Travails with Chachi

by Louise Fernandes Khurshid

  I was delighted to have a case to argue that night. But something still bothered me. He said that two-wheelers are the second highest to blame. Which or whom were the first? Aha! Here was the catch. It seems that the highest percentage of victims − almost 52 per cent − were pedestrians. And though my savari tried to argue till he was blue in the face, I was not so confident Bablu would accept any claim that these pedestrians were not victims of Redline buses!!

  Chachi, who all this time drove along with a minimum number of bumps and grinds, suddenly started to burp loudly. ‘I told you that exhaust of yours spells trouble,’ the babu said. I didn’t tell him that that’s Chachi’s way of expressing her disapproval and disbelief. Having been a victim of a Redline broadside, this is a very sensitive topic for her.

  In fact, anything ‘red’ makes her tail go into a spin.

  For instance, she and I have this running battle going on with the Delhi traffic lights. She is convinced that they are collectively conspiring against her. They almost to pander to her paranoia; turn red each time we approach. In my kinder moments I suggest that this may be a sign that she should slow down somewhat. After 20 years on the Delhi roads her gears have started to grind; her lights have started to dim and, my passengers tell me, her shock absorbers leave a lot to be desired. The museebat, the trouble is that every time I start to have this conversation with Chachi, Bablu ki Ma tells me to stop talking to myself and concentrate on making some money. The little lady is convinced that ‘red’ will be the permanent colour of our bank account.

  When she does this, Chachi seems to wink at me. She is used to this situation. ‘In the red’ is what her former owner, a Supreme Court lawyer, used to be when he did case upon case either free or at a discount. My own situation is not much better. Whatever I make on the firangis is evened out by my UP politician friend, Trivediji, who keeps telling me he’ll pay me double when he becomes a minister and ‘income opportunities automatically widen,’ whatever that is supposed to mean. My worry is that his party’s current tally in UP, like my bank account, is very much in the red! And with little sign of improvement.

  Sitting there, in one of Delhi’s typical traffic jams, surrounded by those little red mosquitoes they call ‘Marutis’, with Chachi getting red in the face and back-firing in protest, makes me think of the infinite variety of words and meanings that spin off from the word ‘red’, some of which make sense, others which don’t.

  For instance, it makes sense to talk of catching a crook ‘red-handed’. Bablu tells me the expression comes from the act of catching a person with his hands covered with the victim’s blood. But have you wondered why, when ‘Reds’ is an accepted term to describe Communists, the Chinese should be described as ‘Yellow’?

  When you are ‘in the red’ it means you are in dangerous financial trouble. When you are ‘seeing red’ you are dangerously angry. When a bull finds a ‘red rag’ waving in front of him the bullfighter is in danger of losing more than his cape. More appropriate, in our country, when a bureaucrat binds your file with ‘red tape’ that spells disaster − in the form of long delays − for your business. So ‘red,’ therefore, is a colour of danger, of alarm. Right?

  How, then, do you account for the ‘Red Cross’ being an emblem of peace and neutrality in war? Or a ‘red blood corpuscle’ being the saviour whereas the white cell is the dangerous one? And surely a ‘Red Hat’ − the term used to describe a Roman Catholic cardinal (from the wide-brimmed flat red hat presented to new cardinals by the Pope) cannot be considered a dangerous man?

  ‘Red’, as in the signals that plague Chachi, is supposed to denote a warning: to stop. Isn’t it ironic, then, that one should use the expression: ‘Red light district’ to describe the one area where all signals are green?

  21

  THE HERITAGE HUNGAMA

  INTERESTINGLY IT TOOK JUST A WEEK FOR BABLU TO FIND another ‘cause’ to agitate about. The enthusiasm (and fickle-mindedness!) of youth! He came home that afternoon, very excited. ‘Arre kya hua?’ his friend Tiplu asked. ‘Ladki ne puppy diya kya?’

  Bablu ki Ma’s antennae went up. ‘Puppy? You will not keep another puppy in the house,’ she shouted. ‘Not even if your girlfriend gave it to you!’

  I thought it best not to explain that Tiplu, the little harami, was referring to a kiss and not an animal. And besides, Bablu’s excitement was yet to be explained.

