Truck de India!

by Rajat Ubhaykar

  We cross the road to enter the temple complex. It is an imposing white marble structure with a prominent shikhara, dedicated to Sanwalia Seth, a local swayambhu (self-created) form of Lord Krishna. The board outside reads in Devanagari:

  ‘Around 125 years ago, three idols were discovered from a well on this spot. One of the idols was immediately consecrated here in a small temple. In 1975, the small temple was replaced by this magnificent structure after conducting appropriate rituals with the sun God as witness.’

  When we step in, my eyes are greeted by beautiful jali work (latticework) and a dazzling interplay of marble and mirrors. It really is a magnificent temple. The idol of Sanwaliaji—literally, the dark one—is befittingly made of black granite, and draped in golden garments and jewellery. The ceilings are hand-painted with events from mythological stories, and the pradakshinapath (circumambulation path) is lined with the entire Hindu pantheon carved in monolithic marble. Dattatreya, Maha Vishnu, Shiva-Parvati: everyone finds a place here.

  Mahendra tells me this temple is frequented by many truckers to seek the blessings of Sanwaliaji, whom they consider their patron deity and protector. And sure enough, I spot many trucks crowding both sides of the road near the temple as we walk back to our truck.

  The worship of Krishna is widespread in this region, popularized by the Vaishnavite bhakti philosopher Vallabhacharya in the 15th century. The Gujars too claim a connection to Krishna. One of their legends state that both Nand Mihir, the foster-father of Krishna, and Radha, his lover, were Gujars. They call themselves Nandvanshis—from the lineage of Nand.

  However, the favoured God of the Gujars is not Krishna, but a folk deity named Devnarayan, whom they revere as an avatar of Vishnu. ‘We believe in all gods. But our very own god is Devnarayan,’ says Raju.

  Devnarayan is a real historical figure for Mahendra and Raju, born to a Gujar warrior in the 10th century AD. The truck’s dashboard has a large photo of him pasted on it. In it, Devnarayan is depicted as a martial figure riding a horse, sporting a glorious moustache, and flanked by a snake, dogs, and two armed attendants.

  The most remarkable aspect of the cult of Devnarayan, however, is its rich phad tradition—religious scroll paintings on cloth that are used as mobile canvases by bhopas (priests) to pictorially narrate epic stories of folk deities. Devnarayan is one of the most popular phads in Rajasthan. It is also by far the longest, its length almost comparable to that of the Ramayana. Its dimensions are stunning—five feet high and thirty feet long, comprising a total painted area of over 150 square feet, the living space of an average Mumbaikar.

  Mahendra keeps one eye on the road, listening to us while Raju tells me about the phad that is organized in their village twice a year. He gesticulates wildly.

  ‘There is so much excitement in the air. The entire village gathers around the temple. The phad vachan usually begins after sundown. The bhopa arrives along with his assistants, who unfurl the phad behind him. Soon, the musician who plays the jantar (a double-stringed instrument) joins him. His assistant holds out a lamp to illuminate the portion of the phad that is being narrated. And once the bhopa begins the story, it can go on for up to ten nights!’

  A professional bhopa is expected to memorize the epic of Devnarayan in its entirety, beginning with the story of Devnarayan’s ancestors, who lived in the Satya Yug; the exploits of Devnarayan in Kali Yug; and the origin myth of the Gujars as a community distinct from the Rajputs, through inter-marriage between a Rajput man and a Brahmin woman. Interestingly, the villain of the Devnarayan phad—the wicked Rana—is a Sisodia Rajput. It’s a revealing contrast from the tales of Sisodia righteousness and valour that course through the veins of Mewar.

  Scholars like Tanuja Kothiyal have noted that as Rajputs have increasingly turned to the hospitality sector, it is other castes like the Jats and Gujars who have contested the lowly status assigned to them by reconstructing martial pasts for themselves through these oral narratives, the only references to history they have.

