Hello I am back :)
Yet again, like many times earlier, I did try writing a few things, but it didn’t flow, seemed forced and wound up being a jarring read. Hehehe.
Trying again this time – let’s see if this one flows effortlessly or makes you mumble “kitna boring hai” :)
On this rainy rainy day, let me tell you about a hot summer afternoon, when I was out for a celebratory lunch at a restaurant with my parents and son.
My parents didn’t like this idea and the restaurant from the moment we decided to go ahead. They were already grumbling about how it was going to be a very boring afternoon.
Unfortunately, further cementing their dislike, the food at the restaurant also ended up being a massive disappointment. My mother still pretended to enjoy everything a little bit – but my father was just very angry and vocal about his displeasure. This is normal behaviour though. Hehehehe.
My son, on the other hand, was just simply excited and happy to be at a place he likes, eating food he likes, with the people he likes.
Somehow, after a slowwww 1 hour, we got to the end of the lunch. We had 2-3 uber taxis cancel on us, as also is normal these days. So, we decided to take an auto to the closest taxi stand and a taxi from there towards home– much to my son’s delight and thrill.
It wasn’t a very long auto ride. It was short and sweet and very breezy in an otherwise hot and sweaty Mumbai summer afternoon.
There were a few taxis at the taxi stand but there was one particular taxi with an old disgruntled driver leaning against it with a scowl. Just as my mom and I were discussing not taking that taxi, my father leaped out of our auto towards this taxi as if they were long lost brothers – well, they very well may have been, given the really angry scowls plastered on their faces.
It wasn’t a surprise to either my mom or me because my dad, like me, has a natural magnet for weirdos. My genetic inheritance game is strong ;)
Anyway, Appa sat next to this driver, who by the time we all sat in, was terribly angry. I really want to believe that the heat had gotten to him and made him angry and it wasn’t our faces.
As soon as he started the drive, he received a phone call. That phone call was stressful for everyone in the taxi. This driver-uncle couldn’t’ hear. So, he would say : KYA, HAIN, KYA BOLE repeatedly after every word the caller said. And not just say the words – it was a sheer scream. We had all become invested in this call. Appa suggested keeping the call on loudspeaker to which driver-uncle said ‘KYA’ again loudly. This infuriated my already furious dad and he mouthed some unmentionables and looked the other way outside the window. Mom had started complaining about how this phone call was diverting the driver’s attention and he was driving rashly. My son on cue started grumbling that he was sleepy and it was hot and it wasn’t comfortable and he wanted to get home.
I gathered whatever little patience was left in me and suggested boldly to the driver to park the taxi aside for a moment, finish the call and then driving again. You can only imagine what happened next. He got SO angry that he started loudly saying stuff that we couldn’t even understand or make sense of.
The phone was on – I could hear the caller at the other end yell “chacha chacha” on loop, driver-uncle was screaming at us, Appa joined in shouting to terminate the call, Amma was shaking her head and trying to get her grand-child to sleep and I, at this point, decided that looking out the window at the street was possibly the easiest option. This went on for 3-4 heavy minutes. All this while – uncle was also dangerously driving through narrow lanes and loud horns and trucks and every vehicle invented by mankind, around us.
Suddenly, we came upon a traffic signal. God bless the person who invented these – because we all got a miraculous few moments of calm. Driver-uncle finally decided to cut the darned call but only after screaming some terrible profanities at the caller. This made my dad chuckle. (Don’t ask me why). He even joined the driver in agreeing that the caller was a terrible person for calling in the afternoon and talking in a way that the uncle couldn’t hear. Uncle also calmed down and shared a laugh with my father. But his anger towards me was intact. But because by now he was “friends” with my father, he tolerated me.
Meanwhile, my son started an endless loop of “have we reached”. That driver only had a very limited quantity of patience left – he lost all of it when my son asked for the 177th time if we had reached home – but thanks to his new friendship, he somehow kept it together, only complaining to my dad “Ek hi baat bole jaa raha hai bachcha”.
After what felt like ages, eras, eons….. we reached home and paid him. He was mumbling something again but we were all too tired to even care what he was complaining about. We got home in a hurry and aimed directly for the bed to take a well-deserved nap.
As I was drifting into a sweet sweet nap, I heard my dad tell mom with a hearty laugh, that they had a nice afternoon, that the restaurant wasn’t as bad as they felt and that, the driver was a good guy having a bad day but with a wonderfully colourful vocabulary!!
P.S. requesting earnestly to please write your name if you comment otherwise it’s a string of anonymous messages due to some strange settings. Hehehehe :)