  It seems he was going to join a bunch of his friends in a dharna to protest against some people deliberately harming our heritage. ‘What have they done that’s so bad?’ his mother wanted to know. And whose heritage were we talking about? Any harm to our immediate Yadav family heritage would necessarily involve depleting the grass on which our jath wallahs’ cows graze. But then, all those cows and bulls they direct towards Delhi’s green belt from the neighbouring laal dora areas were done clandestinely anyway. So that could not be the problem.

  What, then, was the problem about?

  The outrage was against some people wanting to hold a beauty contest on the lawns of one of our so-called protected monuments. ‘It’s just as bad as having a tamasha on the lawns of the Mata ka Mandir, Ma,’ he cleverly explained to his mother, with an example (not quite appropriate, I thought), which would agitate her the most.

  ‘Tauba! Tauba,’ the little lady exclaimed. ‘What will they think of next?’

  ‘Didn’t someone else also try such a thing in the Lodhi Gardens?’ I enquired aloud. Bablu reminded me that there was this lady called Ritu Beri who ran into trouble when she tried to arrange a fashion show in the shadow of the Lodhi tombs. Art collectors and arty columnists had protested so loud that the poor lady had to retreat, at the very last minute, to some other inconvenient location.

  This made little sense to me. I was told the lady had all the valid permissions − from none less than the Archaeological Survey of India and through none less than the son of the Cabinet minister under whose ministry the Survey survived. Where then was the hitch? And these art collectors and arty columnists who got their pants in a twist about a one-off session of beautiful men and women showing off beautiful clothes against a beautiful background − wasn’t it people of their own kind who had taken the unspoiled, chaotic beauty of the Hauz Khas village and turned it into some kind of three-ringed circus?

  ‘Oh Papa, you’re so cool!’ Bablu exclaimed. ‘This is exactly what our dharna is about.’ It seems this working couple, Naveen and Manju Sharma, whose kids went to school with Bablu, were planning to organize a protest against the wholesale misuse of the ancient monuments in the area. ‘Papa, you should see how badly they have mutilated and desecrated the tombs in the area,’ Bablu said. (What big words these children use, I thought, getting more and more impressed with Bablu’s vocabulary.)

  In a sudden fit I said, ‘Let’s all of us join the protest.’

  Bablu ki Ma was thrilled. Anything for an adventure. But not for her the hunger strikes of protest. When the day came for the dharna she insisted on going armed with a tiffin carrier full of alu ka parathas and three flasks of bel pathar ka sherbet.

  Chachi, too, seemed to approve the exercise. She drove straight to the Hauz Khas village without backfiring. But when we got there her dismay could not be concealed. Where was the open space where she used to rest her tyres while my cousin (who used to own a dairy in the area) and I bubbled through a hookah and caught flies with our bare hands? All she could see was fancy furniture where the charpoy used to rest and leather cow puppets and stuffed camels where Gowri and Laksmi, Ajit Pal’s prize Jersey cows, used to chew the cud.

  We had to walk in a single file through a maze of curio and gift stores catering directly to the firangi tourist, down a dark passage and then out into what was once a flourishing talaab. The water had obviously long since dried up in the natural tank − though Bablu darkly hinted that there might have been some human help in that direction.

  I must admit my concern at seeing modern brick and mortar unashamedly slammed against the ancient
tomb walls. Worse still was the sight of cola bottles thrown carelessly on the ancient stomping grounds after some particularly lavish NRI wedding. The little lady kept muttering, ‘Tauba, tauba, ye kya zamana hai!” And I could see why. In the debris of the empty bottles lay the legend: ‘Montu weds Sweety’, engraved elaborately on a giant block of melting ice.

  That would melt by nightfall. But would the similar inscriptions carelessly scratched on the surface of the largest and prettiest domes of the tomb, ever go away? Indeed, tauba, tauba!