  And these histories, invariably, are bound up with myth. Many Hindus continue to await the arrival of the Kalki Avatar to deliver them from the immoral world of the Kali Yug. For the Gujars, however, it’s almost as if Kalki has already arrived—in the form of Devnarayan, who graciously descended upon the earth to avenge the misdeeds of the evil Rana. Like the well-hewn protagonist of the blockbuster film Bahubali, Devnarayan is an exiled prince, born and raised in neighbouring Malwa, oblivious to his true lineage, who finally decides to go back to his homeland and vanquish the Rana. And when he’s done that, it is he who revives the dead, defeated Rana; magnanimously grants him the title of Sisodia and dispatches him to establish the city of Udaipur! It’s intriguing how one city can have so many narratives. Oh India, you truly are endlessly fascinating. If only I could live long enough to unpack all the stories you carry in your bosom.

  It’s been an hour since we set off from the Sanwaliaji Temple. I notice Mahendra is driving at a constant speed of 40–45 kms, even when he quickly lights a bidi. The speedometer hasn’t budged since we left. ‘It’s to save on diesel. The more you use the brake and accelerator, the less your mileage,’ says Mahendra. ‘Dheere dheere chaloge baar baar miloge, tez chaloge seedhe Haridwar miloge (If you go slow, we will meet again and again, if you over-speed we will meet directly in Haridwar).’ For the uninitiated, Haridwar is the gateway to heaven for Hindus.

  I can’t help but guffaw. Raju notes my amusement. ‘Arre aisi kahavatein to bahut hain hamare paas (We have many such proverbs),’ he says, and starts recounting them, as I struggle to note them all down in my notebook.

  ‘Amiron ki zindagi chalti hai biscuit aur cake se, driveron ki zindagi steering aur brake se (The lives of the rich run on biscuit and cake, drivers’ lives on steering and brake).’

  ‘Kichad mein jaaoge pair dhona padega, driver se shaadi karoge toh rona padega (If you step into a puddle, you’ll have to wash your feet, if you marry a driver you will live to regret it).’ To this, married Mahendra protests that he knows for a fact that many girls in the village want to marry a driver because he’s usually a dildaar aadmi, one for whom money comes and goes, unlike other tight-fisted suitors.

  When Raju hears I’m from Mumbai, he throws in another one. ‘Bambai, jahan chudai aur khudai kabhi nahi rukti (Bombay, where they never stop screwing and digging up roads),’ he says.

  Raju and Mahendra seem to be repositories of these dark, self-deprecating aphorisms, passed down from ustad to khalassi. They’re aphorisms that capture the stark realities of their lives, bittersweet proverbs that both console and amuse.

  Raju is excited about finally getting his license and becoming a driver, and at some point, ustad. ‘It would be nice to have someone to lord over,’ he admits. I ask him what procedure he had to go through to acquire the license. ‘I did not even appear for the test. You get the license through brokers for five to seven thousand bucks if you’re 10th pass. If you’re completely illiterate, then the brokers will fleece more,’ he says.

  Mahendra soon stops the truck for dinner at a dhaba. It seems to be the regular haunt of many truckers. It even has a generator attached to a giant freezer with Bhayankar Thandi Beer (Extremely Chilled Beer) written over it in huge block letters, so patrons can sip on a cool beer even when the electricity is down, as it is prone to.

  ‘Let me order our special dish for you,’ says Mahendra. ‘Hey you! Bring a couple of egg curries and tandoori roti,’ he yells to a waiter.

  We settle on the charpoys. The food arrives. The egg curry, while delicious, is much spicier than I had expected. The egg itself is slightly under-boiled; it keeps slipping away from my spoon as I try to carve out a piece. I have not even had a couple of morsels when a strong wind starts blowing from the east.

  Before we know it, a sandstorm has engulfed the dhaba. I cower behind my table keeping my head down. The waiters sprint into the kitchen, and others shade their eyes to prevent sand from entering them. Some patrons, however, resolutely
continue wolfing down their food before the sand infiltrates it.

  When the brief storm subsides, I find that the sand has coaxed its way into everything—my ears, my hair, my shirt, the food, the glass of water. There goes the dinner we ordered, I think. Raju, however, is made of sterner stuff. He spoons some curry into his mouth, and spits out the sandy residue on the ground. I join him in this exercise. When we’re finished eating, the crew brushes away my offer to pay for the dinner. So when Mahendra says, ‘Daaru piyoge?’ I readily accede, but on the condition that it’s on me. Our plan is to spend the night at the dhaba and leave at the break of dawn.

