Autorickshaw altercations - part 1

"Don't think I am new to the city so that you can quote whatever fare you please. You can try the trick on someone else. I know the city like the back of my hand! City Railway Station to Meenakshi Temple is exactly 120 rupees, not less, not more," I put my point across as forcefully as I could.

From the choice of my language, from the accent and from my general demeanor, the autorickshaw driver was certain that I knew Bangalore not like the back of my hand, but like my own back! At 10:50 pm, he clearly had the upper hand and he knew it. He threatened to leave me marooned at the railway station and pick up the next client who was already waiting in the wings, should our negotiations fail.

The driver stuck to his guns, "You can either give me 250 rupees flat or you can go by the meter. The choice is yours. But after 10 pm, it is one-and-a-half charge, mind you. Also, Kalena Agrahara is quite a distance from Meenakshi Temple. It is outside the city limits. It will be one-and-a-half charge over that. I will not get a client on my way back. I will need 30 rupees extra for getting back to the city."

It looked as if there was no end to the miscellaneous charges. In a single breath, he continued, "Plus, you are carrying excess luggage. There will be a charge for that. Right now itself I want to clarify that this meter is an old one. I don't want any unnecessary argument when you get down. You will have to pay the meter charge matched against the new conversion rates. Also, I don't carry any change. You will have to give me the exact fare. If you need to stop at an ATM, there will be a waiting charge as well. All put together, it will work beyond 250 rupees. But it is entirely upto you. I don't mind going by the meter at all." The driver trailed off with a few sentences under his breath which I couldn't exactly follow but caught some choice words like "sumne" and "bejaar" and understood that the barb was directed towards argumentative customers like me.

A part of me wondered whether I would be timed in milliseconds for taking a leak and whether there was a charge for that as well, but resisted the urge (pun unintended).

The mathematics seemed to assume staggering astronomical proportions. The flow-chart was complicated with several "decision points" which could lead the unwary customer to his doom. It was unclear who would eventually do the arithmetic since a bewildering number of complex topics were involved here- ratio-proportion, percentages and fractions to name a few. The driver appeared sufficiently equipped to give the protagonist of Good Will Hunting a run for his money (rather, with my money)! It looked a cheaper and a more straight forward option to purchase the autorickshaw from him and drive it myself !

I had half a mind to give him a mouthful and let him go but the other half of the mind chose to mollycoddle him- discretion after all, is the better part of valour. That I was being taken for a ride was certain, but at 11:00 pm, I actually *needed* a ride or ran the risk of spending the rest of the night at the station platform. I decided to bite the bullet and bravely declared that I would pay by the meter. Bad choice! But ours is not to question why, ours is but to pay and ply!

It was definitely a less travelled road at that time of the day for Bangalore city. Robert Frost perhaps had this road in mind. The street lights had a dull, lazy feel to them and lit roads which were equally sleepy. A pack of irritated street dogs gave the autorickshaw a hot pursuit, coming frightfully close to my heels, but thankfully lost steam midway.

The seat on which I was perched, was not exactly fixed and had a mind of its own. It squirmed and protested against my weight (or actually the lack of it) and suddenly buckled so that I almost toppled over. It looked a precarious balancing act to hold the seat in place and my nerves as the rickshaw negotiated man-made ascents and descents with the ease of a roller-coaster.

The auto-driver broke into a little Kannada film song Ninnindale... as he went over the fly-over from where directions to Lalbaug could be seen. He was in a jolly mood, sure that his month's expenses were taken care in a single ride! 

The song was brought to an abrupt end when the autorickshaw ground to a halt before it could reach Hudson Circle. The driver yanked the lever a few times to jumpstart the auto. The vehicle initially responded with strangulated yelps which gave a ray of hope; it then let out a groan and with a last whimper fell completely silent. "No fuel," he announced calmly. "We have to wait for another rickshaw to get us to the petrol pump!" Shaken... I was, but I had to at least pretend that I was not stirred!

- to be continued

History- His story!

