by Ruskin Bond
There was little hope of getting any passengers for the next four or five miles. The driver pushed the accelerator pedal fully down; the tempo picked up speed of about forty miles per hour like a car. Hot air started blowing into the vehicle fiercely and on Virendra's face. He squinted his eyes to lessen the effect and took it as a hazard of the job. Keeping the railway tracks to the right the tempo sped past a large area of an experimental research farm on pulses, to the left it crossed a Hanuman temple which had been standing there for several decades, and then some open area. This was followed by areas where a lot of building construction work was going on—a large number of small identical houses—probably by some government agency. There was a cinema hall under construction to the right – a promise of entertainment for the growing population. Beyond this patch the roadside then started having shops, and these were the first indication of the congestion of the city that lay ahead. Twenty years ago none of these places was there.
From that place up to the edge of the city, where there stood another suburban railway station, both sides of the highway were packed with shops of all kinds. Shops for building material, for repair of motor vehicles, for electrical fittings, tea stalls, just about everything imaginable. Near the railway station the shops were more on radio and television equipment, roadside eating places, and of course the paan and cigarette shops. The road there was perpetually congested by throngs of tempos for various suburban directions soliciting passengers, and trucks stopping for paying road tax.
In the midday heat the activity had slowed down. The tempo driver stopped for a couple of minutes at the road junction near the railway station and then entered the city proper which Virendra often considered the real life. Because of the buildings around, the blast of hot air abated, and also because one could not any longer drive at very high speed. The area next to the station had a sprawling hospital complex run by the state government. The medical competence was not bad, in fact there were some outstanding doctors; but the facilities were abominable. During the past two decades Virendra had a number of occasions to go to these hospitals mostly to visit patients from the university community admitted for emergency attention. The medical capability of the university health centre was not too good; whenever a case looked a little difficult the doctors promptly despatched the patient to the city hospital. Partly they felt inadequate to handle the job, but the common opinion was, they wished to avoid responsibility.
The number of beds in the city government hospital was quite large but the rooms were designed in a way that they looked dark and dingy even during daytime. The various blocks were connected by long corridors around which relatives of patients, who came from villages, often camped for days and sometimes weeks. Besides stray humans, there were stray dogs, some severely diseased, which wandered around. Seeing some of that one would not have believed that it was a hospital. Incredible as it would sound, the dogs were known to enter patients' rooms in search of food at times. There would be a brief commotion, but mostly it was accepted as a part of the scene. The doctors came and went, the students somehow got trained, the patients ended up one way or the other; the situation remained unchanged.
The tempo was now passing the area of twin lakes—locally known as pearl lakes—two artificial lakes which were dug at one time by the municipal administration. Next to the lakes stood the huge municipal building. Whenever Virendra saw that building he invariably remembered the experience he once had in its health department when he came to get an inoculation certificate authenticated. Along the staircase and on the landings there were sand-filled wooden containers to act as spittoons. Many people used them to spit out the red liquid formed when chewing betel-leaf preparations and the nearby walls were full of red splashes. But that was nothing compared to what he saw in the inoculation room. The person inoculating spat out nonchalantly inside the room which was meant to be hygienically clean. Going through many such experiences Virendra had often thought that probably nothing could help this country, or, nothing could destroy it either.
This was the main arterial road in the city; it wound its way from one end to the other. Further down the road was a patch where a less-privileged section of the community dwelt. Next to that to the right was the Idgaah; only the outer wall was visible from the road – the annual Id prayers were held on Idgaah grounds. Further down the road was the place known as Bakrmandi. To the left was a Muslim cemetery area through which a large open drain flowed and kept the atmosphere around stinking day and night all round the year. To the right was a slaughterhouse area for sheep and lamb. It was often a poignant sight with hundreds of animals lined up before a one-storey building of no return. At one time there used to be a slaughterhouse nearby for larger animals – now it was no longer there. A little ahead to the left was a Christian cemetery area and to the right another Muslim cemetery.
The road here took a turn to the left and passed between the two cemeteries, then turned right, and after a road junction finally settled down to a straight wide avenue that ran for a stretch of a couple of miles. This was a major thoroughfare. To the left were some textile mills from the past – beyond that lay a major shopping area where Virendra intended to get down to take a rickshaw along the street at right to reach his destination.
There were so many of the three-wheeled foot-pedalled rickshaws in the city that at times nothing else would be visible. Virendra once had asked a rickshaw puller about their exact number in the city. Virendra had guessed a number around ten thousand; the actual number was fifty. The bus service in the city was poor; it also did not have any regular taxi service, so the rickshaws thrived along with the bicycles. During heavy traffic hours the usual scene was streaming rickshaws on both sides of the street with a small mix of scooters, bicycles, and occasional cars and buses. But the rickshaws were the best mode of transport in the city, except in those by-lanes which were too narrow even for a rickshaw. But an entire humanity survived there.
