clerk.
“Madam, welcome to Jamui,” said her reader, a thin man named Mishra ji. “Your office is ready. Your quarter is ready. Only one problem is there. Current comes and goes.”
Shruti wiped her forehead with a handkerchief that was already damp. She was grumpy by nature, and heat made her grumpier. She was also very, very good at her job, which made her less tolerant of incompetence. Her father called it her Lutyens righteousness. Her mother called it her Delhi complex.
Her first file was about a road widening project near the old bazaar. The PMGSY road needed to be expanded by four feet. There was an encroachment. An illegal structure, built on government land, right next to the cyber cafe lane.
“Whose is it?” she asked.
Mishra ji hesitated. “Madam, that is Bhoj ka akhada.”
“Akhada? As in wrestling?”
“Gym type, madam. But also… Bhoj bhaiya runs it. All boys go there. He is very respected. Less educated fellow, but local boys listen to him only. His father was mukhiya.”
Shruti frowned. In her experience, less educated but respected by whole village usually translated to local goon with political backing. She had seen this in her training in Buxar.
“Send him a notice. If he does not vacate in three days, we will demolish as per procedure,” she said, and signed the paper with a firm stroke.
That evening, she decided to see the encroachment herself. She wore a crisp cotton saree, tied her hair tight, and walked down the bazaar road with two constables behind her, sweating through her blouse.
The gym was not what she expected. It was not a shiny Cult.fit. It was a half-open shed with a tin roof, a few dumbbells made of cement, a couple of rusted rods, old tyres, and a large hand-painted board that said in Hindi: DESI FITNESS CLUB – FREE FOR STUDENTS BELOW 18. NO FEES. NO DRUGS. NO ABUSE.
Inside, in the furnace-like heat, at least twenty boys, thin, dark, in vest and shorts, were doing push-ups. And in the middle of them, shouting counts, was a man.
He was twenty-six, perhaps, tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of body that comes from lifting actual weight, not protein powder. He wore a faded black baniyan, a gamchha around his neck, and loose track pants. His skin was sun-baked brown, his hair cut short, his beard rough. He was laughing. He had a gap between his front teeth and his eyes crinkled when he laughed.
That was Bhoj.
When he saw Shruti, his smile did not vanish. If anything, it grew wider.
“Arre, madam SDM sahiba! Welcome, welcome! Boys, attention!” he shouted.
All the boys stood up straight.
Shruti was taken aback. Goons did not usually make boys do attention.
“You are Bhoj?” she asked, in her most official voice.
“Ji, madam. Bhoj Kumar. Your neighbour, basically. My akhada is here from last three years.”
“You have built this on government land. You have received a notice.”
Bhoj grinned. It was an irritatingly sunshine grin. “Madam, that notice I received. I also read it. Very good English. But madam, if you break this shed, where will these boys go? Back to Pintu Cyber Cafe? There they sit for ten hours playing Free Fire. Here at least they sweat.”
Shruti felt her temper rise. This was the classic emotional blackmail of encroachers.
“Rules are rules. You are running an illegal gym. You are not even qualified. Are you a certified trainer? Do you have a degree?”
Bhoj’s boys looked angry, but Bhoj just laughed again.
“Degree? No, madam. I am fail only. Eighth fail. You are IAS, you have all degrees. I have only these,” he said, flexing his biceps jokingly. The boys laughed.
Shruti found him insufferable. Grumpy x sunshine, but in the worst possible way. She was the grumpy one who had come from Delhi to fix Bihar, and he was the sunshine goon who thought his smile could fix government procedure.
“I will give you three days. After that, JCB will come,” she said and turned to leave.
Behind her, she heard him say softly, not to her, but to his boys, “Chalo, double set. Madam ko dikhana hai ki Bihar ke ladke kamzor nahi hain.”
That night, in her quarter where the inverter hummed loudly, Shruti complained to her mother on the phone.
“Mumma, this place is impossible. 47 degrees, no electricity, and there is this local gym owner, some Bhoj, who thinks he is the king of the village. He has built a free gym for poor kids, which is good, but it is illegal, and he is so… so casual. He called me SDM sahiba like I am some character in a TV serial.”
Her mother laughed. “Shruti, not everyone in Bihar is a character from Gangs of Wasseypur. Try to understand him.”
“I don’t need to understand encroachers. I need to remove them.”
Part Two: The Goon and the Gym
The next two days became a small war.
