I ask them if there’s any corruption involved in the process. Mastaan says there is no corruption in the test itself. The whole thing is recorded on camera. But even if you pass the test, you have to pay a token bribe to the RTO to ease the clearance process. ‘Six thousand two hundred rupees,’ he says, quoting the exact figure with a proud, knowing look.
Neither Guru nor Mastaan managed to see any Bollywood star in all their time in Mumbai. Curiously, all of their favourite heroes and heroines seem to be yesteryear stars. Their favourite Bollywood actor is Amitabh Bachchan. Mastaan is also a big fan of Johnny Depp. ‘Jack Sparrow,’ he calls him.
Among heroines, they like Madhuri and Sridevi. ‘The heroines these days don’t wear proper clothes,’ complains Guru, bringing his hands above his knees to indicate their atrocious length. ‘We like watching older heroines. More decent.’
As our journey progresses, I discover their playlist is an eclectic mix of Kannada, Marathi and Hindi film songs, reflecting the multilingual nature of the region they hail from. Bidar is the northernmost district of Karnataka, right at the tri-junction of Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka. As a consequence, both Mastaan and Guru speak Kannada heavily inflected with Dakhni—a language that trails off sweetly. One could even call the language they speak Hyderabadi Kannada since it’s so different from the Kannada my parents speak. For instance, they use Hindi words for numerals—dus, bees—instead of Kannada words. Not that I understand it anyway. I grew up speaking Konkani.
It’s been over two hours since we set out, but the urban sprawl of Mumbai and its satellites adamantly refuses to yield to quieter countryside. I’m beginning to despair for a rush of fresh highway breeze. At least, it’s not as hot as last time, I console myself. That’s the good thing about setting off in peak winter.
We pass a bus full of schoolchildren playing antakshari, a sight that momentarily transports me down memory lane. The road is lined with gleaming malls— happy, shiny people out having fun with their friends. A parallel dimension from the one we’re in, I’m reminded, when a policeman stops our truck for a payoff right in front of the mall. Mastaan discreetly extracts a Rs 50 note from his bundle and hands it to the policeman.
‘You must never let these rascals see your bundle of chhutta,’ he says, once we’re on our way. I ask him if the bundle helped him when over 80 per cent of India’s currency was demonetized a year ago.
‘We had the bundle even then. But only five hundred rupees were remaining when the announcement was made. That got over very fast,’ he says. ‘The diesel tank was also getting empty. So I parked the truck and called up my seth, who promised to send his men. I waited for them, but they arrived after two full days. Hardly ate anything in the meantime.’
Considering I’m hungry even though I ate only some hours back, I can’t begin to fathom what that level of starvation must have felt like. Finally, near Navi Mumbai, we stop for dinner at a dhaba. A child waiter rattles off the menu in his reedy voice at top speed— aloo mutter, sev bhaji, palak paneer, aloo palak, dal fry… Guru tells him to repeat it, ‘Halu bol, halu halu (Speak slowly).’
We end up ordering some sev bhaji—a spicy red gravy with globs of sev floating in it, and dal khichdi, a dish I introduce them too. I’m surprised neither of them have had it before, and I’m relieved when both of them approve of it. Talk turns to food. They tell me that as a rule, they dislike any dish involving pao, which is unfortunately all you get in Mumbai—vada pao, samosa pao, misal pao, and so on. It induces gas and affects digestion, they say, so they prefer eating rice or chapati.
They also have a stove and gas with them, and cook sometimes. ‘Not while the truck is running, of course. The drivers in Tamil Nadu, though, cook even while the truck is on. Don’t know how they manage it.’ How I would like to experience that, I think to myself. But for that, we must first get out of Mumbai.
We climb into the truck. Guru and Mastaan exchange roles, and soon, we find ourselves cruising on the Mumbai–Pune expressway. A part of me feels like screaming, ‘Woohoo!’, but that would alarm my companions, so I contain my excitement. Glimpses of my childhood flash before my eyes—the excitement of driving on the newly inaugurated expressway; staring agape at the yawning tunnels that interrupted the steady stream of songs playing on the radio; eagerly watching my father hold down the accelerator of our Maruti; my growing incredulity as the speedometer crossed hundred (a hundred!); and how dumbstruck I was when other cars effortlessly zoomed past us even while we were at hundred. It was the first time I had beheld ‘development’ in concrete, physical terms.
