You Came, (Am) Happy

The first contact with a rickshaw on a crowded and noisy Mumbai road, from the time you hail it as it rolls along the road and you get a look at the rickshaw driver trying to catch his eye as he slows down to acknowledge you, sometimes barely appearing to do so as he sizes up your fare worth, lasts little more than a second or two.

But to a commuter seasoned from travelling in and around Mumbai, that second or two spent taking in the face of the rickshaw driver, and his general demeanour will often reveal in surprising clarity the likely result of their attempt to hail it.

Faces say a lot, most times that is.

A couple of years ago when I saw Suresh Pawar’s face I knew he wouldn’t turn me down. And he didn’t. Soon I was to find out why.

~

“The main thing is the customer should feel comfortable,” Suresh Hemji Pawar replied in Marathi, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

After getting into his rickshaw at Mulund Check Naka I was pleasantly surprised at finding a designer carpet cover the passenger side of the three-wheeler’s floor, a rare sight, my first in over a decade of travelling in auto-rickshaws here in Mumbai and anywhere.

Most rickshaw floors are bare metal except during monsoons when many rickshaw drivers will cover the floor with rubber mat to protect the metal from rains blowing in and from passengers’ stepping into the back of the rickshaw in wet footwear and umbrellas dripping rainwater.

Mumbai’s monsoons and humidity levels can quickly rust metal. In other seasons there’s nothing to cushion your feet from the rumbling metal.

So it was a surprise to see the designer carpet in Suresh Pawar’s rickshaw, the kind you rarely see in homes now, more because they need maintenance and people now are not only more casual in their tastes in general but hard-pressed mentally to expend effort in maintaining anything, likely driven by their soul turning consumerist, celebrating change rather than getting into the mach-mach culture of retain, repair, and reuse.

One indication of lesser demand for such carpets is now I see fewer carpet sellers making rounds of neighbourhoods where I live, used to live, and where I travel to on my jaunts elsewhere.

The design is common to Kashmiri carpets and used to be a rage in the years gone by when households sought to communicate a “rich” ambience about their drawing rooms centred on showcases, with pride of place reserved for the colour TV that beamed two channels if you were lucky.

In homes with windows brightly lighting up living rooms, the heavy carpets came off well, their greys, browns or reds contrasting positively with the light unlike in poorly lighted rooms where they would add to the gloom and dreary, and misery if the owners matched the mood.  

I’d find it hard to sit long in those living rooms. That was then when I was still cheery and bright and lively.  

~

I shifted my feet to take in the designs at the first traffic signal at Teen Haath Naka. The carpet was aged, holes dotted it. But it didn’t matter. What did matter was it sought to lend a living room feel to the tiny back of the rickshaw in the middle of rousing traffic bumping along potholed roads, cushioned by the bolster serving as a shoulder-rest on the side of the rickshaw. Small pleasures.  

While its absence wouldn’t have made travel any less physically difficult than it was, its presence, as with trappings generally, lent the mood a positive spin, maybe comforting even, as Suresh Pawar had intended. Pawar is a surname common to Marathas and Dalits.

Suresh Pawar’s rickshaw bounced gently compared to most rickshaws I’ve been in that rattle until your skeleton reminds you of every bone that makes it whole or one that is missing. The treatment is thorough.

I wasn’t surprised in the least bit that Suresh had ensured the shock absorbers worked well. He looked the upright, no nonsense, methodical sort who had his principles and lived by them, a not uncommon trait I’ve come across in some Marathi-speaking, Maharashtrian rickshaw drivers, a socialist demeanour so to speak.

I gathered courage and rested my back against the backrest, comforted in knowledge that I’d be insulated from the worst jerks on the road. I felt welcomed.

It’s instructive about the state of affairs how a rarity becomes luxury when in fact it should be given.

After all, the first thing you see upon getting into his rickshaw is – आपण आलत आनंद आहे (You came, (am) happy).  आपण (You / yourself) आलत (came) आनंद  (happy/joyous) आहे.

At first I had blindsided आ, the letter common to each of the four words, and tried to make sense of पण लत नंद हे before realising my mistake.

 

 Suresh Pawar had laughed it off, saying, “even when read separately (without आ ) they’ve meaning.”

