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 5th – 4th 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.