  All of us settle into a single cabin, with Raju, by virtue of his juniority, squatting by the edge of the truck door. A momentary lapse of balance, and he will keel over the side, breaking more than a few bones. But his positioning right by the edge is for a reason. The others routinely dispatch him on errands, first to fetch the drinks, then to get some plastic glasses, then some bidis. I realize the institution of khalassi is a rite of passage for truckers, an apprenticeship in which you have to slave away for at least a couple of years to earn your stripes.

  Raju, who doesn’t drink himself, opens the bottles, pours our drinks, mixes it with some water, and hands it to us, one by one. One of the two steel glasses is handed over to Kishor, the senior-most member of the crew who had originally asked me if I had any porn, and the other to me, the guest of honour, and payer of drinks.

  One of the men is obviously gay. He is forever in conspicuously close quarters with one of the other crew members, both of whom whisper to each other, and largely keep to themselves. He is also the only one who is wearing a bright red T-shirt, and not the standard baniyan.

  Finally. The moment of imbibing. It’s a revelatory moment for any culture. Because instead of clinking their glasses and saying ‘Cheers’, the truckers hold their glasses high up in the air Nazi-style, chant ‘Jai Mata Di’, and pour the whisky down their throats in one swift gulp. The concept of nursing your drink doesn’t seem to exist here, I write in my logbook, and follow their example by knocking down my drink in one go. I almost feel like an ethnographer, observing and experiencing the rituals and practices of an unfamiliar culture.

  After a couple more rounds of Jai Mata Dis and knock-downs, the conversation turns to more bawdy matters. Kishor fondly grabs a fistful of Raju’s ears. ‘This one is a proper sex maniac. He is,’ he says, proudly surveying the progress of his khalassi under his able tutelage. Raju groans in agony.

  Kishor claims to have visited over hundred prostitutes during the course of his ten year trucking career. ‘You can get a prostitute for between 200 and 500,’ he says. As opposed to the urbane view of sex as something that involves careful undressing, extended foreplay, and sensitive lovemaking, sex on the highways of India is a remarkably brisk affair. A quick lifting of the ghaghra, some aggressive pelvic thrusting, and in less than five minutes the job is done.

  ‘If you take more than five minutes, the charge is 500. Otherwise, 200,’ says Kishor. I have a mental image of a pimp hovering around with a stopwatch. ‘But if you want anal sex, the charge is 500 irrespective of how long you take,’ he adds.

  Do you use condoms? ‘I always do. AIDS ka khatra bahut hai—There is a high chance of contracting AIDS. But this idiot doesn’t listen to me. Kitni baar bola hai—How many times have I told you?’ says Kishor, smacking Raju square in the back of his head. Raju grins, rubbing the back of his head gingerly.

  ‘How do you know where the prostitutes are?’ I ask. ‘It happens in the cover of darkness,’ says Kishor. ‘The pimps shine flashlights a little way off the road to signal their presence. That’s how we know. But we always have to be careful. Because sometimes, robbers use this trick. They hide in the bushes and flash the light. Drivers assume it’s a prostitute and rush there eagerly, only to get robbed. Twice, I have been robbed like this. They took all my cash,’ he says.

  ‘What places in India does this happen?’ I ask them. All of them, who’ve been across the length and breadth of India on trips, start reciting names.

  ‘Where we are right now, this stretch between Udaipur and Chittorgarh. It’s well-known for randibaazi,’ says Kishor.

  ‘Neemuch and Ratlam districts in Madhya Pradesh,’ pipes in another.

  ‘Vijayawada and Rajahmundry in Andhra.’

  ‘Bihar–Bengal border. You’ll find many Nepali randis there.’

  ‘Durgapur and Bardhaman in West Bengal.’

  ‘Sometimes, the pimp will also have desi daaru in plastic packets with him. He sells it at a higher rate, but still finds many takers because some can’t get it up without alcohol,’ cackles Kishor.

  This link between alcohol and sex, however, is nothing new to India. This is how the French gem merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier describes the symbiotic relationship between alcohol and prostitution in 17th century India.

