Awesome Blossoms: Horn OK Please (10 page)
Read Awesome Blossoms: Horn OK Please Online
Authors: Kartik Iyengar
Let your communication decisions be guided by this quote:
“If we stopped wasting people’s time, what could they do with it?” - Eric Ries - The Lean Startup
***
Anonymous
***
He said many things,
And in her own desperation she hung on to them all
The courteous, the kind, the ones in jest
Many were to lovers whispered in lust
Others were to God, beseeching prayers
In anger and disgust he wrote at times
The fire of his fever burned the provocative pages
At times his tears soaked and dripped off many hurting hearts
When one day in a poem he asked “What color is the night?”
She whispered, “Tonight it is the color of my dreams
I always dream in sepia
Last night it was the color of my love
I love in shades of crimson
Tomorrow it will be the color of my sadness
I cry in hues of alabaster.
What color is the night? For you I will paint it white
That specific white that only a moon flower has
So that its fragrance will lie down with you
when you fall asleep,
Its velvet petals comfort you when you are cold
and its beauty comes back to you in every dream of her”
But then on another day she read:
“I am words only, I can never deliver on their meanings”
It was only in that instance that she truly understood
Finally knew they shared the same impotence
***
CHAPTER NINE
All India Permit
W
e had just moved into a new house in the hills. Away from a busy small town, it was one of the very few houses in a small quiet hamlet, flanked by a gurgling river on one side, sprawling acres of orchards and rolling green on the other. Nestled in the midst of the lush green woods, it was a peaceful dwelling.
The view from my room offered the brilliant view of both sunrise and sunset. It sure wasn’t easy for my Dad to let go of this room for he wanted it for himself. After all, it was the most enviable room in the house.
I had somehow managed to convince my dad to let me occupy the room on the upper floor that had a window facing the river, towards the east. The other window faced westwards and it offered a panoramic view of the apple orchards. My space inside the house was the perfect place to watch the sun go down from the cozy confines of my room. I have an elder brother as well. The three of us shared the room.
However, the house was quite far away from everything. Every weekday, we had to wake up at wee hours to get ready and get to school.
For want of having ample time to study in the morning, my parents would always set the alarm to half past five in the morning. But the very idea of living a house by the side of the river was exciting in itself and quite made up for waking up at an unearthly hour every single day to get to school.
The only flipside to it all, if I may, was that we had to walk to school everyday. The concept of a school bus was quite alien to my hometown. Hence we walked to school every day, four kilometers each way. But
covering such a distance in the hills would take less than an hour one way and the walk was not too bad.
Though a small section of the four-
kilometer stretch was a rocky single lane road, most of the stretch was lined with tall, evergreen trees with the flowing river on one side that made the walk a pleasant one.
Now that I’m all grown up and live in a big, bustling city, I cherish those long walks.
I am glad that we had the luxury to cover such a beautiful stretch every single day. My basket is full of mélange of beautiful childhood memories from them. I remember the monsoon craziness and the freezing winter walks. I used to run scared when we came across creepy snakes, scary nomads and weird tourists. However, I shall keep these memories tucked away safely, in the deep confines of my heart, to be told some other time.
Anyway,
our sleepy little hamlet had not yet experienced the concept of school bus yet, so every child used to walk to school. There was only one government bus plying that stretch and it certainly wasn’t worth it and we preferred to walk to school. First, the bus was always crowded. Second, the punctuality was in question always and didn’t align with our school hours. Third, there were no designated bus stops. Everything depended on the driver’s whim and fancy and walking was the best option.
Since mine was a large family, Dad figured that we needed to add another wing to the house. I remember the time when construction was on in another part of our new house. We would have a truck bring in the laborers and construction material from town to our house every single day. The truck would be there at our house every morning sharp at eight.
So what if we didn’t have a school bus, I had been pestering my parents to let my brothers and I take the ‘school truck’ someday. Our school was right between the house and the highway, so it was anyways en route for the truck driver.
And then one fine day, my dream came true. It was yet another dreadful Monday or maybe not so.
