It was a morning bright with warmth and promise when I ambled, newspaper in hand and the just collected mail in my bag, down ‘The Mall’ for a reviving cup of coffee. Sipping the hot nectar whilst browsing the news, after going through the mail, is usually a very pleasant experience, one to be savoured and stretched out at leisure but, unfortunately, this was not to be.
An overweight, loud young man plonked himself down at the adjacent table and immediately tried to strike up a conversation — I ignored him and continued reading. After three failed attempts he invited himself, unasked and unwanted, to sit at my table and tried to insinuate himself from close quarters to which, naturally, I objected. When his voluble, rather suggestive innuendos got out of hand, he, on my request, was shown the door and I heaved a sigh of relief which was, as it turned out, premature as the idiot was waiting outside for me to emerge.
His persistent pestering became more and more annoying as I walked back up The Mall towards where my cab was waiting and twice I took refuge in shops where, as I am known, shopkeepers were all too happy to tell the obnoxious male to move on ‘or else’. He, however, had other ideas and followed in my wake almost to the police barrier in G.P.O. Chawk where I, knowing the policemen on duty took matters into my own hands. Yes — I could simply have had him picked up and given a dressing down for harassing me but I had a better idea!
Having already observed that the pest had somehow managed to park his car — he had offered me a lift — in a pedestrian no-parking zone, I pointed this out to the police who, without hesitation, sent a forklift to remove it from the scene and the persistent idiot was last seen running after it, yelling ‘Meri gari. Meri gari’ while I and other bystanders laughed out loud. There is always more than one way to skin a cat!
I was still laughing, indeed the idiot was still running after his uplifted car and no doubt panicking at the thought of how much cash he would have to cough up to get his wheels back, when the next unexpected event ‘happened’. A very large, very ostentatious, metallic green four-wheeler bearing government plates drove up the closed Mall, halted for the police to raise the barrier and let it out when, from an open back window, someone threw a handful of empty juice cartons on the road almost at my feet. Without hesitation I swooped, picked them up and tossed them back inside, shocking the overstuffed begums inside in the process.
Politely, although biting my tongue was hard, I explained how garbage bins had been provided by the municipality and that they should please use them for the sake of all living things and cleanliness of the environment in general. Their initial dumfounded reaction degenerated to arrogant scorn as the one nearest the window puffed out her chest and declared, “My husband is in the government and I will throw my garbage wherever I please” at which juncture, she threw the cartons back out onto the road and I exploded in anger.
Picking the offending items up for the second time I hurled them, with force, right back inside the vehicle and let rip with a battery of choice Punjabi expletives I rarely have occasion to use but this situation warranted whatever I could dredge up from memory and, as the vehicle’s occupants turned a deep shade of horrified purple, I let them know what I think of people like them and of the government they purportedly represent and then, with steam coming out of my ears, I headed for home where, since morning, the power had been off.
To cut a long story short, I ended daylight hours sitting on top of a mountain, leaning against a stinking buffalo, laptop balanced on my knees, until black clouds of rolling thunder and flashing lightening eventually sent me racing for the calm, cool safety of that wonderful place called home!