The Automaniac

It was late-evening, the light was fading. The sky was a grim grey-brown, as it had been all day. It being Sunday, there was little traffic on the road—cars and bikes zoomed past him, the odd bus trundled by; few autos chugged past noisily, but they were mostly taken and did not stop despite his repeated signaling; a bullock-cart, full of fresh manure, passed him, leaving a trail of obnoxious smell behind; He walked around in circles, getting increasingly impatient, muttering to himself to stay calm. And then, he finally saw an auto that was passenger-less: he jumped down the pavement, onto the road, in its path and swung his hands frantically. It stopped.

“Where to, sir?” the auto-wallah asked, grinning. And the man noticed he had no incisors.

The man hesitated, before he said:

“To the Market. Er... How much?”

The auto-wallah gave a demented, tooth-less grin yet again, and declared:

“Sir, you will give me fifty rupees”

That was nearly twice what he thought it would cost, but he simply got in quietly.

With a single hard tug at the lever, the engine spluttered and coughed into action. The rush of the wind stung so hard that the man hugged his jacket and drew his bag closer to him. He noticed there were three decorated rear-view mirrors, one on either side of the windshield, and one on top, just below the picture of the Goddess. In every mirror, all he saw was different bits of the face of the auto-wallah: the mirror above showed his forehead, mostly dominated by a bright-orange tilak, and a portion of his curly, messed-up hair; the mirror on the right showed one side of his two-day stubble and one red, kohl-lined eye; the other side, showed the other half of his face, a black birthmark on his cheek, lips more grey than pink. In the mental picture he made of the face, putting together the pieces in every mirror, the auto-wallah looked like a lunatic.
“Do you like my auto sir?” the auto-wallah asked suddenly.

“Um?” he said, looking at the mirror on top, at the red-eyes that were trained on him.

“Auto .. Like? You?” the auto-wallah asked again.

“Its nice” he said, pretending to look around.

The auto-wallah let out a shriek of laughter and abruptly sobered down and asked in a soft, toneless voice:

“Only nice?”

“Very nice, sir. I meant very nice” he said hastily.

And thanks to one of the rear-view mirrors, he saw one side of him smile.

They were still twenty minutes away. He just didn’t like the way the journey was going, but he held his calm.

They stopped at a signal. A bus tanked next to them with a loud hiss, and a gust of welcome hot air blew from its exhaust; the buzz of still running-engines all around irritated him; a beggar-boy, carrying his little sister went from one tinted window to another-- finally one opened and sent a jet of red-paan that the boy did well to dodge. Presently the boy came up to him: he looked away and refused. The auto-wallah gave the boy a ten-rupee not and said menacingly, looking at him through the mirror:

“Sir, don’t you have to give this boy ten rupees, too?”

The man briefly considered abandoning the auto and bolting, thinking this was the devil that had, perhaps, come to give him some sort of a warning.

But he simply took-out a ten-rupee note from his wallet and gave it to the boy.

The light turned green and they were away, again.

“Can you sing, sir?” the auto-wallah asked.

“Um .. Me?” he asked and instinctively, held on to his bag even more tightly.

“Yes, sir”

“No, I cant”

“Eh?”

“I can’t” he said a little loudly, trying to make himself heard over the din of the auto.

“I am not deaf, sir” the auto-wallah said sternly.

“Sorry” he muttered.

And they both stayed silent, before the man noticed the reflection in the mirror lighten as it broke into a smile. He relaxed slightly. The auto-wallah said:

“I’ll teach you a song, sir. Sing after me”

“Um .. Ok” he said meekly.

And the auto-wallah broke into a joyous cacophony: it spoke of the greatness of the country, of the mountains and the rivers, of the Gods and the Kings, of diversity, of unity, of tolerance and kindness and of course, of love. With every line he repeated, the man grew tenser. Sweat beads formed behind his ears and rolled down his cheek; his eyes grew steely and dark much in contrast to the auto-wallah, whose blood-shot eyes moistened with feeling and he looked like a sad, mad man.

When he finally reached the Market, the man nearly jumped off the auto. His hands shivered as he fumbled with his wallet, before dishing out a hundred-rupee note and said “Keep the change”. The Auto-wallah gave him one last tooth-less maniacal grin of gratefulness. He ran, as fast as he could, in the direction opposite to that of the Auto. And then he heard it and he stopped and relief flooded him. He smiled, slid his hands into his pockets, whistled a soft love-song and walked on. In a few hours he’d watch it all on TV, reporters scrambling to get a shot of the debris of the Auto that carried the bomb (his bomb in his bag!) that rocked the Market and shocked the nation ..