Road-confidence Around the Bend

This is a true account of how a ‘woman on the streets’ inspired me with self belief, passing it on across my ‘manicured lawns.’ I, a divorced woman, had reclaimed my life in many ways but couldn’t drive. Even the poles (North and South) could switch their places under massive geophysical changes but I would always be in the same position, dependant on others for a drive. All this remained unchanged till I met her…

Place – Bulandshahr Lesson Learnt – The Wheel to Change is Letting go of Fear

That was the first time I saw her. Hijab can be so beautiful! The face having it on looks so chaste yet powerful. She wasn’t a Muslim, but no less a ‘Mohtarma,’ a lady to be respected. She looked like an ‘Arab Nazneen’ (delicately pretty female) going about her day. Only she didn’t know she was building belief! A caramel coloured dupatta lined her head in two circular drapes. Reminding one of the gold rimmed circumference of a wedding ring, encasing a diamond solitaire. Beauty is unbridled when set in defining borders, I realized that day. Her face! So beautiful! Minus adornment!

She was on double duty.

1) Driving her husband’s electronic rickshaw.

2) Driving away the belief that she was ‘available.’

Her commuter was a woman with vermilion bleeding down a straight line, covered by the ‘Indian Umbrella’ for demure ladies (Sar ka Pallu). Inspired by this lady driver, the winds of wisdom fluttered a new WatsApp status across my mind. I took out my mobile to type- SELECTIVELY AVAILABLE! My belief got confirmed over the next few days. She seemed to tick mark only old couples, women and children in her passenger list. There were no concessions for the whistling wolves.

The ‘Keen Kumars’ on the lookout for fun rides and meaningless meanders in narrow streets, couldn’t take a chance on her.

I boarded her ‘Tiree’ (local language for E Rickshaw in Bulandshahr) one day. She was insightful and intuitive. I came to know a lot about her. Including the pride she took in her fully spread hair bandana.

Her pinned dupatta pinioned all evil intent. It had been a ritual for most cyan evenings and cobalt nights. She would flounce the dupatta and set free her locks to the arms that garlanded her. Those locks would not get exposed to the birds, bees or even trees during daytime. Two beings would then snake around each other in total surrender. Her husband’s puckered lips pressed to hers. Two raindrops wrapped up in a cloud of bliss, only two, sufficient to satiate the parched cosmos. She belonged to him and he, to her.

Nowadays she was building belief. Belief that she could jump the stone wall, climb the steep tower, in short do anything within sanctified limits called ‘modesty’ to keep the kitchen fires ablaze. Her household was in constant threat of being gutted with her husband admitted to a government hospital. He was lying ‘shoe horned’ between two rotting cots, in the cramped space of the floor of general ward. The culprit was LAL PARI. The wrecking bottle of desi sharaab (country liquor)! Coming back from a stud gathering in a happy mood, he had been struck by a speeding Bajaj Pulsar. Resting and healing, dying to stretch his injured leg firmly secured in compression wrap bandaging, he kept cursing himself. Enormous was his guilt realizing his wife was driving around the city, earning bread, leaving their two sons to her mother’s care.

I learnt that the resolute woman had trained herself on the e rickshaw controls, maneuvering confidently, in a single day. She had replaced her husband back to back on the friable roads, dusting her grubby face with the corners of her dupatta.

She was a mind architect. She did something to me eventually. I fetched the car keys from the wooden key holder and called up Montu Bhaiya, the local cabbie who drove school and office wagons. After thirteen years rubber was meeting the asphalt road. I steadied my grip on the steering wheel, Montu Bhaiya by my side.

I smiled as I remembered the beautiful poem by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala

‘ Woh todti paththar, dekha meine usey Allahabad ke path par.’

I saw her cutting stones in one of Allahabad’s paths.

Today I would rephrase it this way.

‘Bulandshahr ki bheed mei ghiri, woh akeli aurat chalati apne pati ki Tiree(e rickshaw).’

Surrounded by the crowds of Bulandshahr, she was the only woman to drive her husband’s e rickshaw. She melted the fear that had paralyzed my mind thirteen years back. As a gazeted officer in the Indian Armed Forces, I had been driven around most of the time by MTD’s (Mechanical Transport Drivers for official long distance duty). Other times, I was happy driving my ‘two wheeler’ to the SLS (Station Logistics Section the workplace). Let’s fast forward to a few years. It could have been a fateful day for my trainer driver and I, the day we met with a wheel separation accident. I was just beginning to learn car driving. A tyre had come off the lug nuts, flying sideways, bouncing our Indica to a shocking halt against a tree. Nursing a shoulder injury I had decided not to be at the wheel anymore. ‘Not anymore’ no more! She had broken the chain links fencing my mind. In a week’s time I was driving confidently without Montu Bhaiya.

She had learnt it in a day whereas I took a week!