  In the cool of the evening you see them [prostitutes] before the doors of their houses, which are for the most part small huts, and when the night comes they place at the doors a candle or a lighted lamp for a signal. It is then, also, that the shops where they sell ‘tari’ are opened. It is a drink obtained from a tree, and it is as sweet as our new wines. It is brought from five or six kos distant in leather bottles, upon horses which carry one on each side and go at a fast trot, and about 500 or 600 of them enter the town daily. The King derives from the tax which he places on this tari a very considerable revenue, and it is principally on this account that they allow so many public women, because they are the cause of the consumption of much tari, those who sell it having for this reason their shops in their neighborhood.

  The only difference now is that the government has cracked down on the sex workers’ permanent establishments, forcing them to take cover in the bushes. Mahendra tells me that some of the highway prostitutes in parts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan come from nomadic communities such as the Bedia and Banchhra which are known to practice prostitution as a traditional occupation—the men being the pimps who lease out the women in their family to customers.

  However, my companions are not all about sex. They are also earnest believers in love, although the specifications of love for the gharwali and baharwali are very different. The gharwalis are meant for begetting children, while the baharwalis are meant for meeting secretly in the fields and making love all night, something almost everyone present here claims to have done at some point.

  The discussion turns to how women these days only chase after money, when Mahendra interjects, ‘What are you lot rambling on about? My girlfriend even gives me money when I’m short,’ to a round of drunken laughter.

  Mahendra, who is married, is carrying on a clandestine affair with a girl from the same village. ‘The heart isn’t satisfied with just dal-chawal. Sometimes, you need biryani,’ he explains. This would only be the first of many times I encounter this culinary metaphor being employed to justify infidelity, something I learn enjoys a remarkable degree of banal acceptance among the underclass, probably more so than among the well-heeled in metros.

  Mahendra doesn’t know how to read or write. So whenever he wants to express his feelings for his girlfriend, he uses Raju’s services. Raju fetches a notebook from the dashboard. On its last page is a terse love letter Raju has penned on Mahendra’s behalf. It’s written in Devanagari—the only English words being ‘I Love You Mis Darling’—replete with clichés straight out of Bollywood song lyrics, and framed by a giant arrow-struck heart that suggests the wounded nature of Mahendra’s love as a fervent ‘deewana aashiq’. I’m touched.

  It is past midnight now and soon everybody retreats to their respective trucks for the night. Raju, Mahendra and I manage to squeeze into the cabin, sleeping alternately with our heads and legs pointed in opposite directions, to minimize the awkwardness. It’s been a long day, and I’m about to fall asleep, when a rustling sound attracts my attention. I look for its source, and spot some vigorous movement under Raju’s thin blanket in the
region of his crotch. I avert my eyes immediately. Oh, come on Raju, I think to myself. I understand you haven’t had the chance today, but at least try to be discreet?

  As planned, we leave at the crack of dawn. The morning brings its share of thrills. Mahendra is nursing a debilitating hangover so he asks Raju, who hasn’t had anything to drink, to drive, while he enjoys an extended nap. Early mornings are considered safe hours for khalassis to practice their driving.

  Ideally, they should also be supervised by the ustad. But Raju has trained long enough. So Mahendra feels sufficiently confident to entrust the truck in his care. It turns out that his confidence is misplaced, because five minutes after he starts driving, Raju becomes itchy for some music. The problem is the USB drive is beyond his reach. Instead of simply asking me to pass it on, he inexplicably chooses to get up from his seat while the truck is running, and stretches his arms to grab the USB stick from the far end. The truck carries on, sans its driver.

  I freeze. Is this really happening? What combination of bad life decisions has landed me in a driverless truck somewhere in Rajasthan? As the truck veers towards the divider, I narrow my eyes and brace myself for certain death. But just as it is about to crash, Raju leaps towards the seat, USB stick in hand, and turns the steering wheel in the nick of time.

  I can finally breathe. That was a close shave. In fact, the closest brush with death I’ve had in all my life. A lucky Mahendra sleeps through it all. It is so much more preferable to die in one’s sleep, than to see it close in on you. I can’t help but think—if this is the degree of cautiousness Raju displays on the even roads of Rajasthan, how will he fare on the hairpin ghats of Himachal Pradesh? It’s the jawaani, I presume.

  I contemplate if it’s time for me to find another ride. My resolve only strengthens when our drunken revelry of the previous night gives way to a hungover awkwardness in the dry, rising heat.