"What is your favourite subject ?" asked the inquisitive, elderly gentleman in the BEST bus. For a school boy, it was like being asked to choose between bitter-gourd and neem leaves! All the subjects were equally revolting; but in the circumstances, it appeared preferable to go with the least obnoxious one. "Well, History actually!" I answered quite truthfully. The gentleman's genial expression morphed into a scowl and he clicked his tongue in disapproval- "How can you choose History ? Tsch! Tsch! Mathematics is the queen of Sciences. Every Science has to dust the feet of Mathematics." Mercifully, I was spared a lengthy discourse on Mathematics and its curative powers to solve world hunger since it was time to get down at the bus stop and run to school. History continued to be my favourite subject despite my run-ins with Mathematics fanatics.

My marriage was on the rocks in a very short time when we failed to maintain any flow in conversation. "There is this story about the Pandyas of Madurai...." Usha began, when I interjected. "I thought Pandas existed in the mountains of China. Didn't know that the bear can be found in Madurai as well!" It was an innocent comment which started a whole round of questioning. Wide eyed, my wife was aghast. "I meant Pandyas, not pandas! You mean you've never heard of the Pandyas?" "Not really. In Mumbai, when someone cuts the lane and we need to pick on him in a rather friendly way, we typically start with Aye Pandu or Aye Pandya! But not in any other context, I'm afraid." "How about the Pallavas ?" was the next question. "Of course, we all had a crush on Pallavi Joshi... her family, I guess," I added, with a little wink which didn't go well either. "How about the Cholas ?" "You mean the Hotel... Chola Sheraton in Chennai ?" "The Cheras?" "What are they ?...chelas ?" "The Chalukyas ?" "The chalu who?" "The Rashtrakutas?" "Were they from Maharashtra?" "The Kings of Vijayanagara?" "Amar Chitra Katha had a story on Tenali Rama..." I began, only to be cut short. "Did you even go to school ?" It was resembling the deep anguish that the Princess of Ujjain suffered when it dawned upon her that a quirk of fate had got her married to Kalidasa, a confirmed dullard in his earlier avatar.
Exasperated, Usha finally asked, "What do you know ?"
I rose to my full height. Like Shashi Kapoor in that famous tete a tete with Amitabh Bachchan in the classic Deewar, I calmly looked her in the eye and replied, "I know Shivaji". There was an uneasy silence.

The tables were now turned.  It was now my turn. "I hope you're aware of Dadaji Kondeo". Usha hadn't heard me fully. "Surely, we all know Dadabhai Nowroji," she began, when I snapped, "Not Dadabhai Nowroji silly! He was an old man! I'm talking about Dadaji, Dadaji, Dadaji Kondeo," as if Usha was hard of hearing in addition to being oblivious about basic History! My wife hadn't heard about Shivaji's mentor. It was an elementary question as far as I was concerned. "How about the Temple of Raireshwar ?" was my follow-up query. "We can't go to all the temples built by Aishwarya Rai's family! We have bigger temples in Triplicane and Kanchipuram." The reply was a dampener and my lower jaw dropped. Even "boarders" like Wayne in my class would have answered that question. Everyone knew that Shivaji took his famous oath of swaraj in the precincts of that temple. "The fort is captured, but the ...." I left the sentence hanging, but no one completed it. Even in a comatose state, a student from Maharashtra would have answered, "but the lion is dead", in obvious reference to the famous battle of Sinhagad when Tanaji, Shivaji's commander took on the might of the Mughals but laid down his life. If the quote was unknown, there was no way my wife would know anything about the  monitor lizard "Yeshwanti" which was used to scale the fort. It looked as if Men were from Mars and Women from Venus and they had read History about two completely different planets.
Evidently, not much progress could be made. We had to abandon History as a binding cord between us and move onto other topics where we were hopefully better matched.

