My latest posts are on a very somber subject – about life during the COVID-19 related Pandemic and Lockdown – which is actually taking a toll on me as I am reliving those moments while reminiscing and writing. For the sake of sanity, I just thought of digressing a little and talk about my experience almost a decade earlier. If anybody had then told what was going to befall on us in the form of Corona, we might have taken that as a crude joke and laughed a little. More pressing need of those times was commuting to and fro office. I was posted in NOIDA which is in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and resided in Delhi. Under the then Administrative regime, offices and commercial hubs were getting decentralized. Many shifted to NOIDA and Gurgaon (in the State of Haryana). Crossing borders was the call of the day. But with the decentralization, development of means of transport did not coincide. The UP Administration was imposing kind of entry tax on vehicles at the borders which gradually stopped the Chartered Buses by which most of the office goers commuted to and fro. The proposal to connect the States through Metro was only on papers. The only option was to drive up and down by car which was pretty expensive. Car pools and later Pool Vans became the order of the day.
We (three of us) pooled in with one of my senior colleagues who was eccentric by nature to say the least and a chaotic driver. Often he sat late in office pretending to be busy (without work) which delayed our return home. We could not afford to annoy him as we desperately depended on his car (not him, mind you). This arrangement, though not very convenient, continued for more than a year, till I shifted to a van pool and that sorted a number of problems. However, that one year was bothersome to say the least. The gentleman is no more so I can safely record that once he had the audacity to propose me for a ride to Connaught Place (CP) with him. I, obviously, refused politely but firmly. I could not make out whether he was upset or angry on account of my refusal but he never came up with any odd proposals thereafter. I felt awkward for quite sometime in his company as I did not know how to place him after this unexpected turn of event. He was my neighbour. He was my colleague. More importantly, his car was the only mode of transport I had for commuting to office and back.
It was also the time when I had started writing short stories. The ideas, crazy enough, came from the varied experiences I had to face in me-life including the aforementioned one. This post will be a little longish as I wish to recount the anecdotal story. I had earlier published it in my other blog on blogspot.com (link inserted). I call it a spooklet though I don’t know whether there is any word like that in English language but the coinage sounds impressive and implies to be a humorous combination of a spooky tale and an account based on facts. But more intriguing to me now is what prompted me to write such a story then … Was I trying to get back at my colleague in this manner?
Read on and let me know what you all think about it…(I have deliberately used only first initials of the names to maintain anonymity of the characters)
The Story :
I do not know why Mr. R always takes the wrong turn and loses his way at Gyaraah Murthy. It’s late and the roads are almost empty except a few cars zooming past. Not a single passer-by whom we can ask the route or the right direction.
Its mid-December. Bitterly cold. Sitting late in the office is not my choice-work-culture but Mr. R, in whose car we all pool in, leaves us with no other choice as he loves to pretend hard work after office hours. Alternate transport is next to nil. Result – stuck up at Gyaraah Murthy, hungry, angry and late.
K sleeps peacefully. It’s cozy inside the car. The windows are pulled up. We are five of us in a Maruti 800 including Mr. R who myopically scans the desolate landscape and suddenly asks “Isko Gyaraah Murthy kyon kahate hain?” (“Why do they call it Gyaraah Murthy”)
What difference does it make Mr. R whether it is Gyaraah Murthy or Teen Murthy once you have lost your way!!! I curse the Government silently and its decision to decentralize the commercial and office areas of the city without sufficient transport network connecting to the residential suburbs.
Mr. R rotates the steering wheel indecisively. A, his secretary, tries to guide him to the right direction. A futile exercise as he is as knowledgeable as our driver is. I, who is famous for losing my way home, do not want to enlighten Mr. R with my superior road sense.
A few more minutes pass by in indecision. Mr. R takes a turn. We move on in the darkness knowing not whether it is the right way. I try to lighten the atmosphere with an “amusing anecdote”.
Another desolate, winter night. A long, winding stretch of dark road. An autowallah (auto driver) is returning home when he is stopped by a beautiful girl dressed in bridal attire. She flaunts a cascade of long mane rippling down to her waist and a beatific smile to compliment her breath taking looks. She requests the auto driver to drop her home a short distance away as her car has suddenly broken down and the thoughtful driver has toed the vehicle away to the Workshop leaving her waiting in the darkness. She is scared and pleads help. The driver takes pity and agrees to drop her.
