We were both really tired when we reached our compartment, and decided to sleep. There was the whole next day to chalk out some plan. Presently, what the body needed was a nice sleep to get the mind in shape, to work out yet another plan that’d bail me out of yet another crisis. I felt happy after talking to Shreya. At least she wouldn’t worry now.
As I closed my eyes, words of the song that I had written came back to me:
“There one thing you’ve got to learn,
Life’s full of twists ‘n turns,
You’ve got to breaks the rocks in the hot sun,
For the tide to turn.
If there is right, there has to be dawn.
Life goes on.”
Life was indeed brimming over with twists and turn, and that is how one has to live it. Once can’t run away from it. I waited for my dawn.
And then another song, brilliantly written by Sir Paul McCartney, made itself heard.
“When it will be right, I don’t know. What it will be like, I don’t know We live in hope of deliverance
From the darkness that surrounds us.”
There was a bang. Yet again! And yet again while I was sleeping. I was sleeping like a corpse and the sound rushed me back to life. I jumped, fearing that the stubborn bandits were back again. But to my relief, and to my friend’s entertaining, I was wrong. I saw Rajit near my ear, laughing.
“What on earth was that?” I demanded. You all by now, how much I hate being woken up, and being woken up like that, well… “That,” he said, brining his hands together, “Was this,” and then did it again… the loudest clap I had ever heard. Even when awake it sent a shiver down the body. The train which was shaking as it normally does threatened to derail. The world, I tell you, is no more a safe place to live in, when people are equipped with tools like those. I marveled at my friend’s talent. One doesn’t need guns or bombs, when one has hands clap like thunderbolts. I wondered why my friend feared those gunshots. To him those should have been no more than drops failing soothingly into a bucket. Life is strange, it proves again, full of ironies. “Man, you have got hand-grenades instead of hands!” I said, impressed.
“You got scared, didn’t you?” he asked childishly. What a waste of a question!
“Of course I got scared, I don’t live in a minefield, used to be woken up by bombs instead of alarm or cocks.”
“Good, I got you then!”
“Got me?” I said unbelievingly.
“You were acting such a hero when the bandits came in, you coward!”
“Excuse me,” I cleared my throat to clear the misunderstanding, “Courage is not defined by how you wake up to stupid sounds. Even Angulimal would’ve been shaken by your brute of a clap. Courage is about character…” my lecture on what courage was all about was nipped in the bud.
“Alright, Teesmaarkhan, I got it. I just wanted to get even.” “Even?”
“Remember how you scared me when you hung your head down like more dose, and I may have heart attack.”
“Fine! You are spared. Now get up, don’t you want to plan?” “Yes,” I said yawning, “What’s the time?”
“It is nearing eleven and I heard that we are approaching another station. Train will stop at some place called Wadi. We are about four hours late.”
I hoped down with my tooth-brush and soap, and made my way to the wash-basin. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and made my way back to the berth. Meanwhile, the train that had started losing pace finally stopped. I got out lazily to enjoy the hustle and bustle at the station. The air was cool, the atmosphere electric, and I made my way to a clod drink shop.
The station in these parts, I have already told you, is like a plash of colours, and presently on this canvas, a particular sardarji stood out. His colours, by which I allude to the colour of his clothes, struck my eyes like a ball of fire. He was busy haggling with the owner of a bookshop some fifteen meters away, with his back to me. He wore a red turban of the richest red, under it a green shirt of the richest green, and still below brown trousers, needless to say of the richest brown. In short he looked like an pluck, what he thought must be an apple. That no drunkard was in his vicinity was a thing that out sardarji must be thankful for.
With my eyes fixed on the human kaleidoscope, I asked the Pepsi Man for a bottle of the beverage, and while he produced one, I saw sardarji try to slip his purse into his trouser’s back pocket. Well, at least our sardarji, one saw, was extremely busy reading the book he had purchased, which he held in his left hand. What Sherlock Holmes must have deduced, had he been there, was that our man, no doubt a keen reader, was also a fastidious fellow, who wouldn’t like to waste time, precious as it always is, that it took for one to go from the book-stall to the train, in mere walking. He’d have also labeled our sardarji absentminded and careless, for his purse instead of going smoothly into the pocket, went smoothly out, and hit the ground with a mild thud, which was lost in the din of the station. I apprised you a para or two back of the cool breeze at the station. Presently this naughty breeze, precisely a nanosecond after the purse had landed, encouraged a stray newspaper page to fly and land on top of the purse thus concealing it from the eyes of eager thieves that prowl about at the station.