The Maharashtra State Board History syllabus had a simple vision. Instead of cluttering the student's already over-burdened mind with historical facts from across the country and the globe, they believed that it would be in the student's interest to study something relevant and closer to home, in detail. Little wonder, that by the time we completed school, we were well on our way towards earning a PhD on Shivaji. Our introduction to Shivaji was in the fourth grade through a History textbook which had a story-like, simple narrative and brilliant water-colour illustations. Every year, a few more details were added to the basic storyline so that slowly, but surely, Shivaji's persona captivated us. When we played at the Bosco grounds, we pretended we were mavlas (Shivaji's soldiers) and mounted "gorilla attacks" on each other. (It was much later in life that I understood that it was actually guerilla.) When we enacted plays, it was about Shivaji and his compassion for the milkmaid Heera. If it was a Fancy Dress competition, there would be at least half a dozen Shivajis (those who could successfully procure a beard at the costume shop). The rest, who couldn't find a beard, wore the same dress but called themselves Sambhaji (Shivaji's young son)! If we had a heated debate between friends and wanted to end the argument by accepting the other person's viewpoint, we typically said "Tu Shivaji!" (Loosely translated: I accept that you are Shivaji. You win! I don't have anything more to say!)
To put it simply, History was His story, Shivaji's story, full-stop!

No wonder, we felt it was perfectly natural that the engineering college VJTI (Victoria Jublee Technical Institute) in Mumbai should be referred to as "Veer Jijamata Technical Institute", in memory of Shivaji's mother Jijabai. Also, the railway station VT (Victoria Terminus) required a new acronym CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus). The only downside was that just saying Shivaji as a destination to the taxiwala was not adequate anymore. He could take you anywhere from the Cricket pitches at Shivaji Park to the International Airport (again Chhatrapati Shivaji) or to the train terminus! One had to be really sure that he took you to the appropriate Shivaji.

The wheels of time spun away relentlessly and I lost touch with History and Shivaji.

A year ago, we had the opportunity to attend a spelling-bee competition with our daughter at Delhi. I was seated in the audience beside a hyper-active school boy. He was from Pune and in the fourth-grade. I could not resist a question. "What are you studying in History?" "Shivaji," pat came the answer. "Uttam! Uttam! Ati uttam!" I couldn't control myself. "And what are you learning about Shivaji ?" The spelling bee rounds were in progress and it would have been difficult for the child to give an elaborate answer. But he did. The boy held his palms out as a tiger would its clawed paws. Next, he made a little gesture as if he was ripping something apart.
That mudra said it all - Shivaji's famous encounter with Afzal Khan, a David versus Goliath episode, where Shivaji deftly used tiger claws to slay the opponent with his bare hands. Through this simple non-verbal communication, the boy and I connected! History was still in safe hands! I told his grandmother that he was a bright child who would surely go places. The grandmother beamed with genuine pride!

P.S: Note on pronunciation: Kondeo should not be pronounced as "Kon-duo", but as "Kon-dev". In Maharashtra, the "V" sound is closer to the "W" so that the word "dev" would end with the lips pouted (as in W) rather than biting ones lips (as in V) . The letter "O" is used in "deo" (instead of dev) to account for a sound which thus has overtones of  "V,W and O". The reader may want to pay attention to this detail though I'm sure I've confused him enough!

Madness at Chakrata - part 3

The army personnel gave us a stare which could have bored holes right through us- "You don't mean there are two other fellows who are presently stranded in this weather ? How can you guys be so irresponsible and foolish ? Madness! We need to send a search party but that just cannot be done in this weather. It will have to wait for tomorrow morning. Period!" We tried our best to plead with him to at least make an attempt; the next morning could be too late. Some effort was made, but came a cropper.

We lay down in our shack, in the make-shift beds and spent one of the longest and most difficult nights. Sleep was of course out of question. We were seized with guilt that we had simply committed too many mistakes in this trip and had landed in a big soup as a result.