The door creaked open and as usual, Mom strode in sternly and ordered me to get up and get ready to go to school.
My elder brother was
always the obedient child. He’d already crawled out the bed even before mom arrived. My younger brother rubbed his eyes and got out of the bed with a great difficulty, cursing the alarm clock now and then.
T
he shrill cry of the noisy alarm clock broke the silence of the morning and my peaceful sleep went for a toss. This vintage alarm clock was placed near my elder brother’s bed. The poor lad! He now had to face the pain of being a grown up person. Anyway, alarm clocks are one of those few things that I will continue to hate till I die.
My
hatred for the alarm clock has only manifested itself and grown roots over the years. It has made me carelessly ignore the annoying sound and sleep through it all as I snuggle up with my kid brother till Mom would walk in and wake us up.
To me, it was a slow uptake every morning. I was still in the process of waking up and didn’t realize for quite sometime that today was a special day. It would be the day of my first truck-ride. I was terribly excited about it. It would also mean that I could get up late and save
us from walking about four kilometers to the school.
“The truck will
be here by 8:00 AM. If you want to take the truck ride, finish revising your homework and be ready”, Mom announced. The proverbial rooster just had a different form and gender everyday.
The announcement was enough for
me to wake up. Being a part of strict household meant that there could be no sibling fights in front of parents, no banging on the shared bathroom door in the morning, taking care of assigned responsibilities such as polishing shoes, packing lunchboxes, filling up water bottles without whining and of course, finishing off breakfast without a book to read.
That day, even b
efore the old grandfather clock struck eight, I had packed our school bags and was grinning from ear to ear, waiting for my ‘school truck’. My brothers and I were ready before time. My parents had no reason to complain that day. We stood practically hanging out from on of the windows in the verandah, anxiously waiting for the truck to arrive. I had never sat in a truck before and I was excited.
Like any other day, we waited for the jolly ride. Truck after truck passed by our house, all of them laden with apples. So many trucks passed by but no sight of our ride till ten minutes past eight. He was late but was there.
The three of us grabbed our school bags and water bottles and rushed out of the door as Mom shouted her goodbye messages. We raced down the slope from the house to the road where the majestic vehicle stood, waiting for us to board.
As we rushed, I could hear the blaring horn of the truck. It was melodious in a very noisy way. The truck stood on the other side of the road and we waited impatiently on the other side for the speeding vehicles to pass by so that the truck could make it’s way close to where we stood on the other side of the road.
The wait must have lasted a thousand years as I stood sulking, like any other child, with my elbows rested on my knees and my hands cupped around my chin. The traffic that day seemed endless. As the truck inched towards us, the smile returned. I had never been so eager.
Finally, the massive
vehicle that was to by my ride that day; came to a grinding halt right in front of us. The driver kept the engine running and I loved the noise. He jumped out of a small door on one side of the truck. The truck driver was well known to Dad since I was a tiny tot. He used to carry apple boxes to the local market during apple season.
There was always a helper inside the large truck
but today he wasn’t around. He was known to be a good man and since everybody in our small town knew everybody, it was safe to be around with him.
Things sure have changed since then
. Gone are those days when one didn’t have to worry too much about evil people. Even today, people in the mountains pride themselves on their simplicity, goodness and honesty.
I watched in awe as the tall, middle-aged man sporting a beard fifties beckoned us to board.
He wore a crumpled, blue, full-sleeved shirt that looked old and had layers of dust and stains on it. He It well matched his equally crumpled khaki trousers. His grey, unkempt hair gave him a regal appearance, worthy of the truck he owned. He certainly didn’t seem like someone who had to get up early in the morning, get into a uniform, pack his bag and head out to school unlike us. I envied him then.
My father appeared out of nowhere along with a dozen laborers who helped him unload the cargo for the construction. I watched him with awe, the pampered daughter, as he went about giving orders to the workers. Spotting the driver, he walked up to him and asked, “
How are you, my friend?”
“All good”, he answered with a
toothy smile, “Excited kids here today, eh?”