He had a point. Though our journey came to an end before he could elaborate on the meaning the words had separate from आ, it was apparent if you could see the obvious.

पण “but” लत “addiction” नंद “joyous” (is) – read consecutively reads as “but addiction is joyous” even with a bit of a stretch with 'लत' 

Addiction to what is missing unless it’s to the hospitality as Suresh Pawar made evident with his “The main thing is the customer should feel comfortable.”

While  ननद (Nanad) is more commonly used to reference the husband’s sister, a term restricted for use by the wife, it is also substituted by नंद (Nand) in some regions of India.

I got off to Suresh waving at me as he kicked his rickshaw into gear, with an ‘Anand ‘ look about me the brief encounter had facilitated on a hectic day.

~

Other – 

नंद वंश (Nand Vansh) was a large kingdom in ancient India, dating 5^th – 4^th century BC with Pataliputra as the capital before being overthrown by Chandragupta Maurya. The Nand dynasty came to be known for their military prowess and immense wealth.  

नन्द बाबा (Nand Baba) was the head of a tribe of cowherds (Yadav caste) known as Gopas, and came to be known as the foster-father of Lord Krishna after Krishna’s father Vasudeva took the child Krishna to his brother, Nand, to raise him. 

Hamara Bajaj In Bora Bazaar

Of late it no longer feels like a long walk from Kala Ghoda to V.T since the time we took to winding our way through Bora Bazaar, dodging people and vehicles without taking our eyes off the myriad stationery and other shops and happenings along and on the narrow road that runs straight before exiting a short way off the iconic railway station.

We both revel in the old world charm of the place, from the shops, the people and the wafting conversations. It’s a place that calls to the organic nature of its character, a bazaar that’s more like a neighbourhood than a place of sterile commerce.

It helps if you’re in no hurry to get someplace, a luxury we were fortunate to have early this week, and a relief after the interminable wait for our turn with the token at the bank round the corner.

The little ‘nothings’ along the way make long walks a breeze. This time around it was the unlikely appearance of an old Bajaj scooter with an empty sidecar.

The scooter with the sidecar seemed to appear out of the blue before slowing down to find a way through the busy Bora Bazaar street. 

An old Bajaj scooter with a sidecar is not a common sight anymore though I’ve seen a few of late, so when one made an appearance with an elderly couple in crisp white that set off their presence against the alternating greys of the bazaar, the character of the street reverted ever so slightly to the good old days as I’d imagine the bazaar to be.

The gent astride the scooter kept his eyes on the jumble of the traffic ahead while the lady took in the view about her. The scooter seemed to be family, a comforting presence by the virtue of having served them for a long time, beginning with middle class aspirations for mobility, upward as well as transportation.

It was a Hamara Bajaj moment no less, even if far removed from its origins, and era.

It didn’t take long for the iconic tune to well up in my head as they floated ahead, their demeanour set firmly in the middle-class and family values from an era long gone, when a newly energised middle-class tuned in to Hamara Bajaj on their telly in the eighties.

I tried to imagine their youthful faces from three decades ago, of the moment they were handed over the scooter, their first ride together, the space they made for the third person in the sidecar. I must have smiled at the thought for I caught a worker looking at me with a bemused look on his face unless I imagined the reason behind his seeming bemusement.

We paused to let the scooter pass before catching up with it as it waited to pass a tempo carrier, blocking access to pedestrians seeking to squeeze past them. I didn’t mind in the least.  

Every once in a while, hurdles by way of vehicles jamming the considerable foot traffic are more an opportunity to pause and take in the sights jammed cheek by jowl on either side of the street than an irritant.

This is all the more true if one does not have to catch a train from V.T. which  however most people do as they stream in a single minded march, head high, eyes fixed in the direction of the exit the moment clocks strike six and offices across Fort begin to empty of workers from all over the city and beyond.

Some things haven’t changed even if the Hamara Bajaj era did!

~

I’m writing this to the tune of Aa Chal Ke Tujhe Main LeKe Chalu wafting from the kitchen. “My dad used to sing this,” K tells me as I let the song wash over the Hamara Bajaj one, reaching further back in time to an India of a time long before me.