Shruti did her homework. The land records showed the shed was indeed on PWD land. The cyber cafe owner, Pintu, who was a legitimate taxpayer, came to meet her and complained that Bhoj’s boys had threatened his customers. “Madam, he says gaming is haram. He drags boys out of my shop,” Pintu said, though he looked well-fed and well-connected.
Bhoj, on the other hand, refused to leave. Instead, he sent her a steel tiffin the next morning through a small boy. Inside was litti chokha, still warm, with a little note in broken Hindi: “Madam, garmi bahut hai. Aap Dilli se hain. Yeh kha lijiye. Pet thanda rahega.”
Shruti was furious. Was this a bribe? A flirtation? A joke? She sent the tiffin back untouched, with a written warning about attempting to influence a public servant.
The boy returned in an hour with the same tiffin, and a new note: “Bribe nahi hai, madam. Bhoj bhaiya says, you did not eat lunch yesterday also. He saw you in Collectorate. SDM sahiba should not work empty stomach.”
Mishra ji whispered, “Madam, he is like that only. He sends food to everyone. He sent kheer to the thana last week.”
Shruti did not eat it.
On the third day, she arrived with the PWD engineer, two constables, and a JCB. The entire bazaar had gathered. The boys from the gym stood in a line, shirtless, their arms crossed. Bhoj stood in front of them, also shirtless now, his body glistening with sweat, not out of show, but because the tin roof made the akhada an oven.
“Madam, one last request. You can break it. It is government land. You are right. But can I show you something for five minutes before you break it?” he said. His sunshine grin was gone. He looked serious.
Shruti, conscious of the crowd, nodded curtly. “Five minutes.”
Bhoj whistled. A boy, no more than fourteen, skinny, with spectacles, came forward with a register. It was a simple school notebook, filled with names, dates, and timings.
“This is Ankit. Father is rickshaw puller. He used to spend 100 rupees daily in cyber cafe. He failed in Class 9 twice. He has been coming here for one year. Now he is in Class 11 and he can do 50 pushups,” Bhoj said.
Another boy came. “This is Faizal. His elder brother is in jail for mobile snatching. Faizal used to steal money for UC recharge. Now he teaches younger boys.”
One by one, they came. Twenty-three boys. Each with a story of gaming addiction, of dropping out, of being found in cyber cafes at 2 am by Bhoj, who would literally pick them up, put them on his shoulders, and bring them to the akhada.
Shruti’s official, IAS-trained mind was calculating. This is anecdotal. This is not data. This is emotional manipulation.
But her heart, which was still the heart of a 28-year-old who had cried when her best friend in college had gotten depressed, was doing something else.
“What is your qualification to de-addict them, Bhoj? Are you a counsellor?” she asked, but her voice was softer now.
Bhoj looked down. He picked up a water bottle and offered it to her first, before drinking himself. “Madam, you think I am goon, na? Less educated, gym owner, local dada type. Everyone thinks same. SDM madam from Delhi thinks same. It is okay.”
He then looked at Mishra ji and said, “Mishra ji, aap bata dijiye. Aap toh sab jaante hain.”
Mishra ji, who had been silent, cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable.
“Madam, actually… we were not telling you because Bhoj bhaiya told us not to. He does not like to show off. Madam, Bhoj bhaiya is not eighth fail.”
Shruti frowned. “What?”
Mishra ji opened his old, cracked phone and showed her a photo. It was a newspaper clipping from 2019. Dainik Jagran, Patna edition. The headline: IIT PATNA TOPPER FROM JAMUI BRINGS LAURELS. Under it, a much younger, thinner boy with spectacles, wearing an IIT Patna t-shirt, holding a certificate. Rank 1, Computer Science and Engineering, CGPA 9.8.
The boy in the photo was Bhoj.
The world, with all its 47-degree heat, went completely silent for Shruti.
He was not a school dropout goon who flexed his muscles to intimidate officers. Bhoj Kumar was the All India Rank 47, IIT Patna Computer Science topper of 2019, who had walked out of his final semester with a 9.8 CGPA to return to his village and open a free akhada-gym for the boys who were rotting in cyber cafes playing PUBG and Free Fire till 3 am, because he had lost his own younger brother to gaming addiction, and he had decided to leave a high-flying life to choose what the world called a lower life.
Part Three: The Topper Who Left
The JCB stood idle. The crowd stood idle. Shruti stood holding Mishra ji’s phone, her hand shaking slightly from the heat, or from something else.