This time is different, though. We creep along the side of the road meekly, trundling at the stately speed of sixty kilometres per hour, overtaking not a single vehicle. Guru is unconcerned. ‘I always maintain a single speed,’ he says. ‘It’s simple. If you over-speed, you won’t get mileage.’
Around midnight, after the initial excitement, the featureless, overfamiliar expressway starts failing to hold my interest. Mastaan is about to fall asleep in the upper bunk, squinting into his smartphone, his face bathed in the blue-white glow of Facebook. I decide to call it a night too. I stretch myself in the lower berth. Guru throws me a blanket, and I soon drift off to sleep in the cold, cold night.
At seven in the morning, I’m woken up by a sickly sweet smell wafting in through the window. It’s the signature stench of sugar mills, something I’m quite familiar with from my days spent at a military school in Satara. I look around. A thin film of mist hangs in the distance, hugging body-high stalks of sugarcane that stretch as far as I can see. We’re in sugarcane country.
Guru, who’s been driving the truck all through the cold night in a thin T-shirt, sees me stir and through chattering teeth, asks me to hand him the spare blanket lying out of his reach. I hasten to pass it to him. He quickly wraps the red blanket around his head and body like an all-encompassing dupatta, cutting a strange figure in the morning light.
Within an hour, we reach Solapur, overtaking dozens of bullock carts hauling freshly harvested bundles of sugarcane to the mill. Guru wakes up Mastaan and stops the truck at a stall selling khari—a flaky biscuit that’s standard accompaniment with tea in Maharashtra and its surrounding states. Guru tells me Solapur is renowned for its khari, and both of them jump out to buy a couple of packets for their families. A schoolgirl in her uniform hands it to them, and goes back to reading from her textbook once she’s done counting the money.
Once we’re on our way, I notice that most of the billboards in the small towns we pass are plastered with huge Happy Birthday posters dedicated to local worthies such as Om Dada and Sachin Dada, likely sponsored by over-enthusiastic supporters intent on registering their fealty. The landscape is now mostly scrubland, interspersed with grape vineyards. Men donning bright yellow turbans typical to this area become a common sight. The highway is littered with failed restaurants, their only vestige being sad, dusty boards, often with no structure substantiating them.
Around nine o’clock, we stop at a functional one called Bharat Tea House for breakfast. Mastaan and Guru order their usual breakfast. ‘Three rice plates,’ Mastaan calls to the proprietor, an old man in a grimy white vest and shorts who immediately huddles over with small plates containing rice, dal and two pieces of capsicum fried in besan batter. At twenty rupees per plate, it’s a steal, not to mention delicious. We take seats on a narrow green table with mysterious black splotches all over it. Guru and Mastaan go on to order another plate each. I’m satiated after just the one. A big mistake, as I should have learnt by now. In the uncertain world of trucking, breakfast is never really breakfast. Usually, it’s brunch.
At the Tea House, I finally get a chance to inspect their truck in the daylight. It’s a multi-coloured vehicle with a memorable license plate number—399339. The mudguard has Road King written on it, along with the words ‘Sunday ho ya Monday. Roz khavo anday’. It’s an old, catchy slogan of the National Egg Coordination Committee, an association of poultry farmers, whic
h has evidently been embraced by transporters with a significant stake in the increased consumption of egg.
I ask Mastaan about the slogan. ‘Our fixed load from Hyderabad is eggs,’ he explains. ‘It’s a tricky business, transporting eggs. One has to be real careful. A sudden movement of the steering, and you risk breaking them all. It has helped improve my driving for the test though.’
The image on the back of the truck is more sentimental. ‘Ghar kab aaoge (When will you return home?)’ it says in Devanagari, accompanied by the painting of a lonely wife, huddled under the shade of a tree, with a house in the distance.
As we resume our journey, the road starts crumbling right before my eyes. Gaping cracks start appearing in its smooth surface, a sight that is soon almost entirely replaced by potholes. ‘The road is terrible till the Maharashtra–Karnataka border,’ informs Mastaan before I can ask him. Overloaded sugarcane trucks become a frequent sight—the height of the stacked sugarcane often exceeding that of the truck—no doubt contributing further to the deterioration of the road.
Mastaan points to one of them. ‘You see that?’ he says. ‘You were asking earlier about overloading? These are the trucks that overload. But since it’s agricultural maal, no one dares touch these vehicles. They’re all afraid, because otherwise the kisans will start protesting,’ he says, leaving me surprised at the vehemence of his tone.
