Like most little children, I was also terrified of walking into dark rooms as a kid. I could see ghosts jeering from within, their shining green eyes winking and making faces at me. It was as if they had been hiding under the cot all day, to jump out and scare the wits out of me when the night fell. I would whine and plead till some elder at home accompanied me and switched on the lights. Even after the lights were switched on, I wouldn’t breathe normal until I had double checked for the possibility of a hidden monster in the room. Home alone one fateful night, I was forced to muster enough courage and venture into a dark room alone. Trembling like a leaf, I peeped into the room. And indeed, several green eyed monsters were dancing inside the room! I watched in horror. After the initial shock, I realised that the silly ghosts were actually dancing quite well. Curiosity got the better of me and my tiny steps treaded in for a better view. Their dance was so mesmerising that I stood amazed, forgetting the dark room and everything else happening around me. After a few minutes I realised my green eyed monsters were nothing but innocent little fireflies doing a jig. From that day on, I would look for my dancing friends in every dark room. Dark rooms had suddenly gotten interesting!
There were many more figurative dark rooms to be confronted with in life. And all of them had
something as beautiful as the firefly in store for me. Chennai was one of them. A city and people that can love you boundlessly if you aren’t prejudiced about either.
The first time I went to live in Chennai as an undergraduate fresher, I only had prejudices about the city. And they were all reaffirmed by a receiving committee of shady looking auto rickshaw drivers trying to snatch away our luggage. Well, they were not thieves but men trying to get a passenger whom they could charge hilariously high. No one who has visited Chennai even once would dare forget its ‘automen’! But a few days in Chennai teaches you how to deal with them. A typical conversation with an auto driver on any given day or time goes this way:
Passenger: Anna, T Nagar Povingala?
(Will you go to T Nagar?)
Auto Driver: 300 rupees ma
(You will have to pay 300 bucks for the ride.)
Passenger: 300 va? Naan nethu kude ponene... 150 rupees kodukiren.
(What? 300 bucks? No way! I just took a rick there yesterday. I will pay only 150 bucks.)
Auto Driver: 150 va... (guffawing at you) 250 kodunge
(150? I’ll go for 250 bucks.)
Passenger: 200 na vange
(200 bucks is the maximum I will pay.)
Auto Driver: Aerunge... (mumbling under his breath)
(Whatever... hop on!)
After the ritual, you think you have struck a great bargain and the auto driver thinks he has made some smart profit. All the same, both of you pull a long face feigning dissatisfaction! This noble art of bargaining is the first thing that your besties teach you in Chennai. All the three years that I stayed as a student in the city, this sceptical relationship with the city’s auto annas continued.
My college days at Chennai earned me Dhanya – my best friend, a gang of super cool friends and a lot of love along with a graduation in literature. I was fed fat on their love and lunch boxes as a hosteller away from my hometown. Such was their love that, I even got special tiffin boxes hostel delivered on holidays! When college got over I wanted to stay back in Chennai for my masters, as the city had grown on me. But destiny had other plans and I returned to Kerala for my higher education. I missed the city, its people and even our dear auto annas for so many months! But life had to move on... with less quarrelsome, quieter and sensibly ambitious auto chettans in Kerala.
Seven years after college, when Dhanya decided to tie the knot, I had to be there. After an elaborate
planning and ticket booking ceremony, I chomp chomped back into Chennai with a duffle bag full of
wedding fineries, gifts and knick knacks. As always, I stepped out of the railway station into a familiar crowd of auto annas haggling for luggage and money. Though this time, the irritable auto annas gave me a sense of nostalgia and familiarity, assuring me that this was the same city I knew seven years back. I smiled at how things hadn’t changed.
The great Indian wedding madness engulfed me for the next two days. Warm uncles, dotting aunties,
exotic cuisines, countless ceremonies and a super excited bride to top it all! And so dawned the day of her reception. I was excited as the reception was also going to be a reunion with my gang of friends and teachers from college. Everything was just going great. The wedding was supposed to happen early next morning. Mahalakshmi, a friend of mine who stayed closest to the auditorium invited a bunch of us home to stay over. In my enthusiasm to catch up with my long lost friends- Shruthi, Jaya and Maha, I abandoned my initial plans to stay with the bride and her family at the auditorium. They already had so many guests to accommodate anyway! So I coaxed the nervous bride into letting me stay with Maha and the gang. A reluctant Dhanya let me off after extracting a promise of turning up early next morning.
