NEW DELHI: He wakes up around 4.30am every day, but instead of a morning walk he gets into his specially modified car to deliver water around the capital. It takes 68-year-old Alag Natarajan an hour and a half to fill the 60-plus matkas he has placed in and around South Delhi so that thirsty passersby and the poor get easy access to clean drinking water.

No surprise that this retired gent who lives in South Delhi's Panchsheel Park has earned the epithet, the 'matkaman' of Delhi.

Natarajan, an engineer who returned to India in 2005 after spending over 32 years in London, says it was a brush with colon cancer that changed his mindset. His was detected at an early stage and treated on time but it made him determined to make his post-retirement years count. He first started working voluntarily for the Shanti Avedna Sadan cancer hospital where he would help those who couldn't afford to bear the cremation expenses of their loved ones, even ferrying bodies in his van. "A lot of people could not even afford to spend Rs 500 on the cremation, so I would help them," says Natarajan.

Soon, he hit on the idea of placing matkas on stands in areas like IIT, Green Park, Panchsheel and Chirag Delhi. The water, he says, is collected from three different borewells whose owners appreciated the work he was doing and wanted to help.

"The car had to be modified, with a generator added and two tanks of 500 and 200 litres to ensure the matkas did not run dry. My volunteers and I now make four to five trips to fill these matkas," he says. His volunteers include his house help, gardener, a drain cleaner from the area and a full-time as sistant. His van which has the name of his website matkaman.com painted across it is a familiar sight in South Delhi.

He has also started installing cycle bells for cyclists who don't have one. He has now made a few designated points in the Panchsheel area where cyclists gather for refreshments in the form of lassi, to drink water and to get cycle bells installed.

