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!