The Assault

With my bike needing an urgent service, I was forced to leave it at the Hero Honda showroom in Anna Nagar and took a share auto to office today.

The auto was filled to the capacity after we (myself and a colleague who happens to live nearby my home) boarded it. I sat with my back to the auto-driver as it rattled over the pot-holed roads of Chennai. Except for the beautiful girl who sat just opposite to me, there wasn’t anything-eventful happening around to attract my attention. So with a single-minded intensity I was observing her activities with great amusement. The most striking of her features was her lips. What is it, this association between pink and femininity?

How can a pair of lips be so pink in color? Was it actually a normal color of lips that was getting highlighted to a great extent due to the fair color of her skin or was it some special color bestowed on her by nature.

My stream of thoughts on her lips was interrupted by the screeching sound of the tires of the auto on the road. The driver had applied the brake all of a sudden causing the vehicle to come to an abrupt and noisy stop. Just as I turned around to look what had happened I was almost taken aback by the sight of a huge guy, with large flowing moustache and menace stamped on his forehead walking towards the driver.

Before one could understand what the situation was, he opened the door next to the driver and pulled him out. In the next few minutes he blasted a stream of invectives from his nasty mouth at the hapless driver. From his verbal assault I could make out that the auto had just hit him while he was walking near the pavement towards his office. In his filthy language he described the events and finally pointed to a building when he said he had been walking towards his office when he was hit. I looked in the direction of his pointed finger. Though I don’t remember the exact words engraved on the granite slab at the distance, I was able to understand that it was some kind of a government office related with transport services. I immediately felt sorry for the driver who was definitely not going to get away easily by any stretch of imagination.

By this time, the government officer was creating a huge ruckus and was demanding for the RC book. He wanted to know the capacity the auto was permitted to have and by how many counts the driver had over shot it. When the driver, instead of obeying his orders continued to plea, he raised his hand and was about to bring down a blow. Fearing it, the driver handed over the book to him and continued pleading. But the words did not seem to have any effect of the government officer and his rage suddenly went up and he abused the driver further, calling him by a derogatory term, which would boil the blood of any son who loves his mother.

That particular word was repeatedly used in the next few sentences too. All this was happening in front of girls and ladies sitting inside the auto. The government officer suddenly turned very people-concerned when he lectured on how the lives of the public (like us sitting inside the auto) depended on the driver.

He finally barked at the driver to push-off but not before snatching his RC book, which was to be collected by the driver personally later in the day. The driver (a boy not older to me by 2-3 years) returned shame faced to the seat. For the rest of the travel, he drove with a face filled equally with shame and rage. He collected the money given by the passengers without looking them in the face.

Arriving at the final destination, we all got down. The old man, who had been sitting next to driver all through the journey, patted him in the shoulder as a gesture of comforting before getting off.

The driver looked up at him and asked wiping his eyes, “Just because he is a government officer does it in any way give him rights to degrade my mother?”

As we continued to stare down on the road, he rode off.