The remover of obstacles
I looked around me in quiet desperation. The monsoon downpour was torrential. Cars, trucks, buses, auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, passengers, and pedestrians were crushed together, bumper to bumper, cheek to jowl, in a mish mash of metal, glass and humanity. I lowered the window and was greeted by slanting sheets of rainwater and a cacophony of beeps, toots, and honks, as angry drivers gave vent to their frustrations by gesturing violently and hurling expletives at each other while banging on their horns. Ankle-deep water gushed down the road, scurrying in rivulets around the vehicles and stranded pedestrians, in a hurry to get away from the madness and the chaos. A paanwallah ensconced in his tiny ramshackle tin-roofed hut on the footpath with his array of betel-nut leaves, tobacco, and miscellaneous ingredients neatly arranged on a tray before him, gazed impassively at the scene.
‘Sir, it’s a puncture, will need to change the tyre.’, said the driver. His teeth were yellow, the insides of his lips were deep red, as was his tongue, stained by years of paan and tobacco consumption. In the twenty minutes since we had left the airport, he had been laconic and grumpy. He was apologetic now. From the Hindi he spoke and the way he spoke it, I deduced he was from the north of the country. I’m not an expert in languages and dialects, but if I were asked to place a pin on a map, I’d wander North and East and plonk my index finger in an area straddling Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The lady at the pre-paid taxi counter at the airport had offered me a choice between an airconditioned cool-cab and a non-AC taxi. I had opted for the latter and cursed silently fifteen minutes later when I climbed into a thirty-year old Maruti-Suzuki van. The vehicle was on life support; something was going to give imminently, the engine croaked, the doors rattled, the paintwork had lost the battle to rust, the interiors reeked of cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, sweat, stress, and strife. As we left the highway behind us and took the Andheri flyover exit, we heard the crunch and wobbling of the tyre to the rear-left and we knew its day had arrived.
‘Sir, it’s a puncture, will need to change the tyre.’, said the drenched driver as he returned to the car after having quickly exited to survey the damage. The only catch was that he didn’t have a spare tyre. I didn’t need to turn around and look at the backseat to remind myself that there were two big suitcases there, each weighing twenty-three kilos. The bulky backpack on my lap contained, among other things, two laptops, an iPad, my mobile phone, and my travel documents. I realised absentmindedly there must be a leak in the car, as my shoes were wet and not being waterproof, the dampness had seeped through to my socks. Perfect. Just bloody perfect.
When it absolutely needs to and is called upon to do so, the human brain can work at lightning speed. It took mine a second to survey our circumstances and complete an assessment of our situation. It didn’t look good. We were bang in the middle of a vast traffic jam, hemmed in on all sides, as the coagulated mass of vehicles edged forward ever so slowly. This was my first trip to Mumbai in three years. The monsoons could be fierce, the downpour that we found ourselves stranded in, the vehemence of it, was a good representative demonstration. We were headed to my parents’ flat and that was twenty minutes away, under normal traffic conditions. There wasn’t a vacant taxi in sight, I wasn’t expecting one. Calling an Uber was out of the question, unless they had an option to parachute a vehicle in or fly in a drone that could airlift me to higher ground. I could just wait in the car for the rain to pass and the traffic to subside, but looking at the ominously pregnant and dark clouds, I realised this could be a long wait. The only other option available to me, it seemed, was to alight from the car, with luggage in tow, and hang around until the rain abated and the traffic ebbed and chance upon an empty cab. I was glad to be alone on this journey. Having my wife and two young daughters with me at this juncture would have been a disaster. I shuddered at the thought.
Without warning or an explanation, the taxi driver jumped out of the car and plunged into the heaving mass of iron, steel, and glass. I stared hard through the sheets of rain. He was nowhere to be seen, disappeared without a trace. Stranded and abandoned, my heart pounded faster, a thin film of moisture lined my forehead and palms, and I knew it wasn’t just the stifling humidity.
Lord Ganesha sat cross legged on the dashboard. The miniature statue of the deity was colourful and intricate in detail. His eyes were small and close to each other. The upper lobes of his large ears were pointed. His torso and substantial belly were bare. A yellow cloth covered the lower part of his body. He held a broken tusk in His right hand, its pointed end was black, presumably dipped in ink. He held a book in His left hand. The flourish of the other tusk was magnificent and pointed directly at the driver. A tiny grey mouse with a pointed tail and inquisitive eyes lay at His feet and looked up subserviently at his lord and master. Ganesha’s flamboyant trunk was pointed at me, and my gaze followed it from its tip to its base, to the lips that were curled in a peaceful smile and from there back to its eyes that were regarding me with a look of tranquillity and mild amusement. I was transfixed. It seemed to me that there was an oasis of calm beyond those tiny eyes. The wall of sound, the vehicles, the pedestrians, cyclists, the sheets of rain, the chaos — they receded in the background. I was alone. But not stranded and abandoned. The knots in my brain began to loosen. My clouded vision began to clear. The pounding of the heart reduced to a drumming.
The sound of urgent knocking on my window yanked me back to my present reality, in full technicolour vision and Dolby stereo. I turned to see it was the taxi-driver. He was speaking loudly, but the words were lost in the din, and I could not decipher what he was trying to say. He pointed to something peremptorily and gestured for me to alight from the car.
I opened the door.
‘Sir, come Sir, I found a rickshaw for you,’ shouted the erstwhile brusque taxi-driver, pointing to a three-wheeler parked in front of us.
In less than sixty seconds, between us, we heaved the suitcases into the cosy confines of the auto-rickshaw. The rickshaw driver turned around and for a moment, I thought he was going to object about the excessive luggage and refuse my custom. The taxi-driver patted him on the back, I rattled off the name of the neighbourhood we were headed to, and he smiled, nodded his head from side to side, revved the engines, and off we went. Ducking my head outside the opening of the rickshaw, I looked back through the sheets of rain and waved to the taxi-driver, who gave me a thumbs-up and waved back.
I reclined and felt the moisture-laden wind whistle past my ears and ruffle my hair. The myriad sounds and smells of Mumbai washed over me. Not unlike an F1 driver on the Monaco street circuit, albeit at an altogether different level of speed and performance, the rickshaw driver wove his way through traffic, swerving here, darting there, halting, jerking, accelerating, swearing, and cursing. The downpour had stepped up in intensity. On either side of me, the thick tarpaulin sheets draping the openings provided some protection. The driver leaned forward and frantically twisted a knob repeatedly, clockwise, and then anticlockwise, as the manual wiper struggled to keep up with rain, as it lashed against the windscreen.
Just below the knob on the dashboard sat a familiar figure. This time the book was missing, and He didn’t brandish a broken tusk. The right palm was flat and raised at shoulder height. There was an impish gleam to the eyes, which as before, were narrowly located on either side of the base of the trunk and appraised me teasingly. I felt the corners of my lips twitch and curl into a smile.
With the Remover of Obstacles by my side, I realised that all I had to do was go with the flow. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to be guided through the metropolitan quagmire to my destination.