Although it’s a short run, the journey seems interminably long and the end of the road progressively distant. It is odd the way the young girl is left alone on the dark, discarded road and the driver disappearing with the car before finding her a suitable transport. The drivers, nowadays, are irresponsible and do not have any sense of propriety, muses the autowallah.
It is also surprising the way the girl is dressed. Her adornments twinkle in the dark interiors of the auto. Is she running away from her home? Or planning to elope with somebody who has failed to turn up at the last moment? Disheartened the girl has decided to return home to her parents….or perhaps……something else…..something more ordinary, mundane, least exciting. The autowallah races on as does his mind. Whatever the reasons may be he feels sorry for her. He has a daughter too. A young girl of her age. The girl seems upset and perhaps uneasy too. There is a kind of restrained remorse about her. As though she is in mourning.
The auto-driver tries to pick up a conversation with her to alleviate her uneasiness. But the girl seems reluctant to talk and replies only in monosyllables. The driver still carries on. A kind of soliloquy. At least the journey will come to an end faster if a dialogue, nay a monologue, is struck, so thinks the autowallah.
He talks of the latest price hike…. the rising price of vegetables…. the survival of the poor is at stake…. the Government is doing nothing……the politicians are just making money and filling up their pockets…..and then the disparities……look at the way people squander money!!!!!!!!!…….the film stars, the politicians……the rich and the famous…………and of course these serials………….spoiling the children……he has bought a new TV on installments……but now he feels it’s a mistake……the children only want to watch serials and refuse to study…..and what serials, mem’saab…..the other night they show a girl stopping a car in the dead of the night…she beguiles the driver to give her a lift…………..and takes him away to a jungle and suddenly vanishes into thin air………….but before the disappearing act as she picks up her long dress to disembark from the vehicle her feet are visible ………………”woh chudail this uske paaon ulte the!………(she was a witch with upturned feet!)”
At this juncture of this one-sided conversation, the young girl suddenly puts forward her feet. and asks “jaise mere hain?(like mine?”………………………The auto takes a sudden wild turn, lurches forward and almost does a vault on its rear wheels and then blank…..nothingness……… Regaining consciousness the driver finds himself at the ridge in the other end of the city, lying spreadeagled on the rugged terrain hidden by a cluster of thorny bush, his uniform torn and his wallet gone; his auto lies at a distance upturned, the front wheel of the three wheeler almost stuck into a scraggy tree.
Mr. R, who has been listening to the story intently, is unusually quiet. He turns a bend and almost rams into a lone figure standing in the middle of the road. He jams on the brakes. A girl frantically gesturing for a lift. Her long hair sways in serpentine coils against the backdrop of the night sky inadequately lit by the distant stars. Her face is almost invisible in the half light. Mr. R swears under his breath and swerves the car to the left with a jerk. A fraction of a second. The girl is missed by an inch of a space. Narrow escape!! K jolts up with a start and asks where we are. We fill her in. She responds quickly and points the right direction. Mr. R takes a screeching U turn and accelerates. We speed up at last homeward.
Post Script: Mr. R. is avoiding Gyaraah Murthy since then and we are leaving office an hour early now.
You will also read this story on pratilipi.com
Trivia :
Gyaraah Murthy – “The massive, glistening black sculpture depicting Gandhi’s iconic Dandi March of 1931 stands proudly in the heart of the city, easily visible on the Sardar Patel Marg, near Willingdon Crescent. This poetic sculpture by veteran artist and sculptor Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury shows ten Indian people following Gandhi on his path-breaking Civil Disobedience protest, hence the name – ‘Gyaraah Murthy”
Teen Murthy – “Teen Murti House; formerly known as Flagstaff House is the former residence in New Delhi of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He stayed there for 16 years until his death on 27 May 1964. It was designed by Robert Tor Russell, the British architect.
The house is named after the Teen Murti (literally “three statues”). The memorial comprises life-size statues of three soldiers, and was built in 1922 in the memory of the Indian regiments who participated in World War I with the British 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade in Haifa, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.”