And then one day a huge surprise, or was it an optical illusion? Wasn’t that her in the construction site of stucco homes?! Her head covered as usual, employed as an unskilled labourer loading and unloading material. I noticed her chapped thin skin and ‘observed some more.’ The silver fox (handsome grey haired) property owner eying her! Damn! The dirty bedroom eyes feasting on her blameless face! Nada! Nothing doing! She wasn’t going to be a part of construction solutions anymore, I decided.

That evening I drove to her place, Sufi music playing on FM…Faya Kun Faya Kun, movie Rockstar. She met me with her signature smile. The good news was that her husband would be discharged in a fortnight, the bad – the e rickshaw had been reduced to a non performing asset. Someone had sneaked into the verandah of her dwelling place and stolen the e rickshaw battery. Luck had surely gone sour with her carelessly leaving behind the key bunch, inserted into start position in the hole.

Clearing my throat I informed her that I would help her in buying new ‘e ride batteries’ and a safety mechanism, equivalent to the gear shift lock of a car. I wrote a cheque and handed it to her.

She beamed in delight. “You mean I won’t have to go to the construction site anymore?” She continued, “You are so kind madam, how can I repay you?”

“Uhh! Oh!” I managed to say, “Nothing! Once a while just come over to chop veggies and dust the house, while your husband is away at work.”

“Surely Madamejee! You are asking for too less.”

“Don’t bother! I waved my hand and left.”

She would never know what she had done to me. This above board woman with immense self belief!

CHOOSING ONE OVER THE OTHER

Huzza! I’m out. I’ll be fine you zooterkins. Rejected by you, the ‘illuminati tribe’ of social media, I still walk proud though you make me feel like your latest fopdoodle. Thwack! You wallop me with your critique! You troll me. I’m deleting my account from your social online ‘friend-web.’ My cardinal sin is ‘resistance.’ I beg your forgiveness, dear armchair patriots.

Heroes are heroes anyway! You want me to join your league? I shall qualify as a nation loyalist only if I wear a ‘TEE SHIRT’ of my country’s martyr and withhold patronage to the ‘global insignia’ of another country’s revolutionary. They are neither apples nor oranges. Heroes anytime anywhere don’t need crutches. Dear ‘screen revolutionaries’ your mental hacks on skewed patriotism don’t work. Reject me! Reject Democracy!

I could never choose one over the other. If I had a photo gallery of heroes, I don’t know whose ivory photo frame would find more space, whose portrait would be garlanded with a fuller bunch of roses?

One’s visage had always held me captive. The other had a power packed ‘electric’ persona to become the second sun. Both sent me on an emotional drill. Both were like glow worms illuminating dark corners. Both gave me a reason to dream beyond my comforts and live for something bigger. I genuflect to the memory of both ‘revolutionary souls’ Ernesto Che Guevara and Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. The former was a great figure of the Cuban Revolution and the latter executed at age 23 remains a ‘folk hero’ of Indian hearts ‘lionized’ in history, art and literature as a socialist revolutionary.

No moral compass could ever tell me who’s mine and who’s not. One from my land and the other executed by members of the Bolivian army on another side of the Atlas. It wasn’t in my geometry to pin one down with a compass needle while forming a halo or a ‘homage paying circle’ around the other. 

 Your media post was ludicrous. You were training me to be Swadeshi (for the country) on new lines. You wanted me to ‘LIKE’ and comment on the group update. It was a picture ‘FLASHING A RED TICK MARK AS APPROVAL’ on a tee shirt with Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh’s face and a ‘RUDE BIG BLACK CROSS’ on the second tee, a ‘NO NO’ on Guevara’s pixilated image. Poor Guevara! You make it sound like he’s been the worst abuser of your human rights. He lived for the man on the street.  Immeasurable is my chalice of respect  for Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. I try to resist and there’s a string of comments against me (like disapproving grandparents rethinking their will). For a tee, seriously!

You ostracize me! I’m no longer a part of your ‘Smartphone’ community. They are heroes not terrorists! 

Guevara’s iconic photograph taken by Alberto Korda seems to smile at me. As for my homeland hero Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh, I hold him tight in an ancient sepia photograph pressed to my heart. 

Circa 06.06.66. There’s a warm mist coating the pellucid bathroom mirror. Jimjams and cold-creeps woven into a gossamer epiphany! The frissons on my otherwise normal tracks for life! I sneeze to a rare tingling sensation up my nasal canal. A scene unfolds. A swift segue to a rundown theme park spinning on decaying ferrous wheels. No! The Columbus no longer appears to be a fun-buzzing ‘swing to amusement’ ride. Like a heavy bodied drone (male bee) spinning fast without its stingers. A parchment roll flutters down the rocking seat. Superimposed in bleeding vermilion, the dark burnished gold trim washroom glass with espresso frames comes eerily alive to display 666. No ballpark figure the beast number. I wrap the Turkish bath towel on my wet hair and step out to figure out my morning the ‘logic brained’ way. It’s not that I am high on Crystal Meth. In fact I don’t do drugs at all.