Bhoj took the phone gently from her.
“Madam, JCB ko rok dijiye. Dhoop bahut hai. Operator ko chakkar aa jayega,” he said, still in that same, maddeningly calm voice. “Chai piyenge? My mother makes very good sattu sharbat.”
Shruti sat down on a cement dumbbell. Her crisp cotton saree was now dusty. She did not care.
“Why?” she asked. It was all she could manage.
Bhoj sat down on the floor opposite her, not caring about dust either. The boys slowly dispersed, giving them space. For the first time, his sunshine smile had a shadow.
“My younger brother, Guddu. He was thirteen. Very smart. Better than me. He wanted to be like me, go to IIT. But when I went to Patna, he got a smartphone. My father had bought it for his online classes during COVID. He started playing. First one hour, then four hours, then whole night. He stopped eating. He stopped going to school. My mother would cry, my father would beat him, but he would play. One day, he had a seizure. Doctors said it was due to no sleep, no water, only gaming. He was in hospital for one week. He left us,” Bhoj said, his voice flat, as if he was reciting a physics formula he had memorised.
Shruti’s breath caught.
“When I was in IIT, I was getting offers. Google internship, 20 lakh package. I was the topper, madam. Everyone said Bhoj will go to America. But when Guddu died, I came home for last rites. I went to Pintu’s cyber cafe to recharge my phone. I saw ten Guddu there. Same age, same dark circles, same anger when I told them to go home. I realised, my degree is useless if I cannot save even one Guddu in my own village.”
He picked up a small, smooth stone from the ground and turned it in his palm.
“So I did not go back. I told my HOD I am leaving. He thought I am mad. My father thought I am mad. My mother cried a lot. But I thought, if I make a place where boys can come and feel powerful without a phone, where they can sweat and shout and be tired for real, not virtual tiredness, then maybe they will leave the screen. So I sold my laptop, bought these second-hand weights. Started this. Free hai, madam. I earn from my father’s five bigha land and from teaching maths to Class 12 boys in evening. That is enough.”
Shruti looked at him. Really looked at him. The faded baniyan, the gamchha, the cement dumbbells. They were not signs of being less educated. They were signs of a deliberate choice. He had left a high class to choose what her Delhi circle would call a lower class, but what in Jamui was actually the highest class, service.
“I called you a goon,” she whispered.
“You were not wrong, madam. I do goon-giri. I drag boys out of cyber cafes by their collar. I scold Pintu. I threaten to break his computers if he lets small boys enter after 8 pm. That is goon-giri only, but for good reason,” he said, and his gap-toothed smile returned, a little sadder now.
Shruti stood up. She turned to the PWD engineer.
“No demolition today,” she said loudly, so the crowd could hear. “This structure is serving a public purpose. I will regularise it under the Youth Welfare Scheme. File a proposal. We will build a proper tin shed, with government funds, and attach it to the Nehru Yuva Kendra.”
Mishra ji’s mouth fell open. The boys cheered.
Bhoj looked at her, surprised.
“But madam, it is on government land… rules…”
“Rules are for people, Bhoj. People are not for rules. My father taught me that. I just remembered it now,” Shruti said.
Part Four: Sattu and Spreadsheets
After that day, the dynamic changed.
Shruti started visiting the akhada every evening, not as SDM, but as Shruti. She would come in her salwar kameez after office, when the heat was slightly less murderous, and sit on the side while Bhoj trained the boys.
He started teaching her how to do a proper push-up. She, in return, started teaching his older boys how to fill out scholarship forms and how to apply for Khelo India.
They were grumpy x sunshine in the truest sense. She would complain about the Collector’s meeting, about the heat, about how Delhi’s intellectuals had no idea what real India looked like. He would listen, laugh, and offer her sattu sharbat and say, “Madam, garmi mein dimaag garam nahi karte. Thanda rakho.”
She learned that he woke up at 4 am every day, ran five kilometres, then worked in his father’s field, then opened the gym, then taught maths. He had no social media. His phone was a small Nokia keypad phone.
“Where is your smartphone?” she asked once.
“I threw it away after Guddu. I use my mother’s phone if I need to see something. Smartphone is like fire, madam. Useful, but burns small kids,” he said.
She learned that his mother, a quiet woman in a faded saree, still kept his IIT Patna gold medal in a steel almirah, wrapped in a red cloth, and prayed to it every day.
She also discovered the second twist.