We had started off on the wrong foot. We had handed over letters of parental consent to the Himalayan Explorer's Club that the club would not be held responsible in case of any eventuality to the "wards". The letters were of course hand crafted by us. Parents were too far away and it did not appear necessary to consult them. We had already visited Tiger Falls the previous day, the main attraction at Chakrata. We were yet to recover from the few bruises that we sustained during that trek. It was completely unnecessary to try to up the ante by embarking on the current one. In retrospect, it looked plain stupid to have gone in search of a solitary cottage in the wilderness, based on hearsay, and with no maps to navigate us. The local villager's judgement should have been trusted and we should not have ventured when the weather was suspect. The luggage was divided in such a way that all the food items were with the three of us, while BAK and Anand carried just a bottle of ketchup between them. Bad planning, bad clothes, bad shoes, no torch....too many gaping holes. At least, we need not have parted company. That seemed the worst offence.

By now, it was raining heavily outside and the shack resounded with the clatter of rain on the tin roof. The wind toyed with the sides of the shack which looked as if it would give way any minute.
"BAK and Anand need not have acted funny. Especially when we were running late, what was the point in taking rest ? Sometimes, Anand is so reckless and impulsive. It's difficult to rein him in!", we defended ourselves. We had known Anand and BAK, their families, for well over three years. We gave each other company not just in the hostel wing, but even over a few trips to Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and other places in Uttarakhand.

The hours went by painfully. We hoped someone familiar would knock the door and end the nightmare. No one did. Sometimes, we peered through the door and gazed at the landscape. The possibilities were as frightening as the weather. Do we go back to Roorkee tomorrow morning or hang around here for some more time ? How do we break the news to others ? Could there be a remote possibility that the duo had missed the army camp altogether and had gone back to Chakrata for the night ? Questions were many, but answers few.

Day break and a light drizzle. It looked as if the best course of action would be to get to Chakrata. We reached the main road of the town from where buses took one to Dehra and beyond. We waited.

Two figures emerged out of the haze and walked towards us. The events over the last couple of days blurred the boundary between dream and reality. We had to be sure that this was for real. It was.
We quietly boarded the bus and took our seats. There was little to be said. Chakrata left a bad taste. We had had enough of the mountains and longed to get back to a life more normal, more routine.

We avoided the topic over lunch and dinner tables with Anand and BAK. At times, we learnt that they had in fact reached the cottage and spent the night there with ketchup for dinner! Others told us that bears had pounded their door and kept them awake. From other versions, we heard that they had seen huge footprints of the Yeti when they emerged from the cottage the following morning! We were sure that they had come down to Chakrata for the night. Anyway, it was all completely irrelevant.

Anand has a way with words. At the end of our four years at Roorkee, he wrote a poem covering every major incident that we were a part of, in my autograph book. About Chakrata, he recollected our reaction when he and BAK walked towards us and I quote: "When the dead came back alive, tears flow."

P.S. It's not as if we stopped making mistakes after this trip. We continued to make more of them in subsequent trips! Hence, the reader can stay interested to catch up with another story, another day!

Madness at Chakrata - part 2

At about this time, we discerned what looked like an isolated cottage, down in
the valley below, a good 200 meter snowy slope leading all the way to it. By all accounts, it should have been the fairy tale cottage that we intended to reach. Barely visible, it had a sloping roof covered with snow and wooden, dark brown sides. Anand had a sudden reflex to get on his haunches and slide all the way to the cottage. After a heated altercation,  he eventually dropped the idea since we were unsure whether it was all solid snow or whether a ravine or cliff lay concealed.

We took a collective decision to turn back. Unfortunately, we got split into two groups. Memory fails me as to what exactly led to this- BAK and Anand wanted to rest on one of the rocks, take a breather, tie their shoe laces or some such trivial reason. The other three were impatient to get back to civilization as quickly as possible. Altitude affects thinking. We left Anand and BAK on that rock and proceeded. I still recall BAK, his grey jacket and the rock when we parted ways.

No cell phones then. We had to rely on sounding a whistle at every bend and have BAK and Anand respond to it so that we knew they were following at a distance. The protocol worked quite well over a few bends, but was error prone. Sometimes, we sounded the whistle and the response was late. We attributed it to BAK and Anand acting funny and simply went ahead with the assumption that the other two were in tow.