“
Of course, it’s their first truck ride. How’s business?” said Dad.
“Not much
to do these days, just have to drive down to Delhi tomorrow for picking up stuff”, he replied as he opened truck’s bonnet.
‘Wow
!’ I said to myself. Driving down to Delhi in a truck sure seemed like a cool idea. He gets to drive around in an awesome truck and get paid for it. As the unloading continued, my father left him and he went behind the truck to smoke. His niceness made him not to smoke in front of children.
Standing on a pile of stones at a distance, I admired the truck from front to back. I saw the driver fish out a toothbrush, a water bottle and a comb from the glove compartment near the small hatch of a door. He went back to the back of the truck and seemed to be spending a lot of time grooming himself. He sure took his time; he was in
no hurry like us to get inside the truck. I suppose he wanted to look well groomed if he were to drop nice, clean kids to a nice, clean school.
As soon as I saw him emerge from the back of the truck, all spruced up, he waved out to us, as though beckoning us to come closer to the truck and take a good look.
I turned to look at my kid brother and gleefully said, “Let’s go”. After all, the younger one is always the partner in crime. My elder brother was a sincere and silent spectator who was more worried about us as he kept a watch. We left our school bags on the gravel mount and rushed towards the truck.
Wide-eyed we stood, staring with curiosity and admiration at the mammoth engine that powered the massive beast of a truck.
It looked more complicated than geometry yet as simple as spoken English. To a child’s mind, the laws of complicated engineering in motion with the truck were beyond comprehension.
I’d never been this close to a truck before. The engine was overly complicated and boring for my liking. I wanted to see what it looked like from inside but first I wanted to see what it felt like watching it from close range.
Right above the engine in the front of the truck, at the top was a glow-sign that proudly proclaimed, ‘National Permit’. My admiration knew no bounds when my brother told me that the truck could go anywhere in India. Nobody would stop him for he has a national permit. It sounded so cool! Garish decorations, bright reflectors and ribbons all around, the truck sure looked majestic to three children whose excitement knew no bounds that day.
Running around the truck just to see what it looked like from all sides, it sure was a fascinating sight.
The body of the truck looked piebald with the green and blue paint adorning the orange paint. Adorned with a nameplate of the truck-owner and his contact details on one side and on the other side, just below a painting of crudely sketched mountains, proclaimed a board screaming,
’Queen of hills’.
When we finally could inspect the rear of the truck, sure as pie, there was a very loud signboard that read ‘
Horn OK Please
’. A torn shoe hung below the signboard to ward off the evil eye.
Soon, workers were done unloading the truck and started closing the rear gate. I stood silently, watching them do their work with dexterity.
Unloading over, the time had finally come to roll. The time had finally come for us to get inside a truck to see what it looked like from inside. For a child, the experience is akin to getting inside the cockpit of a large airline. Dad helped the three of us to get inside the cockpit of the truck.
The driver closed the bonnet
to cover the engine. It made a loud thud and he climbed into the truck and gunned the engine. And finally, the most awaited moment had arrived, the truck ride! I couldn’t wait to get inside the massive vehicle.
It sure looked different compared to
any other car. This was so huge! Everything inside was big, be it the steering wheel, the gear stick, the driver’s seat. It even had a bunk bed inside, pinned to the rear end of the cockpit. There were large seats to sit on and the cockpit itself felt bigger than a car.
I must admit I was a really scared child when the monstrous truck took to the road. I sat between my brothers and tightly gripped their arms and watched the world gleefully through the large windshields. The world then was so high up for me as I looked at the truck eat up the gravel path that was so down below.
Once on the move, my kid brother decided to take the helper’s place in the front. He wanted to make most of this ride and was equally excited about it. The truck’s cockpit was decorated with shiny, fluorescent colored plastic frills. Garish, yes, but that goes with the personality of the majestic vehicle itself. The front part had mirrors and sonorous, little bells. There were small, plastic flowers stuck to the dashboard with a transparent tape. Red bangles, tied with a satin ribbon, moved from side to side as the truck maneuvered through the winding roads.
