A ‘feel good’ incident

It was a simple gesture, not anything great, which seemed very natural

on part of that old lady. 

I have no idea who she is. When I returned from my walk one morning,

two months back, she was picking the Parijata flowers in our front yard.

I objected to her coming inside without seeking permission. She apologised

and left.

The next morning she was standing outside the gate and when she saw me

return from my walk, she asked for my permission to come in and pick the

flowers. I told her that she may come in and take the flowers but close and

latch the gate when she leaves. Since then she has been coming everyday

to take the flowers. 

Today our maid was not well and did not report for work.  I was sweeping

the front yard when the old lady came to take the flowers. She saw me and

said “ಬಿಡಪ್ಪಾ, ನಾನು ಗುಡುಸಿ ಕೊಡ್ತೀನಿ” (leave it, i will sweep for you) stretching her

hand to take the broom from me.    

There was no need for her to do that. Maybe she felt that collecting the

flowers everyday was an obligation and wanted to do something in return.

Whatever, it felt nice and I was touched by the gesture and so, I shared

it with all of you. 

A road trip - decades old - Koppal to Bangalore

Raghunandan: Something to read, if one is so inclined ! 

I worked, rather spent time, in government hospital Koppal, Karnataka for about a year in 1980. I travelled to Bengaluru at least once a month. There was a KSRTC bus which left Koppal at 7 pm everyday, went via Hospet, Hagaribommana haLLi,(I will call it HB haLLi) and Bellary and reached Bangalore the next morning around 7am. Koppal depot buses were mostly junk and they often broke down on the way. 

One memorable day our bus left Koppal at 7pm on the dot and had a puncture at 7.25pm on the dot, before it reached Hospet. The bus had a spare tyre but no jack. The driver stood in the middle of the road trying to flag down oncoming vehicles in the hope of getting a jack on loan - bearing the risk of being run over and losing a limb or life or both - and managed to catch a good samaritan truck driver. The truck driver not only provided a jack but was also considerate enough to direct his headlights towards the work spot for illumination! After changing the tyre, we reached Hospet. 

We gathered more passengers at Hospet and left an hour behind schedule. The bus was somewhere near HB haLLi when the radiator fan belt broke. Of course KSRTC buses do not carry a spare fan belt. The conductor was expected to take a lift in any passing vehicle to Hospet and bring a fan belt back. Now it was past nine and there were not many vehicles on the road barring a bullock cart or a tractor headed towards the next village. 

I was cursing the bus, the KSRTC and myself (for having decided to travel that day) when another bullock cart came along. A bullock cart, of course, is pulled by a bullock and a rope called a ‘KaNNi hagga’ (kannada) is used to secure the animal to the cart. This rope is supposed to be very strong and the cart will not function without the rope. So, the carts usually have a spare rope on them. 

Suddenly our driver had a bright idea. He stopped the cart and requested the cart driver to part with his rope. But the cart driver was reluctant. The bus driver enlisted a pregnant lady, two mothers with infants in their arms and a pair of turbaned old heads who were in the bus to support his request and the emotional blackmail worked ! The cart fellow relented and parted with his rope. Having obtained a flickering torch from one of the passengers, the driver went to work and fashioned a fan belt out of the kaNNi hagga. And it worked too ! The improvised ‘fan belt’ would slip out of place every few kilometers but after our driver replaced it twice, everyone in the front row had learnt the trick and the ‘belt’ could be put back in place in minutes. The rope held and we reached Bellary after midnight. We woke up the night duty mechanics at Bellary KSRTC depot who had made themselves as comfortable as possible on spare seats, tyres and tubes, got the fan belt replaced and continued our journey. 

It was just before Hiriyuru that the headlight conked off. But that was not a big problem. It was only an hour before daylight and we simply parked the bus by the side of the road and prayed to the sun god to rise a bit early. He was probably sound asleep and didn’t hear our prayer. But he did rise at his usual time. That was good enough for us. We thanked him and proceeded towards Tumkur. 

We were about eight kms away from Tumkur when the driver noticed that the engine was getting heated up. There was no water in the radiator. KaNNihagga had served the engine to the best of its abilities but it was not a fan belt. So, the radiator had reacted to the insult that it had suffered earlier and was hot with rage. It needed water. Four decades back, nobody had heard of ‘Bisleri’. It was only ‘Kaaveri’. That was not a time when every passenger had a plastic bottle filled with water, but it was a time when there were agricultural fields by the side of the highway. There were farmers on the fields and they had a house and a well. One obliging farmer allowed the use of his well and also provided a rope and a bucket. Radiator water was replenished and the bus reached Bengaluru, sorry Bangalore without any more trouble just about half a day behind schedule. 

I wrote this as a satirical piece to highlight the delay that was happening to a proposed activity in one of my friend circles. People cited some or the other reason for the delay in carrying out their tasks and this was supposed to poke them. It was received with good humour though it did not make any difference to the task ! Since I received a good reaction from my friends, I thought that it may make a good weekend reading and posted it here.