Truck de India!

by Rajat Ubhaykar

  Mewa Singh, who sports a flowing grey beard, points towards one of the photos, and says, ‘That one was the first truck this workshop made. Way back in 1983!’ his stern face betraying uncharacteristic joy, and consequently disappearing in a sea of crinkles. I ask him how the workshop came to be started.

  ‘When I was thirteen years old, my mother died of cancer. We were in a lot of debt then—more than seven thousand rupees. My father was also into truck body building so I joined him in the workshop for a daily wage of two rupees. That’s where I learnt the trade. I was a good worker. The job I finished in two hours then is done in eight by the workers these days.

  ‘It took us a decade to pay back our loan, and in 1978, my father and his four brothers hired three labourers and started their own business. It was a small operation. Our home was the workshop. They would park one truck on the road outside and work on it together. At that time, truck bodies were made for around Rs 11,000 and they typically made Rs 500 on every truck they built.

  ‘Soon, they built their own workshop after taking another loan. Bricks and land were cheap then so it took only a couple of years to pay back the loan. Soon, one Bihari joined them as a worker. He brought along his fellow villagers and jaatwalas and today, the industry is completely dominated by Bihari workers.

  ‘Most of our early customers were from Punjab but we earned such a good name that Kashmiri drivers started visiting us. They would bring a truck along with them to show us the designs they wanted, and soon we became masters at the job. Today, so many competitors have sprung up in Patiala, Moga, Jira and Jalandhar, still Kashmiri drivers only come to Sirhind to have their truck built. They don’t trust anyone else.

  ‘It’s different with other states though. Haryanvi and Punjabi drivers don’t come here anymore. All they care about is the cost and not quality. Paanch-saat hazaar idhar udhar bolo, aagey bhaag jaata hai aadmi (You quote five or seven thousand more and the man moves on to a competitor).

  ‘As a result, the business is in an overall slump. It is still run by our joint family—nine families in all. But demand is low and there are too many mouths to feed. So we’re diversifying now. My brother runs a spare parts business in the same compound and I’m trying my best to accommodate my sons in other businesses.’

  While we’re in conversation, one of the NRI Sikhs I had spotted earlier marches into the workshop and approaches Mewa Singh, unmindful of the silent queue around him. He shoots annoyed glances at me, clearly wishing me away so he can discreetly speak to the boss, but I stand my ground and don’t budge from my seat.

  Then, in hushed tones, he negotiates a part-cash part-cheque deal for the truck body, and requests two weeks more to pay the full amount. ‘Pata nahi kab paise jaande hain (Don’t even realize when money slips from your hands),’ he says, pleading and joking at the same time. Mewa Singh nods serenely and hands him over a metal plate with his company name and address, a kind of visiting card in the truck body business that is finally nailed near the door of the truck cabin. But once the NRI has left, Mewa Singh makes his displeasure abundantly clear.

  ‘You see. This is my biggest problem now. Customers just don’t pay on time,’ he says, throwing up his hands in exasperation. Just then, Mr Grumpy Pink Turban walks inside and whispers something in Mewa Singh’s ears. Mewa Singh’s expression hardens and he excuses himself. They walk outside. I see no other choice but to follow them.

  Outside, I find Jora, Jagdev and Palle are already in the workshop, chatting with some of the workers. In the melee of the workshop, I had almost forgotten about them. ‘Toh kaisa laga aapko hamara Sirhind (So how did you like our very own Sirhind?)’ asks Jagdev, shaking my hand with both of his. Meanwhile, Jora skulks in the background, leaning against a truck, fidgeting with a bunch of keys in his hand.

  I tell Jagdev I’m quite taken by the place, especially Mewa Singh’s workshop. We walk to the workshop’s backyard to escape the din of the workshop. Behind the workshop is a vast government anaaj mandi (grain market). The market thuds in the twilight to the sound of de-husking machines that eject clouds of chaff— mechanical interruptions in a desert landscape covered with perfectly edible dunes of freshly harvested wheat.

