An absolute gem

It was a just another trip for me. The plane landed on the bangalore international airport. I braced myself for the 50 kms drive to my house. And it was 7 in the evening. With the kind of traffic in bangalore during peak hours I knew I was in for a "long journey". I normally take the bus since cabs cost a bomb but this time I landed a good deal with a share cab.

There were two other guys inside the cab both of whom were getting down before me. The driver came in after ten minutes, started the car, gave his agent his commission and took off in a split second. He was a thin frail looking man, maybe in his late twenties, with his teeth badly stained because of ghutka consumption. It was a quiet journey for the first forty minutes except for intermittent calls on the front seat passenger's phone. He spoke loudly about models, films, theatres and the likes. I kept looking outside the window lost in my own thoughts about my life. After an hour when the calls finally stopped the driver asked the passenger in kannada "What sir, you talk about films and actors all the time?". The passenger then explained that he was a casting director and that hes done a lot of big movies in the south and a few new ones in hindi too. He started naming a few hit movies and asked the driver if he had seen them. Both of them then started talking about various Kannada movies. The other guy was in the navy and had come for a medical check up. Both the guys got down after an hour's journey and then it was just me and the driver.

We had half an hour of drive more and I wanted to get some distraction to not feel the heat. I asked the driver which languages he spoke. He said he was a kannadigan but could speak broken hindi and tamil. So I spoke in hindi and started the conversation by asking him how many years he had been a driver. The answer was 3 years. He did not wait for me to ask the next question. He got into a pensive mood. He immediately said repentantly that he is driver because he didn't study. He was from a village called gulbarga where children were not encouraged to study even though there are schools. The girls were married off by the age of ten. "The Police comes and creates problems but still girls are married off behind their backs" He said in broken Hindi. His own sister was married at the age of 12. "The parents just want to continue the relationship" He said disapprovingly.

I told him how things weren't very different in the cities. I shared with him the problems I faced in my house with respect to marriage. "What is your name, Madam?" He enquired. His name was Parusharaman. He told me about the driving business he was in, the commission he paid, the number of trips he made everyday and that he was looking for bride for his marriage. "I try not to work on Sundays but if I get a call from a known customer I go". We finally reached my destination. While I was taking out the cab fare, I told him not to make the same mistakes his parents made and told him to send his children to school since education was the most important thing in one's life. He nodded as if it was obvious. He then wrote down his number in the receipt and said that I can ask for help anytime. He dropped my luggage at the gate and said a one last sentence, for the first and the last time in English with me "It was nice meeting you madam"

That one sentence put a big smile in my face, bigger than any smile I had given to a stranger yet. His innocence, candidness, realization, self respect despite his current condition, comfort, helping nature and his peppy way of talking, not cribbing even once made me experience one of the best rides with a stranger in my life. He was an absolute gem and I sometimes wonder why such admirable features cannot be found in the richest and the most educated in our country. People come in all shapes and sizes and its just the most comforting feeling to see someone be something just the way humans are supposed to be.