One for the Road

One for the Road

 

A detour to the city terminal was not to serve anybody’s need, yet the bus made it. It was unavoidable, a kind of mandatory diversion the driver was supposed to take to remain within the ambit of the rules. Transport authorities had arranged it for the benefit of the passengers so that they could go to a proper place to start their journey. But the time-conscious people knew the best; they would rather stand on the highway to hail the bus that used to return from its mandatory detour and board it than take the pain of going all the way to the city terminus to wait for their bus. This helped them to save at least thirty minutes. 

 

It all happened one day as I was travelling from Bhubaneswar to Baripada on National Highway 16. The 25-minute detour I referred to was to take place at Cuttack, the millennium city with myriad mysteries. The terminal was Badambadi, the name that evoked more bucolic bliss than urban bustle. Finally, the bus I had boarded was mythologically named the ‘Super Dragon’, for whatever it meant to all concerned.

 

          I was not among the time-conscious passengers. Saving thirty minutes of idle wandering was not attractive to me. So I kept sitting in my seat rather than getting down at the diversion point to change to another bus.

 

Super Dragon stopped at Badambadi. There were no passengers to scramble into it. Instead, a posse of sellers swarmed in with their variegated wares: the aerated water, buttermilk in poly packs, the mid-day newspaper that carried sensational small talk, the apples and bananas that were too ripe for eating, the sunglass, and the electronic watch that vainly tried to define the distinction….

 

I kept watching them. There was no ventilation inside, and the breeze from outside had ceased to blow in. It was just eight in the morning yet unbearably sultry, and I was sweating like anything, dripping unabatedly from the tip of my nose down to my calloused ankles. A hawker offering bottled soft drinks entered the coach clanking the steel bottle-opener against the bottles, tring…tring…thak…tring. His offer was incredibly cheap—it could be filled with questionable concoctions. I looked on the other side. A few sips of water from my bottle were enough for the moment; it was safer than the offerings from the grubby hands of the hawker. 

 

‘Try this…a cheap one, sir. Only for one hundred and fifty bucks,’ the watch seller standing outside the bus began pestering my co-passenger on the front row. I stuck my head out and looked at the fellow standing below with his electronic gizmos. I was careful to look at him from the corner of my eyes lest he should start pestering me.

 

‘No, I don’t need a watch…and it’s way too expensive,’ my co-passenger responded. The seller knew what to interpret from the response. He just zapped a watch around the wrist of his unwilling customer.

 

          Continued, then, the ritual haggling—the prospective buyer insisting that the object was just trash and the seller promising all kinds of warranties, including the money-back guarantee. 

 

And the inevitable happened: the buyer’s lack of interest in the merchandise far outweighed the seller’s selling acumen, so the negotiation failed. And the hawker knew not to recognise a failure.

 

Before long, the passenger realised that he was in an inconvenient trap. The nagging seller would not leave him at peace as long as the watch was with him. So, he began to insist that the fellow took back that object of trial. Was it not the seller himself that zapped the watch around his wrist? And now that the negotiation had failed, he should take it back…bloody well, take it back. 

 

But the seller appeared adamant. It was his experience that nobody would ever buy a thing from him unless taken through a round of prolonged persuasion. “Hard sell or no sale,” he knew it only too well.

 

The passenger, too, would not allow the seller to short-change him. As if he called in the right person to take charge of the watch, a lady appeared with a begging bowl just in the nick of time. And the agitated passenger threw the watch into her bowl in no moment.  

 

The lady was taken aback by the monstrous windfall. What kind of generosity could it be? She was only a leper, a beggar who would be too happy to get a coin or two—an expensive electronic watch would not bring a smile to her cracked lips. 

 

She was a beggar but beautiful—fair-skinned and contented. Her beauty emphasised something quite weird: an inscrutable divine scheme that supposedly punished a lovely soul of this birth for the wickedness of the previous; a beauty laden with a thing macabre to frighten and not to please; poverty that needed the company of the disease and disability to shatter the last particle of human dignity…. And while the beautiful beggar spoke, it confirmed my hunch that she came from a family with polished lingo. 

 

‘Babu! I don’t need a thing like this…I’m only an illiterate,’ she said, addressing my co-passenger directly. She was polite, perhaps a little more than necessary.

 

‘Then give it to the seller…and push off,’ my co-passenger directed the leper lady. He was curt, and he was so without reason, unprovoked.

 

The hawker reacted. He had nothing to do with a watch returned by a leper. He would not even touch it.

 

‘What? What do you mean by give it to the seller? How do you expect me to touch something retrieved from the begging bowl of a leper? You’d better give me the cost of the watch,’ the hawker was apparently ready to charge his customer.

 

‘Cost? And what for? I’ve not bought it. It’s you who pestered me, forcing me to buy trash, a shit of the street,’ my co-passenger bellowed.

 

‘So what? It is you who chose to give that to the leper lady. Isn’t it so?’ The hawker was not expecting any answer to his questions though his style was pretty emphatic. The only thing he expected now was the cost of the watch. For him, the watch was already sold…and an item sold was not to be taken back! 

 

‘Forget it. I am not going to pay you a pie. I don’t have money, and that’s all.’

