A Glass Window!

Anybody born with ten left thumbs would undoubtedly agree with me, that it’s truly a catastrophe, if one of the four, on-duty, wheels of your car gives up on you. It is even more so, if it happens a Sunday morning, just when you are about to leave for your weekly, early morning, drive with your son, a ritual both of you await eagerly all week.

Its fun, the years between you just melt away and both of you become eleven year olds. Achyut is twelve and has to grow a bit younger to match my age.

Its fun, also, because we leave the ladies; his mother, my wife, his sister, my daughter, and the mobile behind at home. Guys can never have real fun in the company of females. They are such spoilsports. They disapprove, whatever their age (we tried taking his sis along, once),of a grown up man driving, with his son sitting in his lap, more so, when the son is holding the steering and the father a soft drink, which both are sipping. They think you are being silly, which is generally the idea.

“Go get somebody from that corner puncture shop,” I asked the domestic help, even as Achyut groaned in dismay and went inside to complete his homework. I picked up the papers to hide my own disappointment.

It was the yawing creak of the boot of the car, that made me look up. There he was, Achyut, yanking out the fifth wheel from its womb.

No! Actually it was someone else, but he could well have been his twin; the same lean, scrawny looks, uncut, disheveled hair, and age.

I walked up to him. “They have sent you?” He nodded, as he quickly sat dawn on his haunches and began to feel the underside of the car for a place to put the jack.

I stood by and saw him exert every nonexistent muscle in his body to turn the jack over, again and again. The task done, he took a breather, wiping his brow.

I took the opportunity to ask him, “How much do they give you?” “Fifty Rupees,” he replied evenly, casually, at ease, Income tax returns were the least of his worries.

“Every day?” I probed further, as I helped him lift the replacement tyre a bit, so that its holes were perfectly aligned to those of the denuded metal wheel of the car.

“No, every week,” said he, in the same flat, unemotional tone, as he began to expertly screw on, the first of the four screws. I noticed that his fingers were no bigger than those of my son’s, whose hand I just adore to hold.

He stood up, and began to heave at one of the screws with the help of a lever. The car was still sitting high on the jack, resembling a lame duck. I was still on my knees.

“Do you go to school?” He nodded, “Anu public.”

“Grade?” “Five.” I was about to say, “Same as Achyut,” but he gave a mighty jerk to the lever, putting his full twenty odd kilos behind it. As a result, the jack tilted at an angle.

“Hey!!” I yelled, as I hurriedly got up. The car was about to slip off the jack. It would have slammed down on a wheel whose screws were still loose.

Without a word, and in almost perfect synchronization to my upward movement, he went down, and put his tiny hands on the jack, trying to straighten it.

“Leave it,” I said, “you will hurt yourself!”

He ignored me and instead, started unwinding the jack, allowing the car to come down gently and rest on its wheel.

It then took him but a minute to tighten the screws, hard.

The shop from where he had come is almost a kilometer or so away from my residence. Unwilling to send him lugging a flat wheel all the way, I signaled him to put it in the boot and called Achyut out.

“I forgot to pull the hand brakes,” he said a trifle sheepishly as I eased the car out of my house. “Yeah,” said I, embarrassed that I did not check.

“When do you come to the shop?” I took the interrogation further. “At two, after school.”

“Isn’t Sunday off?” “No, no off days, but Sunday is payday!”

I braked the car. We were there. I slipped him a fifty. “This is for you, don’t tell any body!” I winked; he winked back, sagely, unsmiling. Did he ever smile?

I glanced at Achyut. He was fiddling with the car AC, trying to increase the blast of chilled air, I looked at the boy, now outside the car. He was already bent on the ailing wheel, trying to pull its tube out; the two were completely, even blissfully unaware of each other, as if the other did not exist.

There was just a glass window between them, but it was rolled up, tight.

I wondered at the way the Indias that coexist in one nation. Calmly they keep out of each others way, like planets dutifully adhering to their respective orbits.

But the Universe, vast as it is, is getting progressively crowded. There are other, newer planets, zooming around, fighting for survival, how long, how long, before they crash? How long, before the tiny, islands of prosperity, are swamped by the huge cesspools of poverty ,denial, and inequity that surround them? Are we doing enough to prevent it? Is mere legislation enough? Can a Nation afford to smile, till it hears the laughter of its children, all of them , jingle in the air?