  Sikh farmers with formidable beards and twirled moustaches lounge on wheat sacks in groups, guarding their pile of wheat before the Food Corporation of India buys it. In the meantime, they chew tobacco stored in packets that, judging by their cover, once contained ‘high-quality USB cable’. Some of them have been waiting for as long as ten days for their produce to be purchased. Many of the farmers are over six feet tall with ageless beards, so forbiddingly magnificent that I’m almost afraid to approach them. But when I do, they turn out to be the warmest, their faces breaking out in cute, crinkly smiles that dispel all traces of grimness. When it comes to trusting people in Punjab, I think to myself, it’s never the beard. It’s the smile hidden behind the forest of the beard. It’s a lesson worth remembering.

  It is dark by the time we explore the mandi. Jora and Jagdev lead me back to the highway. ‘Chalo aapko hamaari Accent dikhate hain (Come, we’ll show you our Accent),’ says Jora, the keys in his hands leading the way. After seeing Jora drive a truck, it’s a strangely diminished Jora I see in the driver’s seat. It is indeed a lovingly decorated vehicle, almost like a truck, with curtains and lots of bling. The pride of place, however, is occupied by an LCD screen on which Jora plays some Punjabi music videos after switching on the engine. We’re off to Jora’s house.

  Jora rents one room in the three-room house of a Bihari. A woman, her ten-year-old daughter and four-year-old son greet us in the hall. Dinner preparation is on, with the woman roasting rotis on a chulha. Jora’s is a spacious room with a sturdy bed and pastel green walls. An open cabinet with three levels is occupied by utensils, glasses and a broken ashtray. There’s a curtain near the window for times when his girlfriend is visiting. A TV and cooler form the principal material possessions. It’s oppressively hot, the ceiling fan’s not working, so Jora turns on the cooler which releases cyclonic gusts of hot wind in our faces. He adjusts the panes of the cooler to manage the flow of wind as he lights a cigarette.

  We climb onto the bed and out comes the bottle of whisky we bought earlier and some plastic glasses. We drink away into the night; the conversation increasingly veering towards Punjabi from Hindi, much to my partial incomprehension.

  ‘Ten years back, this was all farmland. Now, this is mostly a Bihari ilaaka,’ says Palle. ‘But you won’t see too many Muslims here. Most of them went over to the other side during Partition.’ It is true. The only conspicuously Muslim person I had seen in the town had been a semi-religious wandering salesman peddling medicine for the sexually deficient. Traces of its Islamic past, however, continue to persist. Sirhind is home to the popular mausoleum of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, a conservative Islamic scholar who led the orthodox charge against Akbar’s syncretic religious policies, for which he was bestowed the grand title of Mujaddid-i-Alf-i Thani or The Renovator of Islam in the Second Millennium.

  Talk turns towards their childhood shenanigans. Peering at me through the haze of smoke, Palle tells me of the time when as teenagers, he and Jora ran away from home just for the heck of it, after nicking some money from their homes. Their adventure, however, proved to be short-lived. After running out of cash, most of it spent on endless cups of tea, they trooped back home in a couple of days to the beating of their lives.

  After his third peg, Jagdev confesses he misses his family terribly during trips. ‘I’m thinking I’ll join Mewa Singh in the workshop yaar. I miss my daughter too much. This way, at least I’ll get to play with her every evening. I’m already dreading leaving day after tomorrow,’ he says, as we empty the last dregs of the whisky.

  Once we’re finished, Jora and Jagdev insist on dropping me to a cheap motel nearby. When we get there, they bargain aggressively with the receptionist on my behalf. I give them both inebriated hugs. It’s time to say goodbye. Looking at their white Accent drive
away, I feel an overwhelming sadness descend upon me. Wonder if I’ll ever see them again… I can’t believe I’m already getting nostalgic about them. The melody of ‘In My Life’ by The Beatles starts playing in my head.

  There are places I’ll remember

  All my life, though some have changed Some forever, not for better

  Some have gone and some remain

  All these places have their moments

  With lovers and friends I still can recall

  Some are dead and some are living

  In my life, I’ve loved them all

  I stagger up the motel stairs and drunkenly crash on to the rock-hard motel bed. Minutes later, I feel a mosquito settle on the side of my cheek. I swat it hard reflexively, but miss, only hurting my face in the process. It soon returns to buzz in my ear. In those last waking moments of exasperation, the only thing I can think of are Shaukat’s final words. Mosquito-free Kashmir, here I come!

