FROZEN LIMBS

"Lake Town? 10 rupaye zyaada dena hoga."

"Theek hai, chalo."

I'd have to pay 10 bucks more for the taxi ride home. It was raining and empty cabs were few and far between. The extra tenner was worth an hour's waiting, or worse, haggling.

We drove off the Park Street Flury's crossing. Traffic wasn't sparse. It was 9:00 pm and the rain swept homecoming office crowd was looking for a dry journey. I looked around, snug in my seat. The howling wind was conducting the rain orchestra.

The taxi reached the Park Circus bridge. A grizzled man with a jovial grin, the driver guided the car through the sea of vehicles and water. The grin was more of a grimace - road rage runs high with cloistered spaces and reduced visibility.

"What idiots! Why are they all in such a tearing hurry!"

I wasn't in a mood to reply. It had been a long day and I'd rather take a nap in the one hour ride home. The driver turned around to look at me. I grunted a non-committal reply.

"Yeah... everyone needs to get home."

"They do, but that doesn't mean you do it at others' expense. Think about the blessings of science that have enabled people to drive instead of walk. This doesn't mean that they zoom through like blood in arteries."

The analogy was interesting. I leaned forward from my splat-on-the-seat position. He continued talking. The conversation that followed was entirely in Hindi.

"I was listening to the news on the radio, babu. It's delhi ka fm. Sometimes it tunes itself here. I listen to it every day and read the papers too." A neatly folded copy of Sanmarg was resting behind the fare meter. "They said that a robot has been bought by doctors in Delhi - for the first time in Asia - that will be able to do biosurgery. A doctor will guide it and it will perform the finest of operations and surgeries without any errors. Just think babu, how we have progressed. A machine to operate on human beings."

"Yeah, it's amazing. Science is making progress."

"And not just progress babu, it's moving forward at a tremendous speed. Where are we going?"

I was piqued. The cabbie wasn't just passing on information he'd heard or read about. He had given it some thought.

"In the satyug, you only had to imagine yourself in one place and you would be there. In the dwapara you had to work by physical labour. And after that it's been a downhill ride. We now travel in mechanical monsters. But we are making progress. It takes two hours on a plane now instead of an instant compared to thousands of years ago."

The car had reached the ITC Shonar Bangla by now. All plans of napping forgotten, I was leaning forward intently. I was desperate to show off my two bits of knowledge in front of this illiterate, uneducated man. My philosophical bantering tends towards non-materialism and non-wealth.

"At the end of your life, it doesn't matter how much you've earned or what name you've made. What really matters is whether you've been able to make somebody happy. Anybody."

"You are right babu. The Gita says -"

"Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani"

"- yes babu. Do your duty and not expect outcomes. Don't do the job for results but for the pleasure of getting the job done..."

I stopped. This man clearly knew what he was talking about and was more than your tobacco chewing, khaini spitting, passenger refusing Nana Shaw. Nana Shaw is a stereotype of the typical Calcutta taxi driver - leaves his mark on the city and on the mind of passengers by refusing them.

"Why did you become a taxi driver?", I asked completely oblivious of how I said it.

"I've got a school in my village. I'm from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. I make enough foodgrains to last my entire family, and my brothers. And also run a school there. This taxi is just for my freedom. The 20 odd thousand Rupees I save every month goes into making the school. I started off my brother with teaching. He took the school forward. I plan to open a library for students. They walk 11 kilometres to buy books. My house in Kasba needs to be fixed. The shingles are falling in on the mud walls. But it's all for the children, babu. You said na that you need to make somebody happy?"

"Yes..... a thousand people..."

His statements weren't as random as my typing. I couldn't digest the information. This man had started a school for the village children. And not just any school, this institute had a thousand students on its roll with 13 qualified teachers registered under the State Higher Secondary Board. A man who drove someone else's cab for a living had a farm, a secondary school and burning ambition to his name. He might have been bluffing. I wouldn't know. His statements were crisp and purposeful. His voice was hard - accustomed to toil and turmoil. His message was soft. If you need to do something with life, contribute to science's robotic surgeries, make a school, make people happy - start with yourself.

The taxi had reached Lake Town.

"Bhaiyya, aap change rakh lo..." Keep the change.