Virendra got off the tempo at the market junction, paid the driver, crossed the street, and walked towards the street going to the right. This area was also part of the central market; this immediate area sold poultry and a little ahead was the fruit market. He walked past this part and reached a street crossing. He went to the side where a string of cycle rickshaws were waiting for hire. He settled the fare with one of them and got in. The rickshaw had to go towards the main railway station, and somewhere Virendra would have to get off; he was not very sure exactly where. This very wide street had quite a character of its own, and it was on this one that Virendra often thought of the futility of his and his colleagues' involvement in science in this university – it seemed so pointless against the life on the street.
The total stretch of the street would be about a couple of miles long, ending at the railway station, easily the widest one in the city to be called an avenue. It had very distinct characteristics; the first part was through a predominantly Muslim community and the other half through a mostly Hindu area. Both were, however, populated by low-income people. This was apparent from the old and dilapidated houses that lined the street all along, the way the people dressed, and the nature of the shops. There was a low traffic barrier that divided the up and down traffic. On either side one always saw stray cattle roaming around or more commonly just sitting as islands on the street. How the rickshaw pullers managed to move speedily through the narrow passages between such sitting animals, and how the animals trusted the entire traffic not running them over were deep mysteries.
In this part a number of mosques lined both sides of the street – none very imposing in appearance, but with active loudspeakers on the minarets the general atmosphere was such that it was obvious that they were both integral and active parts of the community. There were not many shops. As the street started, to the left there were a series of shops making quilts and cotton mattresses. They often hung their wares outside their shops, and sometimes spread them on the open street to do hand-stitching. For most of the stretch there were
facades of very old and poorly maintained houses, some seemed on the verge of collapse but still full of inhabitants. There were glimpses of lanes that went into interiors about which Virendra had no idea. The street was spotted with signboards of small eateries; some of them did not appear to have much establishment either. Activities usually began in the evening when one would see huge pots containing biriyani being sold and people sitting around on makeshift stools or chairs. Further down the street to the right was a lane that Virendra knew led to one of the country's chief leather markets.
The city had a major market for animal hides and there were several tanneries. Besides textiles this was the other commodity the city depended on at one time for its commerce – the situation was changing. For the same reason, leather goods were also one of the major products. Virendra had no idea how it became a centre of this commodity, but it did. He knew little more except that once in a while at nights while waiting for the university bus in the city he witnessed carts heaped with raw buffalo hides being pulled by frothing buffaloes to some seemingly well-known destinations. This was part of the scene – buffalo muscles were as cheap as their hides. Virendra's rickshaw went through the entire stretch quickly. The speed was gained also by not having the rickshaw hood pulled over; no rickshaw puller liked to pull the hood up because the drag it caused required more energy to move the vehicle. Virendra did not particularly mind, but that meant taking all the sun on his head.
At the end of this stretch there was an intersection where another major but narrow street crossed it. There was a small circular area which acted as a traffic island; the rickshaw went around a semicircle and entered the other stretch – at that hour there was no traffic police to stop or direct the traffic. When the rickshaw was crossing the intersection Virendra looked to both right and left. To the right was a market for industrial goods and tools, the street to the left went to join the same street which originally Virendra was on when on the tempo. Virendra could have also come along this way alternatively in this venture, but the road he took was considerably shorter. Whenever Virendra passed this intersection his memory invariably took him back to a time thirty years ago.
He was still a university student at that time; they had come on an academic excursion of the northern part of the country; they were cutting across this city and had a night halt here near the railway station. Virendra did not any longer remember the details, but there was a lot of dust; the evening atmosphere was thick with it. With some of the landmarks that stuck in memory he could reconstruct that they had come to the main market area at the centre of the city—there were fewer shops at that time—but it was dust all over. They then came to this intersection and went to the left side road to a hotel for their evening meal. The hotel dining arrangement was on a terrace one floor above the street level and one could have a good view of the entire area. There were a number of two-storey houses opposite their hotel and each one had a staircase that rose from the street and went to the upper floor. Strangely, in all those houses, right where the steps ended gaudily dressed women were standing. At first with the traffic and pandemonium on the road their significance was not clear; eventually it became clear that they were part of a very ancient institution. Virendra remembered that seeing such a sight publicly for the first time he and his friends were amazed and they chuckled, and while leaving the scene absorbed as much as they could. The details were no longer distinct to him, but the entire experience was so appalling that he resolved in his mind not to return to this city ever. He often felt amused about how little one knew about the future. The women were no longer visible in the old way – Virendra supposed that they had receded to the interior. Virendra had sometime heard about a lane in that locality called the lane of flower-selling girls – perhaps there. They never disappear, they only change their address.