  The Summer Refugees of Kashmir

  It is dark by the time I reach Jammu. I’m finally here after a long day of hitching rides with three truckers from Sirhind via Phagwara and Pathankot, a trip whose highlight was eating the best dal makhni of my life surrounded by wheat fields not far from Lovely Professional University, an experience that is as Punjabi as it can get. Palle had insisted on dropping me in the Accent to the dhaba to find my next ride and we had promised to stay in touch as we hugged each other goodbye.

  As I walk around, I notice Jammu is the sort of place where Hindu, Muslim and Sikh influences are all visible, evocative of pre-Partition Punjab, but with none of its famed communal amity. Instead, a sort of fragility is palpable here, perhaps deriving from being part of the only Muslim-majority state in India, and a sensitive one at that. I see this tense undercurrent reflected in the notice board of a Kashmiri restaurant where I enjoy excellent rogan josh. It warns, ‘Yahan siyaasi guftagoo karna mana hai (Talking about politics is strictly prohibited here).’ It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like it.

  This tension dates back to the Partition, or perhaps before, because while the violence in Punjab during Partition is well-documented, the atrocities in Jammu are lesser known. Muslims in Jammu are said to have been massacred and driven away systematically by the forces of the Dogra king in collusion with Hindus and Sikhs, some of them Sikh refugees from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir ‘who paraded the Jammu streets with their naked swords’. This was said to have been orchestrated with the intent to alter the demographics of the region, to ensure that even if Kashmir went to Pakistan, Jammu would remain with India.

  Today, there are some parts of Jammu that almost transport you to Kashmir in their architecture and layout. But while this is J&K, there is none of its promised cold. I’m still stuck in the plains. The hot weather here is indistinguishable from Punjab, and so are many of the people. They speak Dogri, a language strikingly similar to Punjabi in its cadences—it is the only other tonal language in India, an extremely rare trait among Indo-European languages, wherein the meaning of the same word or sentence changes with its tone. For instance, the word kar can mean house, hands or dandruff, depending on the tone with which it is uttered.

  I wander around the town, too tired to explore. I don’t really know what area I’m in but set out to find a room in the neighbourhood anyway. I step into a lodge. The young man at the reception looks up from the porn clip playing on his phone and grudgingly accompanies me to the room. There is nothing to recommend it except the fact that it is for Rs 300 and that it has a balcony, which can be utilized to escape the dank, musty smell of the room. The TV looks decrepit. The bed looks like all it needs to collapse is either a good WWE-style jump from the ring ropes or a single bout of vigorous sexual congress. Curiously, there’s the perfect imprint of a chappal at an impossible height on the wall, almost near the ceiling. I try to imagine the circumstances in which it could have been made, but fail. I guess some mysteries are never meant to be solved…

  The next day around noon, I set out for the Transport Nagar in Jammu. It is right by the NH44—a vast, unpaved transitory home for trucks. The sun is high up in the sky. A column of dilapidated trucks kick up an impenetrable cloud of dust, enveloping everything in a fine layer of golden brown grime. When I wipe my forehead with a handkerchief, I discover the muddy imprint of a dust-sweat admixture. The mercury has easily crossed 40°C here, much to everybody’s discomfort, and the ferocious sun is making my head throb. This must be the forewarnings of sunstroke, I think, and plod to the nearest source of liquid relief: a watermelon stand run by a Bihari from Katihar district. I feel recharged as the sweet, lightly spiced juice splashes down my throat.

  As I talk to truckers, trying to rustle up a ride, I realize that when it comes to traveling to Kashmir, the most obvious, but insurmountable challenge is its mountainous terrain. (No wonder the impression India leaves on most Kashmiri truckers is that of one vast featureless plain.) The challenge facing me right now is that there is just one single-lane road connecting the valley of Kashmir to the rest of India. This highway is Kashmir’s strategic lifeline, which means that trucks here follow a convoy system, traffic being directed from Jammu and Srinagar on alternate days. The convoy heading towards Srinagar is flagged off from Udhampur, around 80 kms from Jammu, after midnight, so truckers won’t be leaving until late evening. I have an entire, unconscionably hot afternoon to kill. Truckers can still retreat to their cabins for some shade, but me? I have nowhere.

