by Ruskin Bond
'Dwivediji, we have a machining job that needs to be done right away. Could you do it in your workshop at the gate?' Virendra politely inquired.
'Why not?' Dwivedi answered. 'If you just order, it will be done.'
The man was a bit of an eccentric. Often he had stopped Virendra on his way, told his long story of continued misfortunes, bragged about his superior workmanship, and sought extra-time work to be done at his private workshop at the gate. But Virendra, although he sympathised with him, had doubts about his precision machining abilities; he never gave him any job. But today he was direly at the receiving end.
'Do you have a milling machine?' Virendra asked.
'No. But where do you need milling work?'
'Here. Have a look at the drawing.'
Virendra gave him the drawing. Dwivedi examined it. 'It is not essential to have milling work here,' Dwivedi said. 'I will file it in a way that you won't be able to tell the difference. What tolerance?'
'Plus minus five-thousandths of an inch.
'No problem.'
Virendra knew though there were plenty of problems. 'How much would you charge?' Virendra asked.
'Do you have the material?' Dwivedi inquired.
'How much would it be if you gave the material?' Virendra counterquestioned.
Dwivedi thought for a while. Then he said, 'Machining charges would be seventy-five rupees. I have a stainless steel plate from which I will cut the parts out. Give me one hundred rupees for that. Stainless steel is very expensive these days.'
That was high. Yet, Virendra said, 'All right. I want it by three o'clock. My student Varma will be with you all along. Get started as soon as you can.' Then he turned to Varma and said, 'Go to the hostel, get whatever food is available, and then go to Dwivedi's workshop and be with him until the parts are completed. When done, take them straight to Dr Brennan. I will go a different way. Now make a second sketch of the drawing and give it to Dwivedi.'
Varma made a sketch of the drawing, gave it to Dwivedi and left. Dwivedi stretched his palm and gave Virendra a salute with it and said, 'Doctor saab, you will have no complaint about the work. Just wait and see.'
'Sure,' Virendra said, paid him the money and then walked back to the group at the milling machine. He asked the same man he spoke to a while ago, 'Do you know a place in town where they can do a milling job?'
'There is hardly a place in town which can do precision milling jobs. Mostly they use shapers, which have little precision, particularly of the degree you want,' the man answered. Then he added. 'There is one place though, where there is a reasonably good milling machine, but I cannot be sure whether they would do your job at such short notice. Do you know where Kalpi road is?'
'Yes.'
'If you go along that road, opposite the temple there is a lane. In that lane if you go about fifty yards you will find the workshop – I think the name of the workshop is A1 Workshop. You could try there.' The man gave Virendra the direction for the shop.
'Is there any other shop?' Virendra asked.
'No. I don't think there is any other place in the city with such facilities. And I know the city fairly well,' the man claimed.
Virendra had almost decided that he would make an attempt at this place. But what a task! He thanked the man profusely, left the workshop, and entered the fiery stretch of walk back to the laboratory.
The first thought that came to Virendra's mind when he entered the coolness of the laboratory was why bother about the machining job, why not leave everything to destiny. Mukul was there waiting; he told Virendra that Jadav had already left with a half-day leave, so nothing could be done there. After a few minutes Virendra's resolve returned. He said to Brennan, 'It does not seem to be possible to get the machining done here at the university. The workshop facilities in the city are poor. However, I am making a trip to the city to see whether anything is possible. I should be back by three-thirty.'
'All right,' Brennan responded. 'In the meantime I shall check whether there is any problem in the vacuum line of the sample exposure side. I hope we make some progress.'
Virendra checked whether the drawing was in his pocket. It was. He then checked his wallet; he found that he did not have much money with him. That meant he would have to go home even if briefly. He asked Sreekanth for his bicycle key, took it, and said, 'Parvati's son will bring the bike back to you. See you all later,' and left the laboratory.
Downstairs, he unlocked Sreekanth's bicycle, and took off. First he rode along the path under the catwalk, then with a left turn, out of it. The air was really hot, by then must be over a hundred and twenty; his body got heated up in just a few seconds. He rode past the main building, went past the computer centre, went through the main gate of the academic area, and then took a right turn on the main road.
This was no time to ride a bicycle. His entire body started burning, hot air blasting his cheeks, eyes, legs, and forearms; and he was inhaling not air but fire. He closed his eyes from time to time and kept pedalling. Finally he reached the crossing on the main road; by that time it was getting to be unbearable. Here he should have turned left, but he decided to pedal and go straight. He thought he would cut across the school compound using the shade under the mango trees. There were some people on the road, but not many. All cyclists had some kind of headgear; he had none. An orange-coloured city bus went past spewing out smoke through its exhaust. He went past the crossing, rode for about fifty yards, then got up on the sidewalk and entered the school compound through an opening on the wall, without getting down from the cycle.
He rode under the mango trees almost halfway through the school compound, and then was again under the open sun. The heat was on him with full fury. But it was only fifty yards or so to his house; it could be managed. He continued pedalling across the uneven ground full of fine stone chips. He finally came out of the compound and was almost at his house. He rode another few yards, turned left and was at his doorsteps.