We reach the border town of Omerga. Here, I catch my first glimpse of the Kannada script. In fact, much of the town is covered in bilingual signage. Border regions like this have always fascinated me, places where multiple languages and cultures intermingle, and regional chauvinism usually takes a backseat. They’re a reminder of India’s interconnected diversity.
Within half an hour, we come upon the state border. To my surprise, it is completely empty, unlike my last trip, when negotiating borders was an unmitigated ordeal. I’m amazed at the drastic change brought by GST. As we approach the counter, Guru touches my elbow and asks me to climb down. I don’t entirely understand why, but I comply. He jumps off after me. Mastaan follows suit.
I see that a weigh bridge at the border is measuring the weight of the truck, to check if it is overloaded. The verdict? Not overloaded. The total weight of the truck is 16,720 kg, displayed electronically. We’re well within our limits. The clerk hands over a receipt, and with that, we’re off again.
I ask Mastaan how much GST has eased their lives. ‘As you saw, the waiting time at borders has gone down to almost zero. The bribes we used to pay have also reduced by approximately half,’ he says. I’m happy to hear that the changes wrought by GST are not just in theory.
We’re in Karnataka now. My hour of de-boarding is imminent. I keep an eye out for signboards that might tell me how far Basavakalyan is. Around noon, Mastaan finally stops the truck. ‘You can go see the Basava temple in Basavakalyan,’ says Mastaan, as parting advice. Even as I bid Guru and Mastaan goodbye, and thank them for their hospitality, I’m wondering how I should make my way to Hyderabad. I contemplate Mastaan’s advice, but decide I don’t feel like breaking the momentum of the journey with a trip to Basavakalyan.
I stand in the desultory noonday heat, trying to hail down trucks. But none of them pause. An old, frail man of around sixty, however, stops his white Mahindra goods jeep, with no provocation from my end. He asks me if I want a lift. I weigh his offer briefly. Considering the sun that’s bearing down on my head, I decide to accept.
However, as soon as I get in, the man starts turning the cabin upside down, looking for something. I ask him what he’s searching for, but he maintains an inscrutable silence. I decide to step out of the vehicle so he can check the cabin thoroughly for whatever he’s looking for. But he calls me back in as soon as I do.
‘It was right here,’ he says sheepishly, patting the pocket of the black jacket he’s wearing. He holds out the object of his search on his palm—it’s a chillum. He asks me to roll up my window, proceeds to fill the chillum with crushed marijuana, and pulls a mighty drag. The man’s clearly been doing this for a while, because a blazing flame leaps out of the chillum’s mouth. The smell of ganja fills the cabin, circulating languidly in its trapped air. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he says belatedly, coughing in short bursts.
Just then, we spot a mongoose family—five of them—crossing the road, cautiously avoiding the approaching vehicles. It’s a surreal sight, especially in these circumstances. In my predominantly urban existence, I’ve never had the chance to see mongooses out in the wild like that—not even one, and here there are five. ‘Looks like they’re heading out to hunt,’ says my companion, with a knowing smile on his face.
‘Milind Sonawane,’ he says, once the mongooses have disappeared in the bush, shaking my hand awkwardly with his left hand, holding the chillum with his right. ‘From Nashik.’ I introduce myself in turn. Milind becomes unexpectedly enthusiastic when he finds out I’m a journalist. ‘Kalakaar aadmi hai tu (You’re an artist),’ he says. I don’t know what to make of his statement. But as the second-hand smoke seeps into my lungs, I do what I reckon most people would have done. I laugh, uproariously.
He tells me his own job is driving newly manufactured jeeps from the Mahindra factory in Nashik to their owners, wherever they may be. He’s part of a drivers’ union that exercises monopoly on this particular job. It has led him to almost everywhere in India.
‘If you’re in Nashik someday, and need to travel somewhere, just give me a call. I’ll get someone to drop you. Many jeeps set off from the factory every day to all kinds of places,’ he says. ‘In general, my advice to you would be to never take the bus or train. Why waste precious money? Take my case. I don’t even remember the last time I went by bus or train. It’s always either by jeep or truck.’
I’m puzzled by this claim. Things, however, become clearer when he starts narrating his exploits as a small-time con man, which revolve around him duping transport owners into giving him a ride on their trucks for free. He says he’s been doing this for years, without getting into any trouble.