It’s a red letter day. My life’s first patient for genetic screening and heart beat monitoring is here. All’s great with the sensors presenting their proudest report. Suddenly! A flash to me! The living form winks with beryl blue eyes. Sitting in Padmasana(lotus position) he conveys a message with thunderbolt urgency. ‘Tell her stay calm to turn on the charm. 666 on his way.’ I can evangelize the appeal in the obsidian eyes. ‘Tell her!’ The amber skin wants to crawl out of the womb. What follows is an overlay of feelings, my self- censure as a doctor. How can I tell her what I just heard? What was this interlocution? I am a doctor not a harp playing angel, arriving with a crunch on the dry leafed earth bed to convey a ‘message.’

She resignedly says, ‘Six years back that state agent raped me and made me abort on the Columbus Ride. The police file’s still open. Pregnant now with my love, my refuge. My husband has been a healing sanctuary to me. I hope the bae’s ok?’ ‘Bae’ I smile. ‘ Bae your baby’s more than okay woman.’

The life-form floating in her amniotic fluid dances with his hands in a pectoral fin like glide. He waves a red book at me and smiles! In telepathic thought transference I can divine his glee. ‘I am not travelling light. My bags and baggage include the book keeping of justice. I have come back to her willy nilly, to avenge the one that dared to cut short the beast’s life… in that theme park six years back. Let him straighten his deck chair while the Titanic goes down.’

The temple of the living devil! He was romanticizing the past while uniting with the human flesh. ‘The thorns of his desires, now growing in living chambers!’

‘You’ll seal the case. Your own agent’s on the way.’ I patted her swollen tummy. SOMETIMES THE DEVIL MUST COLLUDE WITH THE DECENT TO CLOSE BOOKS OF JUSTICE…THE DESIRED WAY! I helped her up gently and went about my day.

I called it the ‘lighthouse.’ Down the years he had held my hand, ‘handled me with care’ and helped me inside the loft of his mansion with sloping red tin roofs. I had never hesitated in my step for he was known to be the big neighbourly brother, my safety mantle ever since I was six and he twenty. Anyone would think it was threaded in consanguinity but our association was not lineal.

Today he was supporting me from the hindquarters, pushing me up the spiral stairway like a racquet serving a tennis ball. He was leaving that night for his duty station, but before that he had to give me the Shrewsbury biscuit tin he had saved in that dramatic sensual free space he called his studio. Turruttttt!!! The wooden stool slipped as he lunged to fetch the biscuit tin from the veneer bamboo cabinet. He fell in a heap, his outstretched arms around me and his head a pendant to my bosom. I was crushed under the weight of this Atlantic bear and as we rolled on the floor, I felt frissons. Crushed in body and heart, the warrior in me fought with reason in the battlefield of passion. No! No! No! This is out of plan! He buys me Barbies and candies! I can’t be his belle! Meanwhile he engaged his fingers in a circular band around my silken strands and released them in sweeps of tenderness. His fingers now lay caved over my heart and slid deeper, wiping away all boundaries in seconds. That was the loss of my innocence, my emotions in floss. His olive green uniform’s reflection was a luminous filigree on the oriel window glass. “You are in uniform!” I managed in racing urgency. “Holy Cow!” I heard him mumble, “Yes! Respect for the uniform!” The steam dampened and the vapours cooled off. He got up sobered in his sopping uniform, extending a hand, grafting his lover presence forever in my heart. We were Minivets, leaders of a bird wave flying liberally across the blue tent, him in red and me sunshine yellow. Love doesn’t follow convention and is a therapy all by itself, even if the price is losing innocence. Skewed relationships carrying new meanings, who’s to comment acceptable or not!? I know somewhere in his wallet, in the plastic separators, I stayed as a frayed out photograph for a long time and who knows maybe even today!? I just know that the hands that lovingly pulled a moppet’s ribbon braids, held the strings to her heart; as it flew out of the loft window that night to rise like a light balloon higher and higher.

Did it matter that later down the years a male ‘boner’ in an arrow piercing thrust, entered to explore eve’s garden of fertility!? The sensation was not original if not stale. I did get filled up as a woman. Yet, the loss of innocence on my page was a vulnerable drop in the vast expanse of the ocean, where one leaps and loses to the unknown.

Rains Reconnect

My mind races through a ravine of memories,

to the rhythm and velocity of descending ivory rains.

All elements whistle the splashing, chatty rain song.

I weed out some invasive wild growth.

Clear barbs along the rose garden of my hopes.

Now let me float my paper boat...

Before someone comes and tells,

"Dear! It's but a magic spell."

Ah! Back I step into reality,

And floods again the bleeding pain.

For a few moments,

T'was just my mind reconnoitering;

In the petrichor of the silver rains.