  I walk around the Transport Nagar, explain my project to truck drivers, give them my mobile number, and implore them to call me in case they’re leaving. Some are going to Srinagar, others to Poonch. I don’t particularly care, as long as it’s not this terminal. I refuel my engine at the dhaba—some potato subji with roti— and settle down, chatting with the owner and some truckers similarly seeking shade.

  Around 3 pm, I receive an unexpected call from Farooque, one of the truckers I had passed my number to. I hadn’t really expected anyone to call and was half-prepared to spend another night in Jammu, so this is a pleasant surprise. ‘Haan, dus minute mein nikal rahe hain (We’re leaving in ten minutes),’ he says and asks me to meet him near an SBI ATM in the terminal. My heart leaps with joy. God bless this man. At this point, a blast of hot highway breeze is infinitely more preferable to drowning in my own sweat. I can’t wait to get moving, away from this stubborn heat, towards the misty mountaintops!

  Farooque is a lithe thirty-five-year-old with a nervous smile and kind, twinkling eyes, clad in drab grey trousers and a checked shirt. He mutters some prayers and looks up towards the ceiling of his cabin before turning on the engine. The route is treacherous, the roads are battered, and he needs all the supernatural assistance he can get. His truck is a sturdy red and green 6-wheeler with stylish sliding doors, the first that I have seen on a truck. It has 786 (a number used as a protective talisman among South Asian Muslims), ‘Ya Allah’ and ‘Ya Mohammad’ painted in bright colours on the front and back. The designs on the cabin interior and truck exterior are minimalistic—there are no paintings, no photos, just abstract geometric shapes etched on sunmica. The maal he’s transporting is a whole lot of urea, twenty tonnes of it, more than double his truck’s capacity of nine tonnes, to be applied on apple trees that grow in the higher reaches of the Kashmir Valley.

  The sliding doors close with an exclamatory sound and with that, we’re off, out of the dusty terminal and onto the narrow lanes of Jammu for refueling. I notice there’s no left-hand mirror on the truck, which combined with the fact that he’s driving without the help of a khalassi, makes it a doubly risky prospect. I point it out to him. He jumps out at the petrol pump and expertly fits a mirror into the socket in a jiffy.

  He tells me that he’s been driving since the last fifteen years, five of them on possibly the most dangerous road in India—the Srinagar–Leh highway. I feel instantly safer to be in such experienced hands. If he’s still alive, he must be good. This is confirmed later when I am alarmed to see him steering t
he truck with his elbow, while sipping water with his left hand and talking on the phone with his right. Not recommended at home!

  Soon, we’re on NH44, a well-paved four-lane highway with even a divider to boot. I ask Farooque if the road is this good all the way to Srinagar. He bursts into laughter. ‘You must be joking,’ he says. ‘The road’s like this only till Udhampur, for around 60–70 kms. After that, it’s terrible. The floods have damaged it even more. Even this road hasn’t been constructed by the sarkar. Private contractors have constructed this road from Jammu to Udhampur by cutting tunnels.’ Already, I am able to sense how incompetent and apathetic the government is thought to be here.

  The sun is blazing through the truck window, the hot breeze isn’t helping as much as I thought it would and I find myself daydreaming about the sylvan Kashmir of picture postcards. The Tawi River is our constant companion for some time, gleaming and twisting amid a boulder strewn landscape of stark beauty, while monkeys chatter on the bare branches of trees. The monkeys here are remarkably acclimatised to highway life—like alert Indian jaywalkers, they even look both ways before crossing the road!

  We pass diminutive temple-shrines of Sufi pir babas reputed to grant every mannat a devotee asks for. Violet and green flags on top of the shrines flutter in the wind, a sombre reminder of Kashmir’s historical association with composite Sufi culture—an accessible confluence of Islam and Hinduism. Before Islamic militancy took root in the 1980s, Kashmiri culture was known to be highly syncretic, one of the few places in the subcontinent where Sufi saints were called rishis, the most influential one being Noor ud-Din Wali or Nund Rishi who lived in the 15th century.