Chandigarh: This one was a close call. One that had us face-to-face with the man behind the Claus — a smart man, who unlike our picture perfect image, isn’t a chubby cute fatso, but has the same motto, “to make people happy. To make them believe in the good that is still there in this world,” smiles Santa Singh, a 35-year-old restaurant captain at Hotel Prabhat Inn, who has been posing as Santa for the past 10 years now.
“I cancelled my off this month on account of Christmas,” he tells us. Santa Singh recently lost his mother, but then that has not marred the festive spirit, “The smile on the kids’ faces will help me forget all else,” Santa says, as he moves on to a group of students singing ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ and the bell in his hands playing ‘jingle bell’. The sweets distributed and greetings exchanged, “We get somewhere between Rs 200 to Rs 1,000 per day for acting as Santa,” he reels.The earnings depends on the kind of people Santa meets, 24-year-old Deepak Kumar of Mayur Dress Company, Industrial Area, tells us. With his duty hours stretching to over 12-hours a day, “We do complete round-ups of the city — from markets, cinema halls to parties. More than the monetary benefit, it is the smiles of the children that we earn,” Deepak says.
First-timer Manjit Thakur from Kangra (HP), a 21-year-old waiter at Hotel Yellow Chili, too, is happy playing Santa. “I am enjoying each and every minute of it. Not only the kids, but the grown-ups also rush to meet me. I have never got so much attention in my life,” says Manjit, taking off his Santa mask. Agrees Nirmal Kumar, a 19-year-old from from Nepal, who is posing as Santa for the second time, “I am a common man. This day makes a star out of me.”
Source: expressindia