The rickshaw crossed the intersection and entered the coolie bazaar area. Every morning artisans and porters of every description, identifiable by the tools they carried, assembled here in search of the day's job totally uncertain whether they would get anything or not. Some came in groups. As the day progressed, those who found something went to work, those who could not find anything, slowly melted away. But a small fraction was visible all day long. Some even slept there at nights.
Right opposite to that on the left side were a few shops of band parties which advertised their wares by hanging brass horns and trumpets of various sizes in front of their shops and often through practice sessions right at the street side. Their main customers were marriage parties, where they participated in leading the bridegroom's procession to the bride's house. Practically all marriage celebrations engaged them, one or more depending on the affluence of the parties, and it was generally a pleasant experience although the quality of these street bands varied a lot. They usually had a leader who would be a trumpeter or a flautist, and the entire band played to his tune – mostly film songs. Associated with the band would often be a group of lamp bearers – an usual band consisted of a man carrying on his head a vertically mounted fluorescent tube lamp secured on a wooden box; wires then connected a series of such lamps to a cart carrying a diesel-operated power generator. The bridegroom's family walked along with the band or went in cars, while the bridegroom rode on the back of a horse decorated in the traditional way, the bridegroom with a flowerbedecked turban on but in a three-piece suit and tie, a strange combination, but that was the way it was. Since the weddings could take place only on certain auspicious dates, in marriage season it was not uncommon to see more than one such procession on the streets.
Further down the road to the left was a huge garbage dump, perpetually giving out a foul smell, but the entire locality seemed reconciled to it. There would be stray dogs in it looking for food, and sometimes swine and cattle. It was always partly encroaching on the street; some days the garbage heap would become so voluminous that it practically filled one entire side of the street. The traffic then on its own had to somehow find its way to the other side of the barrier causing endless problems to the traffic coming from the opposite side. Some passers-by found it necessary to stop breathing in or put something to cover their nose while crossing the area, while some had transcended the repulsion of the stench.
Further down the street was a temple that had also encroached substantially into the road, and beyond that a number of shops selling construction material like cement, sand – the place was perpetually dusty. Virendra recalled that according to the directions he was given, it was in the lane opposite this temple that the workshop he was searching for was located. As the rickshaw approached the temple, Virendra touched the back of the rickshaw puller to attract his attention, and then asked him to turn into the lane to the right. The man applied his handbrakes and manoeuvred the rickshaw to the right side near the barrier to prepare to turn right. He went a little distance further to find an opening in the barrier, took a right about turn into the reverse traffic and then moved to the left and turned into the narrow lane.
When even after the rickshaw went some distance Virendra could not see any signboard of the shop he was seeking, Virendra asked him to stop so that he could ask some local people. He got off the rickshaw, walked to a roadside tea shop—one of the best places to learn about a locality—and asked. The owner gave him the necessary direction: he had to go a little further and on the left the workshop could be found. Virendra returned to the rickshaw, relayed to the rickshaw puller the directions. It was another couple of minutes' ride – then they reached the place. To the left there was a clearing, and behind it was a garage-type shed; a dented and faded signboard announced the workshop name – the workshop which he hoped had some chance of getting his milling job done.
Virendra got off the rickshaw, paid off the rickshaw puller, and walked towards the garage. There was some sound of machines coming out including the drone of an endless belt moving, a loose strap making a periodic flapping sound. Virendra entered the garage area and looked inside. It was quite dark. In the dim light a
variety of small and large machines were visible—they were obviously very old but in some working condition—the machines had heavy coatings of oil and dirt accumulated over a long time. There was no bright lighting anywhere except at the working areas of some of the machines where oil and dirt-coated electric lamps burnt. Except for a couple of machines, there were workers at most of them. There were shapers but Virendra could not see any milling machine anywhere. He wondered for a minute about who to approach. On the left side he found an area partitioned off; the front part seemed to him a small office of some kind. There was a small window through which a person could be seen inside. Virendra decided to speak to him. He went towards the room and entered through a small door.
The makeshift room was very small with all kinds of junk filling it. At the centre of the room stood a cheap steel table which was painted a light-blue colour. On the other side there was a steel chair on which sat a dark middle-aged man with an unfriendly face. Virendra guessed that he would be the owner or manager. On this side there were two vacant chairs – presumably for the customers. The table was cluttered – with bills, drawings, and a few small machine parts. As Virendra entered, the man looked up inquiringly. Virendra thought that it was best to start with the credentials.