  My friend from the taxi stand, Murli, had accompanied us. I thought he would get smug and make his usual remarks about us ‘uncivilized North Indians’. But not so this time. It seems Murli had his own bad experiences back home in the South. He told us of the time when he drove this firangi to Hampi in Karnataka − the ruins of the once glorious Vijayanagar Empire. His passenger, an amateur archaeologist, had been horrified to note that one of the main gopurams in the area had actually been whitewashed! And, worse still, that this had been organized not by some ignorant local bureaucrat or temple priest but by the Archaeological Survey of India chaps themselves! When they went to the area, which housed the Queen’s Bath and saw the inscriptions on the walls the firangi’s agitation had increased. Original inscriptions had long given way to much the same abuse that the Hauz Khas tomb now saw. Except that while these said ‘Ranju loves Ranjeeta’ those said ‘Sudershan loves Sharda’. Big deal of a difference!

  The firangi didn’t take the abuse lying down. He made elaborate sketches and took rolls of photographs that he blew up and then sent to some organization called INTACH, which, the man said, was supposed to be India’s premier heritage watch-body. It was a very frustrated and disillusioned man that Murli drove to the airport when he finally left India. It seems these INTACH fellows had not even bothered to reply!

  ‘Okay, so the INTACH chaps didn’t respond then. Why not give them another chance? Or what about the Central Government? Surely there must be someone who could respond to the challenge of this problem? And, what about our local administration? You must admit that, at least in the Ritu Beri business, they were very responsive,’ I volunteered. Much as I opposed their policies, I had to concede that the local BJP administration had risen magnificently to the occasion and at least cancelled the Ritu Beri show. Perhaps they could be called upon to do the same with the licenses of the stores and restaurants that were parasites on the ancient Hauz Khas tombs? Had the Sharma couple examined that option?

  There was a moment of silence. And then two pairs of eyebrows went up together. And I understood their distress.

  Was it any good appealing to a Central Government, which, even in this day and age, housed an interrogation (and some say, torture) centre within the confines of the magnificent Red Fort? And was it any good appealing to a local government headed by a party, which prided itself on destroying a 450-year-old historical monument at Ayodhya?

  22

  THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

  ‘THESE ARE SAD TIMES, THESE ARE BAD TIMES,’ MUTTERED THE little lady as we trudged back from the heritage hungama. She was pleased that her alu ka parathas and bel pathar ka sherbet had been appreciated. But the reminder of that monumental disaster at Ayodhya troubled her no end.

  Now, Bablu ki Ma, as I’ve told you before, is a very religious person. Almost fanatical about her puja and her daily aarti and ‘doing the right thing’ on religious occasions. But this was a time when even she had started to have doubts. I remember she had insisted on contributing money to buy one of those shilanyas bricks − much to my disapproval. But she had started to have doubts long before Sakshi Maharaj boasted of aiming the first hammer at the Babri Masjid. I could sense the discomfort when L. K. Advani started riding around in a converted Toyota, claiming it to be a ‘Ram Rath’. Then when reports started appearing in the press about where all those shilanyas bricks were going − some of them silver and gold − and questions were being asked whether the RSS and others collecting money for these bricks were paying the proper income tax, etc. – she started to ask questions herself.

  And when the television networks started showing footage of savage youth running amok at Ayodhya, Bablu ki Ma cried ‘Shame’ long before Vajpayeeji echoed those words in Parliament.

  So when Akbar Pasha, our new colleague at the taxi stand, came to work one day wearing a black band around his forearm, the little lady, who was coincidentally visiting, understood his pain immediately. We men were a little slower on the uptake, not being automatically tuned into the more sensitive side of life.

  ‘Ki gal hai?’ Gurcharan asked. ‘Ghar wich sub theek thak nahi hain kya?’ (What’s the matter? Is everything okay at home?) Pasha looked angry, not sorrowful. It was obvious we were not looking at a death in the family. So what, then, was the protest about?

  Before I could voice another question Akbar picked up the morning copy of Jansatta and pointed accusingly at the headline. And even as we read the sinister news, my worried wife rushed up to him and asked: What was he doing about his family’s safety. And, almost as an echo, came a call from a worried Akbar’s wife, telephoning from the STD booth outside the famous Mahim Church in Bombay. What was he doing about the family’s safety?