It was a month later. Shruti was in Patna for a review meeting. She met an old friend from her coaching days who was now in IIT Patna administration.
“You are in Jamui? Do you know Bhoj Kumar? Our topper who left?” her friend asked.
“Yes, I know him. He runs a gym now.”
Her friend laughed. “Gym? He runs a de-addiction centre, Shruti. But do you know who funds his land? Your father.”
Shruti froze. “What?”
“Your father, Professor Sharma. He is on the board of an NGO, Digital Detox India. They have been funding grassroots gyms in Bihar for two years. Bhoj’s akhada was their pilot project. Your father recommended him. In fact, your posting to Jamui… I think your father requested the Chief Secretary to post you near one of his projects, so you could see real India beyond your books.”
Shruti felt the ground shift. Her entire posting, which she thought was a random bureaucratic decision, her meeting with Bhoj, which she thought was fate, had been orchestrated by her well-meaning, intellectual Delhi father who thought his daughter needed a lesson in real India.
She returned to Jamui that night, angry, betrayed, and confused. She went straight to the akhada. Bhoj was closing up.
“Did you know who my father is?” she asked, her grumpy mode back on full volume.
Bhoj looked confused. “Yes, madam. Professor Sharma. He came here last year. Very nice man. He gave us money for new mats. He said his daughter is IAS. He was very proud.”
“And you knew I was coming to Jamui?”
“No, madam. I swear on Guddu. I only knew an SDM will come. I did not know you are his daughter till Mishra ji told me after you came. I never told you because I thought you will think I am using your father’s name.”
His eyes were honest. Painfully honest.
Shruti sat down and cried. For the first time since coming to Jamui, she cried, not because of heat, not because of work, but because she realised how much she had judged. She had judged Bhoj as a goon, she had judged Jamui as backward, she had judged her father as an armchair intellectual, and all three had turned out to be doing more real work than she ever had.
Bhoj did not try to console her with words. He just sat next to her, left a decent distance, and gave her his gamchha to wipe her face. It smelled of sweat and earth and Sunlight detergent.
“It is okay, madam. Delhi intellectuals’ daughters also cry,” he said softly, with that sunshine smile.
Part Five: Bidaai
Three months later, the Desi Fitness Club was no longer an encroachment. It was a model Youth Centre, with a proper shed, two toilets, a small library with donated books, and a whiteboard where Bhoj taught maths and Shruti taught the Constitution of India.
The road widening happened too. Shruti designed it in such a way that it curved slightly, saving the gym, a small engineering tweak that no one in Patna objected to because the SDM had done her homework so well.
On Shruti’s last day in Jamui before her transfer to Gaya, a bigger district, the boys organised a small function. They had made a card with fevicol and glitter. “Thank you, Didi,” it said.
Bhoj was not good at functions. He stood at the back.
After everyone left, Shruti and Bhoj walked to the nearby canal, where the evening air was finally cool.
“You will go to Gaya and become big DM, madam,” Bhoj said.
“You will stay here and become bigger,” Shruti said.
“I am thinking to start for girls also. Morning batch. But girls’ parents don’t allow. You will talk to them before you go?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence. The kind of silence that happens between two people who come from different worlds, small town and big city, who have no business liking each other, but do.
“Bhoj, why did you never try to go back to IIT? You could still get a degree, get a job,” Shruti asked.
Bhoj looked at the canal water, which was muddy and slow.
“Madam, in IIT they taught me how to make apps that make boys addicted. Here I am teaching boys how to de-addict. Which is more difficult? Which is more IIT? I left a high class, yes, but I found a higher class. My father says, class is not in degree, it is in kaam. And my kaam is here.”
Shruti smiled. Her grumpy frown, which had been her armour since her UPSC days, was completely gone.
“Will you come to Delhi sometime? My parents want to meet you. My mother wants to feed you rajma chawal. She says you are too thin.”
Bhoj laughed, that loud, gap-toothed, sunshine laugh that echoed across the canal.
“Delhi? Very hot, madam. But for rajma chawal, I will come. And I will bring my cement dumbbells. Your Lutyens gym boys need real training.”
He did not say he liked her. She did not say she liked him. In Jamui, in 47 degrees, some things are not said, they are just understood, like the need for water, like the relief of the first rain.
The loo had stopped blowing. The monsoon was coming.
And somewhere behind them, in the akhada that was once illegal, a dozen boys were doing push-ups, counting loudly in Hindi, one, two, three, away from screens, into the real, hot, sweaty world.