‘The trick is you must be able to convince the transporters that you are one of them. Wear good clothes. Act decently. That’s why I’ve even printed a card which says Milind Sonawane, Mahalaxmi Transports,’ he says. ‘See?’ he extracts the card from his pocket. ‘Once they’re convinced I’m one of them, they usually agree to give me a lift when I tell them that I have maal waiting for their truck on the other side. Of course, once we arrive at the destination, I disappear on the drivers.’
I’m unsettled by this confession, and by his apparent lack of scruples. I realize I’m in the company of a morally dubious, but hopefully harmless man, and resolve to keep my guard up. We soon arrive at the Telangana–Karnataka border. Sonawane extracts a couple of stalks of sugarcane he’s brought from Nashik and makes a grand show of gifting them to the guard at the empty border check-post, followed by some small talk. It’s part of his relationship building exercise.
It’s an appropriate gift, though, considering the sugarcane fields of Maharashtra have given way to the elemental landscape of Telangana—dry, ferric red earth, and a forbidding boulder-strewn terrain, spread out under the bluest of skies. I spot many dilapidated mosques along the highway; curiously, their crumbling grey minarets seem to be of medieval provenance while the structures supporting them are recently painted and renovated.
We also pass many tribal women—and women only—standing by the road waiting for a lift. Sonawane, for whom picking up hitchhikers (like me) is an important source of income, stops for them. They refuse though, when they find out he’s asking them to sit in the back of his goods jeep with only cardboard to protect them from the hot metal.
‘Your loss,’ he shrugs, and drives on. It doesn’t take him long to stop for another go at the chillum. ‘You want a drag?’ he offers this time. I decline. The smoke has already gotten to me. Sonawane, however, becomes even more talkative after the second round.
On the way to Hyderabad, I ask him about his
life. ‘Arre what should I tell you? I’ve done almost everything that a man can do. I’ve been a truck driver, a tailor, a grape seller, a mechanic, a salesman, and more. Didn’t stick to any job for more than two years,’ he says. ‘But I’m old now. Don’t have the energy left anymore.’
It’s the sort of self-description most working class men in India would have given, if only someone asked them. India’s informal sector does have a way of making ordinary people multi-faceted, I muse, as Milind finally drops me outside the city limits of Hyderabad, leaving my wallet lighter by two hundred rupees.
Before bidding adieu, he asks me to meet him in Nashik someday.
‘Yes. I’ll call you. I have your number.’
‘That’s okay. You can call me anytime. But always remember these words of mine. Phone khoti, sakshaat bheti (The phone’s a false friend, it’s better to meet in person),’ he says. ‘Stick to this motto, and you’ll never lose your friends.’
I thank him for the ride, and mull over his words. Sometimes one stumbles into wisdom in the unlikeliest of places. I realize his advice is tailor-made for times like ours, when smartphones have made it so easy to mistake communication for connection. I will perhaps never meet Milind Sonawane again, but his parting words shall always stay with me. Phone khoti, sakshaat bheti. It’s a motto worth remembering in hyper-connected times like these.
A Road Paved with Khakhi
There is an avuncular twinkle in K. Srinivasa Rao’s eyes. It has been barely five minutes since I unceremoniously hauled myself into his truck, and he is already surveying my haggard face with something resembling paternal concern. He awkwardly leans forward to hand me a bottle of water. I had resolved to be discerning about the water I consumed, but the heat and my obsessive compulsive politeness disorder propels my hand forward in acceptance.
Accompanying Rao is Harsha, his acutely self-conscious buck-toothed teenage son who sulks in a corner, making himself invisible. We are careening down the long, jagged coast of Andhra Pradesh. Emerald paddy fields surround us, haystacks in the shape of huts breaking the cacophony of green. A flock of feeding egrets abruptly take off in a white blur. The disjointed hillocks of the Eastern Ghats jut out of the lushness like camel humps, their bare rocky facade home to many forts and hill temples. A policeman with a stout lathi stalks the divider. In the east, we can glimpse the misty hilltops of Lambasingi, hyperbolically termed the Kashmir of Andhra Pradesh by altitudinally challenged residents of the state. (Odisha has its own Kashmir in Daringbadi.) To the south lies our destination, the port city of Kakinada.
Truck de India! Page 18