The snow still came down lightly. Though the sky was grey, it was evident that the sun was now behind the mountains and it was getting darker by the minute. How puny we really are, stacked up against the expanse of nature!
Pin-drop silence except for our footfalls and the sound of heavy breathing. To top it, we had no torches to navigate through the darkness.  It may look comical now to have a group of full-grown college students reciting loudly whatever prayers that they knew, but desperate situations call for extreme, unusual measures. Some of us pledged to walk the Seven Hills should He extricate us from this crisis!
The Lord of Tirupati did respond to our plea!  We spotted a few lights at a distance, on the mountain slope. Human settlement at last! Quite impossible to convey the emotion at that moment. We walked in the general direction of the lights.

It was pitch dark by the time we made it to the army camp. Wet shoes, bruised sore feet, hungry, and worn out mentally and physically- we were in tatters! Army folks were bewildered why some of us were loitering in this inhospitable neighbourhood and in such bad weather. We were unnerved by the tone of their questioning, punctuating their sentences with choice expletives. They gave us a small shack to stay and a bowl of hot noodles. That's when we broke the news that we had two more friends missing. Where were Anand and BAK ?

- to be continued

Madness at Chakrata - part 1

There are times when the most level-headed of us (didn't exactly say that I am one of them) take decisions bordering on pure insanity. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time can explain this discrepancy partly, the remainder of which has to be attributed to the quirk of the human mind. It appears as if putting many minds together can help to overcome a momentary lapse of reason on an individual's part. That's where we blunder as this episode illustrates. It was collective craziness.

This story goes back by a decade and a half.. infact more. I have to sift through these mental records which are of course stored in black and white; dust them and present them in colour for a different audience.
We were a group of five, (Anand, BAK, Sheru, Vijay and I) who landed up at the small hill-town called Chakrata in Uttarakhand. Chakrata is nestled amongst the Himalayan peaks. It boasts of a Botanical laboratory and little else. There was one tiny street with shops on either side and a few ramshackle huts hanging precariously on the mountain slope.

Our objective was simple but strange. There was a belief that beyond Chakrata, a trail took one to a cottage which was completely uninhabited. It was left open for travellers of our ilk who could rest the night there. As per this version, the cottage was stocked with firewood to keep the cold away and basic provisions as well- a picture straight out of a Grimm's Fairy Tale. Only Goldilock's three bears were missing. Not really!

There was a slight drizzle as we made our way through the shops and hit the trail. One of the villagers was vocal that it was not a good day to make this trip since the weather can turn ugly rather quickly in these parts. His warning was forgotten in the bit of humour that he indulged in next- should we encounter a bear, which is not uncommon, we should remove our jacket and hand it over. While it tries to make some sense of the jacket, probably, checking which way it should be worn, we would have time to run for our lives!

Like most mountain trails, it was gentle in the beginning. As we trudged, we took in the views of the valley and indulged in the banter that keeps college students busy. There were few forks or deviations in the trail as it gained in ascent and we appeared on track. It was about three in the afternoon when we felt the first few snowflakes on our jackets. Snow has a magic of its own- it transforms the landscape.
Soon, the trail had a bit of snow as well and some more... and very soon we were caught in a big, bad snow storm. We were ill-equipped to deal with this weather- our shoes were ordinary and jackets flimsy.

In an hour, the snow was close to the knees and it was getting difficult to walk. For a comparison, it was like ploughing through sand at the beach. Breathing was heavy and the altitude made the head cloudy as well. We took turns to lead the pack- to create the footmarks which would be used by the rest to plant their feet, so that their effort would be minimal.
We did contemplate turning back, but for some reason, it appeared squeamish. We just had to reach our destination. It was only when the snow got to our thighs that we realized that something was terribly wrong. We had somehow drifted well away from the trail. Trees, shrubs, stones, the path- everything was covered in a full cloak of white. Visibility was poor and the snow came down thick and fast.
May be, we could go back to the fork where we bungled. How far was that point from where we were ? Backtracking was not trivial since our footprints had got erased with fresh snow. We were lost in completely unchartered territory.....

- to be continued.