trusting A "NOBODY"
The morning hadn’t dawned completely yet; darkness still consumed the freshness of the coming day. There wasn’t anything in the air to feel intuitively sick about. It seemed to be a perfect beginning of “just another day”.
My father and I had a train to board scheduled at 6:30am. So, we checked out the hotel room around 5:30am. The guard stopped a bus for us, although we had a different plan. Everything happened so fast and clean that we didn’t bother to mind not sticking to our original plan of taking a cab to the station; after all, all that mattered was the “where" we had to reach and not the “how" we made it to there.
We got inside the bus and told the conductor,” Hyderabad station.”
Pop came a confirmation, but in the native language. All I could get was “Nampally station”.
We said,” No. Hyderabad Railway station.”
This time he said nothing.
We realized that the man had mistaken railway station for bus station, only when a co-passenger told us that we went past our stop a minute ago.
We alighted the bus, changed lane and started walking. It was 5:50 already. There were no empty cabs in our nearest vicinity. The few that ran were full and did not bother to stop for any reason whatsoever.
My father went hyper and worse…he stopped thinking and consequently, acting accordingly to the situation. He blamed himself, then me (for nothing at all) and at last, our act (and not a decision) of taking the bus to the station. All this was obviously not helping us anyway.
What better could I do then, than shouting back at him.
“You aren’t doing any good to either of us, Daddy.”
I surely understood one thing that day that keeping one’s composure at hard times is so very important and also that it becomes the most difficult thing to do at the same time.
All the while I was in the bus, I was looking out of the window and I believed I remembered all the turns it took. So I decided to walk back to where we had started till we get a cab.
While we were still walking with our luggage, I saw a man (a local) coming with a milk can in his hand. He seemed to get it from our condition that we were to catch the 6:30 train and could not get there on time due to the absence of any useful conveyance.
I asked him if we were on the right route to the station.
He answered that it would take us longer if we went on foot by that route. He showed us a short-cut but at that time even understanding a short-cut seemed to be a hell ova job.
Finally, with much apprehension I asked him to accompany us.
He said okay.
And at that moment, I could almost feel that I had stabbed myself.
HERE IS SOMETHING I WOULD LIKE TO SAY: TRUSTING AN ABSOLUTE STRANGER IS NOT SOMETHING I’M TELLING YOU TO BUY FROM ME OR FROM ANYBODY ELSE, FOR THAT MATTER.
During our initial conversation the man said certain things in a certain manner that made me believe that he could be trusted or let’s say I had no better option than that because we had run a lot of time to look for alternatives.
What I gathered from him was that he’s a lawyer by profession.
There were some of the things that he said during our walk to the station that I vividly remember among the rest.
He said,” don’t trust anyone. These cab drivers …don’t look into their eyes…these bastards start their day with duping people like us.”
He also said, “our country has become a land of traitors…the very evidence of this is it having three names or alias…India aka Bharat aka Hindustan.”
So here we were standing in front of the entrance of the railway station. I thanked him and bid him adieu.
But my mind never left the thought of this man, let alone his opinions.
I may not remember his face or his voice, neither can I recognize him in a crowd, but his words still echo, at times. What hell he might ’ve been through to say (read, believe) something like that.
But the chance that I took in trusting him leaves me wondering about quite a few things.
The irony of the whole thing …
Who on earth would’ve imagined that such confrontation with the naked reality would come in such a form?
Of all the things that I had refrained myself from believing was that everything happens for a reason. I’m still to find a reason for this happening.
Taking the chance of trusting the man to “show us a way”…I guess I risked more than our life …I risked all the things that I had learnt till now…
Do I need to unlearn everything that I had known until now?
He did show me a way…
But to what?
My father and I had a train to board scheduled at 6:30am. So, we checked out the hotel room around 5:30am. The guard stopped a bus for us, although we had a different plan. Everything happened so fast and clean that we didn’t bother to mind not sticking to our original plan of taking a cab to the station; after all, all that mattered was the “where" we had to reach and not the “how" we made it to there.
We got inside the bus and told the conductor,” Hyderabad station.”
Pop came a confirmation, but in the native language. All I could get was “Nampally station”.
We said,” No. Hyderabad Railway station.”
This time he said nothing.
We realized that the man had mistaken railway station for bus station, only when a co-passenger told us that we went past our stop a minute ago.
We alighted the bus, changed lane and started walking. It was 5:50 already. There were no empty cabs in our nearest vicinity. The few that ran were full and did not bother to stop for any reason whatsoever.
My father went hyper and worse…he stopped thinking and consequently, acting accordingly to the situation. He blamed himself, then me (for nothing at all) and at last, our act (and not a decision) of taking the bus to the station. All this was obviously not helping us anyway.
What better could I do then, than shouting back at him.
“You aren’t doing any good to either of us, Daddy.”
I surely understood one thing that day that keeping one’s composure at hard times is so very important and also that it becomes the most difficult thing to do at the same time.
All the while I was in the bus, I was looking out of the window and I believed I remembered all the turns it took. So I decided to walk back to where we had started till we get a cab.
While we were still walking with our luggage, I saw a man (a local) coming with a milk can in his hand. He seemed to get it from our condition that we were to catch the 6:30 train and could not get there on time due to the absence of any useful conveyance.
I asked him if we were on the right route to the station.
He answered that it would take us longer if we went on foot by that route. He showed us a short-cut but at that time even understanding a short-cut seemed to be a hell ova job.
Finally, with much apprehension I asked him to accompany us.
He said okay.
And at that moment, I could almost feel that I had stabbed myself.
HERE IS SOMETHING I WOULD LIKE TO SAY: TRUSTING AN ABSOLUTE STRANGER IS NOT SOMETHING I’M TELLING YOU TO BUY FROM ME OR FROM ANYBODY ELSE, FOR THAT MATTER.
During our initial conversation the man said certain things in a certain manner that made me believe that he could be trusted or let’s say I had no better option than that because we had run a lot of time to look for alternatives.
What I gathered from him was that he’s a lawyer by profession.
There were some of the things that he said during our walk to the station that I vividly remember among the rest.
He said,” don’t trust anyone. These cab drivers …don’t look into their eyes…these bastards start their day with duping people like us.”
He also said, “our country has become a land of traitors…the very evidence of this is it having three names or alias…India aka Bharat aka Hindustan.”
So here we were standing in front of the entrance of the railway station. I thanked him and bid him adieu.
But my mind never left the thought of this man, let alone his opinions.
I may not remember his face or his voice, neither can I recognize him in a crowd, but his words still echo, at times. What hell he might ’ve been through to say (read, believe) something like that.
But the chance that I took in trusting him leaves me wondering about quite a few things.
The irony of the whole thing …
Who on earth would’ve imagined that such confrontation with the naked reality would come in such a form?
Of all the things that I had refrained myself from believing was that everything happens for a reason. I’m still to find a reason for this happening.
Taking the chance of trusting the man to “show us a way”…I guess I risked more than our life …I risked all the things that I had learnt till now…
Do I need to unlearn everything that I had known until now?
He did show me a way…
But to what?
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