I'd been told the village I was headed
to would be twenty-five or thirty kilometers from the kasbah where my
family home was. I could take a bus, they said. Well, two buses. Or a
series of auto-rickshaws.
It didn't sound so bad. What was thirty
kilometers? I had forgotten though; thirty kilometers in metropolitan
cities is a whole different kettle of fish. Mumbai's local trains
maybe akin to a tin of sardines but I don't have to be in the tin for
longer than an hour. On rural Uttar Pradesh roads, it's like having
fish pressed into a series of tins over the course of two-and-a-half
or three hours, and being shaken violently all the while.
The auto-rickshaws I found were
modified vehicles. They are smaller than tempos, which seat eight or
twelve people, but slightly longer than the three-wheelers in metros,
and not much wider. The passenger seat can properly seat only three,
but four adults are squeezed in. The driver's seat is replaced by a
long seat. Here too, four adults sit, including the driver. Behind
the front seat is affixed another narrow seat. Here perch another
four passengers, facing the four who occupy the, well, the seat
that's originally meant to be the passenger seat.
Behind the passengers' seat, there is a
narrow space where two tiny seats are affixed, facing each other. Two
adults sit there. Two more passengers are taken on and they sit on
the strip of metal that serves as the body of the vehicle at the
back, which is open to the elements.
That makes for sixteen adult
passengers, every one of them more patient and in better humour than
me. I'd begun to crib as soon as four passengers were found, telling
the driver to get moving. He politely ignored me until he had all
sixteen wedged in tight.
There is an equally tight budgeting
system for local auto-rickshaw drives, and equally narrow profits. I
paid just twenty rupees for the longest stretch of my journey. Most
others paid ten, or five. There was one passenger who got on and off
mid-way, travelling a distance of two or three kilometers. She paid
only two rupees. Or tried to. The driver cursed and humiliated her -
“You think you can get into a vehicle for two rupees?” - and made
her fork over another rupee. She parted with it reluctantly.
It has been years since I last saw
someone haggle whilst trying to hold onto her dignity for a rupee. In
Delhi and Mumbai, both passenger and the cab or auto driver routinely
shrug off a few rupees for the lack of change. No wonder, I thought,
people move to Delhi or Lucknow or Mumbai. This, the heartland, the
homeland, squeezes you too hard.
The elderly woman on my right laughed
and bantered a lot though, and kept trying to strike up a
conversation. I kept saying, apologetically, that I didn't
understand. She spoke a Bhojpuri so far removed from Hindi that it
may as well have been Bangla or Marathi. She asked where I was from.
I caught the word “ghar”, home, and understood. I said, my family
belongs to these parts, actually.
The elderly woman gave me a sideways
stare. After a while, she resumed her one-sided conversation in
Bhojpuri. I gathered that she was trying to tell me the names of the
crops standing in the fields on either side. I told her, I know a
mustard field when I see one. She let out a small laugh that
suggested she didn't think I knew anything at all.
First published in The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/something-approaching-home/article22946065.ece
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