  Dadu, who was spending a few days with us and who had come along with Bablu ki Dadi, shook his head despairingly and said, ‘Kya zamana hai! Ek waqt tha jab Haseen Khan jaise logon ne Advani jaise log ko marte marte bacha liya. Ab Advani ke aulad Khan Saheb ke aulad ko bandook dikha rahe hai! Kya zamana hai!’

  Murli, whose Hindi is minimal, looked obviously puzzled. So Bablu, who had accompanied Dadu, volunteered to translate. He explained that Dadu was referring to the numerous instances in the bloodier moments of the Partition when Muslims born and brought up in the Hindi heartland had saved the lives of Hindu refugees from across the newly created border, including people from Sindh − from where the forefathers of the BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani had originally migrated to India. ‘What right, then, do these BJP wallahs in Bombay have to talk about throwing out people who came from across the border?’ Murli asked. We had no answer.

  As we pondered over the problem a call came in from the BJP headquarters for the use of one of our taxis. A group of three politicians wanted to travel to Sariska National Park for the weekend. In the mood we were, none seemed particularly keen to respond. Murli said there was no way he would drive around people who were threatening to throw South Indians out of Maharashtra. Gurcharan said, ‘I know Advaniji’s campaign in 1989 was endorsed by our own great Sikh writer, Khushwant Singh. But, bhai, if today the target is the Muslims, then there is no guarantee that tomorrow it won’t be our turn.’ Of course none even suggested that Akbar Pasha did the job. And so that left only yours truly. What could I do? Well, I didn’t bother to wash Chachi that morning − which was my form of protest.

  The trio was all ready and waiting for me − all impeccably dressed in starched dhotis with silk kurtas and saffron angochas draped around their necks. I asked them whether they were going to a strategy session, just like the late Shri Rajiv Gandhi had when he transported his entire Cabinet to Sariska. They looked suspiciously at me and did not immediately answer. But when we passed the Mata ka Mandir and I bowed my head in reverence, I felt a distinct level of approval. ‘We have a special mission,’ the junior-most of the lot whispered. ‘If Rajaji and Rajiv Gandhi and J. Jayalalithaa can have game sanctuaries named after them then why not our own beloved Bal Thackeray − the only real tiger left in the country?’

  While he spoke one companion turned the combination of his bulky suitcase and reverentially pulled out a photograph. The other immediately extended his hand in a ‘Heil Hitler’-like gesture and then all three bowed their heads in one-minute silence.

  Just then we passed a missionary school where tiny tots in neat uniforms lined up for morning assembly. And, ironically, while my passengers turned their heads away, with what seemed to be disgust, over the street noises and Chachi’s backfiring, I thought I heard
the children chant: ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night ….’

  From their accent and their speech (they kept saying things like ‘koi lafda nahi hona hai’ and ‘barobar, barobar’) I thought my savaris were Shiv Sena chaps from Bombay. I first restrained myself, but then the disquiet building up got the better of me. I had to speak. However, even before I could start, one fellow said: ‘We are now far from headquarters. There is no one watching us. And this taxi driver fellow seems harmless enough. Now we can really talk.’

  I was intrigued. Even more so when the other said, ‘Arre bhai, gazab ho gaya hai. Ab UP walon ka burra haal hoga.’ This just did not make sense. This was fairly standard UP zaban, standard speech. These were no Shiv Sainiks. They weren’t even from Bombay!

  It turned out one was from Kanpur, one from Meerut and the third − what a coincidence − from my own neck of the woods of Etawah! That made me bold. I said, ‘Why all the pretence? Why all the Maharashtrian chauvanistic slogans of “Jai Chhatrapati Shivaji ki, jai!?”’

  My new friend’s sheepishness was soon replaced by worry. They − all three apparently top ideologues of the BJP − had a major problem. Their plans had backfired drastically. The original idea was to ride on the back of the Shiv Sena into Bombay’s Mantralay and from that leapfrog into our capital’s South Block. It all seemed so easy. Muslims, who swayed the balance in a significant number of constituencies, were so tied up with TADA tape that they had sworn to vote for Shiv Sena rather than the Congress. Within the Congress itself there were as many factions as grapes bunches in their famous Pune vineyards. Meanwhile, on paper at least, the Shiv Sena and the BJP’s political horoscopes seemed to match.