I set off happily with my duffle bag, a jovial bunch of friends and Maha’s parents for her home. We were 6 in number and so had to flag down and haggle with two auto annas. I stuffed in my duffle bag at the rear space of one of the autos and was about to settle down in it when Maha and Shruthi suddenly felt I should board the other auto for space management. Being one of the only two thin people in the group I agreed and boarded the other auto. Before boarding the second auto, I asked my friends to take care of my duffle bag that was comfortably placed at the rear space of their auto. The auto annas took separate routes convenient to each, to avoid traffic congestions. Just as our auto reached Maha’s home, I saw the other auto leaving. It took me a minute to realise that my darling friends had unfortunately forgotten to take out my precious duffle bag resting in their auto!!!
I tried telling them to stop the auto driver, but he was already speeding away by then! With my diamond ring, golden neck piece, favourite saree and every single piece of clothing and other possessions I had!
The time was around 10 pm. For a minute I kept asking them and the other auto driver if someone knew the auto’s number or remembered the driver’s face. No one had any clue. I was blank. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. After an initial spout of denial and chaos, my panic alarm set off on full blare!
We decided to follow him in the same auto we had come in. Maha’s mom and Shruthi decided to stay
back in front of Maha’s house. My heart was racing faster than the auto. Although we had started right behind the auto carrying my bag, we lost it to the city traffic. But I still believed that we could somehow find the auto. We hurried back to the auditorium where the reception was being held just to see if he had gone back there to pick up someone or if he belonged to that area. We couldn’t find him anywhere in the vicinity of the auditorium. We did a lot of asking around but no one had a clue about him there.
Refusing to give up, we kept looking around for him. At auto stands, on the roads, near eateries...
everywhere we could. We even asked other auto drivers about him with whatever strands of
information we had. After an hour of driving around aimlessly, our auto driver said he couldn’t come
with us any more on this wild goose chase. Unwillingly, we sent him away and resumed the hunt by
ourselves. That too, wearing heavy lehengas and sarees. I just couldn’t give up. Filled with remorse and fear, I was on the verge of tears. The city had suddenly gotten too big and strange for me. I cursed myself a hundred times for not staying at the auditorium as per my initial plans. I had been travelling alone all my life. This had never happened to me. I wandered around like a lunatic, blabbering and enquiring. What was I going to tell my parents? That their 26 year old daughter had a lost her bag and jewellery! I felt like an idiot and an irresponsible person. My friends felt equally guilty about the whole episode. They kept saying they could have been more alert. Moreover, it was such a terrible thing for me to make them wander the streets at 11 in the night!
At one point, a policeman saw us and enquired about our source of distress. We recounted the incident to him and pleaded with him to do something. He asked us to go to the police station with him and file a complaint. The idea of going to the police station further distressed me. But the whole hunt hadn’t yielded any leads till then. We had lost all hope and were contemplating the idea of filing an FIR when Maha suddenly got a call from Shruthi. After a few seconds of conversation, Maha’s face lit up and she was all smiles. Bits from the conversation gave me a glimmer of hope. Hanging up the phone she announced that the auto driver had just come back with the bag! I didn’t know if I were to laugh or cry! I couldn’t believe my luck and profusely thanked God for his mercy! Jaya, Maha, Maha’s father and I were elated. Maha immediately called back Shruthi and asked her to tell the auto driver to wait. We all hopped into another auto to get back to Maha’s place, this time bothering not once to haggle about the charge! All the way back home, we couldn’t stop gushing about the goodness of that auto driver who had the civility to bring the bag back for me.
The auto driver was promptly waiting when we reached Maha’s home. He told us that he had gone
home and changed after which he discovered my bag resting at the rear side of his auto. Since he had
seen me tucking the bag there he knew it was mine. And that man had come back a long way from his home just to return the bag! Even though he had just gotten home from a long and tiring day himself!
The most astonishing part was that, he wasn’t even one percent accusative, irritated or pompous about the whole incident! Any man in his place would brag and complain. It was as if we were seeing God. He could have easily kept it with himself or dropped it somewhere or done anything he pleased with it! But he chose the hard and honest way. I couldn’t stop thanking him! I told him that I would always remember him in my prayers. As a token of my gratitude, I gifted him some money. But the man surprised us again by refusing to take it. He insisted he would only accept the petrol charge he had spent to come back! And once more, we haggled with the auto anna! This time with a lot more vigour so he would let us pay him the money he rightly deserved! It definitely was a first for all of us! After a lot of pleading and convincing from my end, he finally accepted the money and bid adieu.
And to think, he was also one of those so called ‘money-minded thugs’ we often distrusted, muttered
about and fought with. What had prejudice brought us to? Not even once did it ever cross my mind that the auto driver could possibly bring back the bag to me. That was the last thing I had hoped for but the best thing to have ever happened to me!
I had once again learnt that every green eyed creature in the dark needn’t be a monster. It could be a
noble firefly too!