I marvelled at the scene, constructed so beautifully by the forces of nature. But having been exhorted by any mum and dadi to help fellow brothers, I didn’t stand sightseeing for long, and called out for the human palette, who had turned left towards the train with the book still in his left hand, a fat black trunk in his right, and his eyes still transfixed on the God-knows-what-lay-inthem lines.
“Sardarji,” I shouted, and at that the sardarji turned around.There comes a stage in one’s life, sooner or later, depending upon the kind of life one has led, when the goriest of horrors ceases to make an impact. The ground remains firmly beneath, the world does not go dark, and the tummy bears it all without inviting butterflies. Any lesser man, had he been in my place, would have fainted on seeing what I saw. But what this journey of mine had done, if I could put my finger on a single thing, it’d trained me to absorb the worst of the life like the good, without even the slightest bat of an eyelid. My nerves had been fully converted to steel and muscles to iron. I had shown surprise or dismay, when dealing with the previous shockers, but to this one I turned a blind eye. I drank it like a bitter medicine that had to be taken. I had to move on. Let it be the most appalling jolt of my life. It had to be dealt with.
It’s time, I guess, to give away what or rather whom I saw. I bet the first thing that’ll bump into your head, when I tell the whole thing is, “What the devil is he doing here?” and I don’t blame you at all. It was the very thing that came to my mind. It was Professor P.P. Sidhu. Don’t ask me – “How could be have arrived at such an obscure station?” I haven’t a clue. He was headed, we all remember, towards Chennai alright, but boarding the train from here? Wadi? The only thing clear, however, and which must solely concern the brave soldier, was that his adversary was right there and there was no escaping that. Pinching or slapping would have proven that I was not dreaming, but I didn’t have the time. The first thing to do on seeing him, as he looked hither and thither for the caller, was to do an about turn, the ones they taught us so well at school at the morning drills. I hated them back then, but presently a wave of appreciation swept me. How well the school trained one to face any situation! I shifted the weigh on my left foot and did a neat one-eighty degree that would have made the fussiest of brigadiers proud. I knew for sure, Pappi hadn’t spotted me the large crowd at the station. I just walked straight nonchalantly, and hid at a vantage point behind the Pepsi shop from where I could scrutinize his movements.
Lying in ambush, I saw Pappi, after his initial puzzlement at the call, proceeding towards the train. He was lost in his book once more, and moved slowly, always in danger of bumping into the hurrying and scurrying passengers. The train rested at the station for a good fifteen minutes and Pappi had all the time in the world to reach his seat. When he saw out of the danger area, I quickly moved to the book shop, and there, after letting a coin drop inconspicuously, bent and picked up the purse along with the coin. I swiftly moved back to my base, the place behind the Pappi shop.
I flipped open the purse and from its right compartment stared at me Pappi, smiling from his IIT-I card. He had an absentminded face, but a genial one. I remember telling you, he is a jovial sort of fellow, and that’s exactly how the photo depicted him. One assumes, no doubt, that the picture was from an age, when he hadn’t rubbed his shoulders with me, and his face was kind – bereft of the ruthlessness only I had seen. I felt a strange empathy for him. All his actions could be justified. He was after all soaked in what he thought was alcohol. For the first time I felt I was not on a vengeance spree with him. Hitherto, I had always seen him as an enemy but presently I didn’t. I don’t know the reason for such an attitude change. May be outside the walls of IIT it is a different life. Outside his station a policeman meets his prisoner without the same harshness.
It was no time to philosophise but to do something. I searched the purse. There were a few hundred rupee notes, some visiting cards and there was the ticket. We were traveling in the same train. I looked down and could hardly believe my eyes. I didn’t shout, didn’t flinch; just pursed my lips and knitted my brows. Bogey S – 4, seat number 43 said his ticket. Bogey S – 4, seat number 44 said mine.