He got off the bike, pulled the bike to the door, and rang the bell. Parvati opened the door. She was a bit surprised to see Virendra return somewhat early for his lunch and that too on someone else's bicycle. As he entered, he found that in the large inner room Parvati had already arranged plates and bowls for his lunch. Virendra told Parvati that he was going to town, and was not going to have lunch at home. He walked to his reading table, opened the desk drawer, took some money, and put it into his wallet. He asked Parvati for a glass of water. As Parvati went to the kitchen to get water he switched on the ceiling fan in the living room and stood under it. His body was radiating heat. For a second he did not feel like going out again, and definitely not to the city. But on second thoughts he realised that there was really no choice, he would have to go. Parvati returned with a glass of water. He drank it without stopping in the middle.
He turned to Parvati, returned the glass, and reminded her to send the sandwich lunch to the laboratory on time. Then he remained standing motionless under the fan for more than a minute. After that he walked slowly to the main door, went out through it and paused for a moment just outside the door. Then he looked up at the sky, lowered his head, walked down a couple of steps to reach the road level, left the shade behind with a deliberate step forward, and walked out into the blazing sun.
FOUR
IT WAS A LONG WALK TO THE GATE. THE HEAT WAS scorching and unbearable; Virendra had the sensation of his face burning as soon as he came out of the side path and turned into the main road towards the gate. The head, the forearms, the feet also became very hot; the effect of the sweltering heat on the brain was to induce some kind of torpor. Virendra walked along with that feeling. He was beyond the point of changing his mind and unable to surrender to his physical needs. He went on because he had to.
The road was practically empty of traffic. Usually there were some rickshaws which ran between the gate and the staff quarters ferrying residents, but even they could not be seen in the intense heat. If one were available Virendra could hav
e avoided the long oppressive walk.
Virendra chose to walk along the right pavement considering that there were a few more trees to offer shade than on the other side. Over the years quite a few trees had died on the other side, but no one had bothered to replace them. As if to provide a contrast, at about halfway point of his walk he saw one golmohur tree doing robustly, the tree in flaming scarlet flowers, the only one on the entire road; it stood like a symbolic note of the fire raging in the environment. As he walked, at times he would enter the shade of a tree and he would feel a little cool, but as soon as he crossed it he was right under the open sun again. There was no real respite and he was not looking for any either. His mind was mostly preoccupied with only one thought: he had to exert his utmost to see that the job got done. He was uncertain about the chance of success; except the tenacity to go all the way to the end, nothing else was he sure of.
No rickshaw crossed him during his more than two hundred yards of walk to the gate. He crossed a park to the right whose grass had dried up in the summer heat, several two-storey houses to the left whose doors and windows were tightly shut, and then finally a barren patch of low-lying land. When he reached the gate his body had become intensely hot, all the exposed parts had a burning sensation, and he was so uncomfortable that his natural inclination was to go back. Instead he stopped under a shade at the gate, looked towards the opposite side of the main road where three-wheelers were sometimes parked shuttling people to the city. Fortunately there was one that was waiting. Virendra looked at both sides of the road for any incoming traffic, then crossed the road doubling up his walk.
Those three-wheelers were all that were available if one was not taking a university bus to the city. There used to be a time when even this luxury was not available. Since usually there were no university buses at that time of the day, and further Virendra did not know their exact timings, those three-wheelers – commonly known as tempos, were the only alternative. These were sort of longish motorised buggies used as passenger carriers. The front wheel was just in front of the driver, and behind the driver six people could sit – three each on two rows facing each other. The vehicle had a canvas hood fastened from the top of the windshield; and the open space at the sides acted as ways to get in and out.
What the owners and drivers did with such contraptions, most of which had become jalopies, defied imagination. The municipal rule was that it was to sit six passengers at most, but except once in a very rare while when the city police became particularly active, the rule was never obeyed. They used to pack at least four each on the rear and the middle rows with the fourth person's bottom barely touching the seat, and there would be three including the driver on the front seat. And it was not rare that there would be as many as four on the front seat with half of the driver's body hanging outside the vehicle by barely keeping the arms and the legs and a fragment of his seat inside. But those tempos which were used for somewhat longer trips to nearby small towns constituted an even more interesting sight.
Besides the packing of humans, which could go anywhere from ten to fifteen—Virendra once actually counted fifteen—the vehicles would carry various kinds of luggage that had to hang around it for lack of space inside. The two most common such items were bicycles and large milk containers. Probably the most curious part of the entire affair was that not only the drivers—who were always interested in making more money with fewer trips—but the passengers also accepted it very coolly.
And these were the most dangerous vehicles to be on. Most of those who drove the tempos did not have valid driver's licences. Half of them would be teenagers from low-income families, who probably never went to school or gave up very early, and were just barely making a living. The speeds at which they drove the vehicles were frightening, sometimes forty or fifty miles an hour, which under the given road conditions a regular four-wheeled car would refuse to take. One often heard of major accidents involving these vehicles, sometimes killing people. Virendra had two accidents; and both were narrow escapes from death.