 

The poor co-passenger of mine was pathetically unaware that he was fighting with a person of strength, a fellow with an entire community of hawkers behind him. In no time, they actually gathered in support and stood outside the coach. They offered to mediate, arbitrate, and bring back the peace of the road before the police came to intervene. Then, with no time to spare, they were ready with their decision and a contingency plan to implement it.

 

‘Sir, you seem to be a person of repute, but why do you penalise a poor hawker? Give him his money and settle the matter, here and now,’ a person from the crowd exhorted. He was a bearded fellow with a furrowed brow above a pair of red eyes. Most probably, he was the leader of the horde.

 

‘No, you people are out to blackmail me,’ my co-passenger was visibly shaken despite his bold front. I thought it was time he chose his words with circumspection. The bus conductor was yet to decide if he would intervene and, if so, on whose behalf.

 

‘What do you mean by blackmailing? Please, sir, don’t force us to turn ugly,’ the leader warned. Then, continuing his threatening stance, he said, ‘Let’s go to our shed, and I’ll convince you why my hawker friend should get the price of his watch.’

 

I understood what was going to happen. The least of all was the fellow would miss his bus. ‘So, what’s that precious little I should do for a friend-in-need? And what was that I could do instantly?’ I cogitated.

 

It did not take me long enough to decide.

 

‘Look, gentlemen. This man has no time to visit your shed, right? He is heading for his destination, and he cannot afford to miss his bus,’ I chipped in. I was resolute; it was just another challenge to prove and live up to. In the past, I had wavered and missed opportunities; this time, I was determined not to let it go out of hand. Indeed, helping people before being told had a natural charm!

 

‘Oh, very well, then, if you insist,’ the leader with a furrowed brow said this reluctantly. After a minute’s pause, he resumed, ‘but you’ve to pay…er…a sum of one hundred and fifty rupees, and that’s all.’

 

Now was the time for action; the ball was in my court. I fumbled in my pocket as I kept weighing the option. Well, there was enough to pay the ransom. Otherwise, one hundred and fifty bucks were paltry, and I decided to spend the amount to buy the peace.

 

          ‘Fine, take this and settle the issue here,’ I proffered the amount in currency notes. But unfortunately, I did not have the exact change to make up the sum and what I paid was ten rupees more than the demand. ‘Plus-minus ten rupees—it hardly matters,’ I decided not to be bothered about it.

 

‘Phew! A hassle is over…finally and peacefully!’ I spoke to myself. I felt a twitch of curiosity: What on earth is the world's reaction? ‘Oh no, it’s not a question to ask, I say,’ I thought aloud.

 

My co-passenger, in whose interest I spent my hard-earned money, did not look at me. It was beyond his dignity to say thank you. He was just my co-passenger, a stranger, but I had not counted this fact while deciding to help him out. What could be going on in his mind? Maybe he was trying to articulate something that was not easy to put straightforwardly.

 

‘Don’t ask me to return the sum,’ my co-passenger burst into saying. I was only taken aback. Then, supplying the reason, he continued, ‘It’s you who decided to pay the blackmailers. I have nothing to do about that. Is that clear to you?’

 

It was difficult to brush aside the reaction—at least I should not hide my discomfiture, not at this stage. The money I invested should have bought a line of gratitude, but that was not to come. Instead, all it did actually yield was an offensive onslaught.

 

Hold it—that was not all. There was more to come. This time it was from the beggar lady. 

 

The lady came closer to the window and raised her begging bowl above her head to bring it closer to me—to my hand’s reach.

 

          ‘Take your watch, Babu. It’s your watch,’ she said in a lyrical tone.

 

‘But why? It’s for you. You’d wear a watch, and that’s my gift, won’t you?’ I told it with matching politeness.

 

The lady was flared up. God! I had unknowingly touched her private grief.

 

‘You’re a big man, Babu, but why do you taunt me? Are all big men like that? I have no fingers, and half my palm has been wasted. The horrible disease has taken this. And you want me to wear a watch?’ her voice trailed off in anguish. I could clearly see tears welling up in her eyes.

 

Then she ordered me to stretch my hand through the window, and I could not help obeying her command. Promptly she took my hand in her diseased stump—or maybe it was her cured hand—and strapped the electronic watch around my wrist. Then she left as my glance lingered on her speeding steps. She was somewhat limping…yes, I could clearly see she was dragging her steps on the concrete pavements.

 

I retrieved my hand and brought it closer. The watch was beautiful, designed exquisitely with a white dial, and contrasted well upon my black wrist. Yes, I am black, not fair-skinned like the beggar woman, but I have my palm intact. 

 

Close-eyed I reflected: the leper woman was speeding her steps; she was fighting back her tears of anguish; her speed was attracting breeze, and the breezes were billowing her sari, a green sari of soft flax and bright border.

 

My neighbour, a distinguished gentleman in all whites with powdered cheeks and scented hair, the one with whom I was sharing the seat, the one who had been a silent witness throughout the drama, gawped at me with reproachful stares. His eyes wandered from my watch to my face repeatedly until he changed his seat without uttering a word. 

 

I had a whole seat to myself until I reached my destination on that scorching afternoon. My watch was in all sweat as I got off the bus and plodded my way through the sparsely perambulated streets of Baripada. 

 

Bhubaneswar

02-05-2008