The first one was about fourteen years ago when he was returning to the university from a trip to the city, and it happened very close to the university gate. There were very few passengers on the tempo. The driver had suddenly applied the brakes and as a result of an imbalance the vehicle tipped to one side. Virendra's body was thrown out on the road and scraped the hard surface for about twenty yards – it was a miracle that during that period there were no cars and trucks at that point on the highway. It was fortunate that all of it went over his torso, his head was not hurt. He was carrying a gift of toy household items for his daughter; they scattered all over on the road. He managed to get up with great strain and limped to other people's rescue. One of the driver's legs was almost inextricably caught between the pedals and the metal shafts going to the engine, and it was bleeding profusely. Virendra too was bleeding, though much less, from the abrasion he suffered from being dragged along the road. With that blood all over the body when he somehow reached home, his wife at first could not understand what had happened—it was the time of Holi—she thought someone had sprinkled red colour on him. After that accident Virendra was in a state of shock for quite some time; for months he could not sit in a tempo with a view of the road in front.
The second one, which took place a couple of years ago, was worse. This was on the way to city, and although it was a new vehicle, structurally it was an inferior version of the older tempos. It had a higher body and smaller wheels – an intrinsically inferior design. Somewhere midway between the university and the city, the tempo had to get off the road and on to the shoulder which was inches below the road level. When the driver decided to return, he steered right but the wheel refused because of the difference in the road level. The driver insisted and turned the steering further, the wheel still could not negotiate. The speed was very high – as a result the vehicle toppled and rolled over a couple of times. Virendra was fully conscious about what was happening until the time of impact when he momentarily lost consciousness. When he came to senses, the passengers had been shaken up inside randomly, and the vehicle was resting on its side right on the road. It was again a miracle that there was no other traffic at that time. His first thought was how to get out before a truck or something hit the tin box, demolishing it. There was confusion and scrimmage inside; Virendra was feeling an intense pain in the head; but he somehow climbed up the body of the vehicle in which they were trapped and with difficulty jumped out. He hurt his right leg as he landed on the ground. By the time he limped out of the vehicle, a crowd had gathered around it. He pushed his way out of the gathering and looked towards the road on both sides beyond the crowd. He was surprised to see a university bus on the way to the campus standing on the road. He was no longer in any physical shape to go to the city; with half-dizzy steps he walked to the bus, looked at the person sitting next to the door and requested him to open it. He got inside and found a seat; the passengers were curious and started asking him questions. Most of them had not witnessed the accident nor seen Virendra come out of the wreckage, so they did not know that Virendra just had a miraculous escape. Virendra simply said that he was all right. Soon after, the back of his head started swelling; by the time he returned home it had swollen a lot. The pain remained there for a few days and then subsided; he recovered slowly. But he decided not to be on a tempo again unless it was unavoidable. With two close calls he had concluded that his luck had run out. In his generally carefree attitude it was probably the first decision of caution. He had later thought about this resolution; he felt that it was a sign that he was finally maturing or just getting old.
In that hot midday sun with two other passengers he waited in the tempo for a good ten minutes. The driver, a dark young man wearing a dirty blue tee shirt and khaki trousers, was in no mood to start – he knew well that it was not a time to get a full tempoload of passengers; so despite Virendra's insistent urgings, he wanted to wait. When Virendra found that he was getting late he asked t
he driver if he would start right away if Virendra agreed to pay half the total fare he would have collected for a full load of passengers. The driver thought for a while, probably made a quick mental estimate whether it was a reasonable deal, then agreed. Even then to start the engine he made as much delay as he possibly could, then when the engine started he looked back again towards the university gate to double-check in case there were any last-minute passengers. When he saw none, he reluctantly started the engine and pressed the accelerator pedal. The tempo took off with a massive jerk.
Virendra had sat on the rear side looking to the front. His three other fellow passengers seemed to be from local villages. All of them had towellike cloths wrapped around their heads. Two of them were wearing dhotis and the third one wore pyjamas. As the tempo started Virendra felt that it would be a tense journey. Despite the incentive he offered to the driver, the driver invariably went on stopping and seeking additional passengers all along the way while Virendra wanted to reach the city as soon as possible.
The tempo went past the Rice Research Institute and reached the Palasnor railway station and stopped at the junction of two highways. From the left joined a road from the side of Sardana, a village on Ganga. Long before the university got established in its present location this was the major meeting and marketing place in this area, with the haat—the full village market—in session three days a week. The Palasnor haat still met the same number of days but its complexion had changed considerably as a result of the nature of demands of the university people. Every haat day in the afternoons one could see scores of university people here in diverse kinds of vehicles – cars, scooters, bicycles. Virendra had never come to the haat for buying goods for the household; Parvati was the one who took care of all such needs single-handedly. The driver waited for a couple of minutes, looked around and then started the tempo again. He slowed down again near the place where the haat actually met—this was a haat day and there were many people around—and he succeeded in picking up a passenger. On both sides of the highway near the haat there were heaps of produce – at the time wholesale transactions were going on. Virendra noticed large cartloads of watermelon—summer was the season for this fruit—a small compensation for the heat nature put out at this time. Most of those watermelons came from the riverbed of Ganga which dried up in summers. It was believed that the more the heat, the sweeter the melons.