last local from Churchgate and traveling with ambitious gangsters

 It was the last local from Churchgate to Vasai, well past midnight. It would practically be all-empty, with most 3-seaters being occupied by passengers who could stretch out and sleep it out all the way. The slow local stopped for more than its usual day-time at Bombay Central, Dadar and Bandra to allow the long-distance night express trains to speed past enroute to their destinations. I had to travel all the way up to Vasai and that would be a journey of more than ninety minutes or so and therefore I organised my haversack as a comfortable pillow and covered myself with two sheets of today’s Times of India and planned to take a good nap all the way. Hopefully, I would not be disturbed by anyone.

There were other passengers on nearby 3-seaters. The rear 8-seater had a family sitting together, looking worried and tense, with several old-style cotton bags, tied up with nylon ropes. They must be going to Vasai to catch the interchange long distance trains that came in from Pune and changed over from the Central to the Western railway networks. Something must have happened at their native town or village, something unfortunate and tragic, perhaps.

The 3-seater opposite me was empty and a lucky passenger could get to sleep on it upon boarding at Marine Lines or Charni Road. It was difficult to fall asleep rightaway. This was my first journey at these hours and I had not planned it in this manner. Whattodo. I could not help it. I had to be at Vasai, just before dawn, to catch the down train from Indore that would turn eastwards to Pune and would help me reach before office hours for an early meeting.

It was ok, I thought. What if I could not go to sleep? I could just take some rest in case I did not get a good seat or sleeper berth on the train from Indore to Pune. The worried family on the 8-seater were whispering and chatting and I could hear all or some of it. The elderly lady was speaking in a terrified whisper and wondering about all the sleeping passengers. She wanted to know what they could do if anyone of these passengers jumped up and threatened them with a knife or a gun and wanted all their luggage and money. How could they fight him and avoid any injury.

I could not hear the reply from her middle-aged son but it had not been satisfactory. The middle-aged daughter-in-law replied impatiently to the elderly lady and the gist of it was that any such person with a knife or a gun would be truly unlucky. They could actually pay the thief to take away their entire luggage and go away. At least, they could then look forward to purchasing new items and new clothes. The five kids, probably theirs, laughed in silent gasps.

Three men boarded at Marine Lines and came to sit at the 3-seater that was opposite me. I glanced at them in a very hesitant manner. They looked quite decent, middle class, half-sleeve shirts, terene trousers, leather shoes with laces and had newspapers, an umbrella each, and small packets of salted peanuts that they must have purchased at the railway platform. It had become costly this month and one had to pay two rupees. A hundred percent inflation and that must be reflective of the state of the nation, I thought. No threat or worry from these three decent persons, I felt.

One was quite elderly, probably their boss or elder brother or their senior at their workplace. The other two spoke respectfully with the elder. He was dressed in a white shirt and a pale cream trouser. The youngest was dressed quite formally. He had his half sleeve shirt tucked in and had buttoned up right up there, all the way to the collar. The third one looked nervous. He looked around the compartment. He was glancing at each passenger and yet, he had just rightaway dismissed the family at the 8-seater. He did not look at them. I could sense his thoughts as he looked at me. It was just more than a normal glance. He was staring deliberately to check if I was really sleeping or just faking it up.

The youngster in the formal tucked-in-shirt bowed low, just a bit, and spoke in a matter of fact manner. “Boss, we may have to bring a full stop to that shop owner. He refused to pay up on the monthly rent and has not paid for the past one year. You are very kind to him otherwise I would have used my full stop methods, at least six months ago.”

The elder smiled and patted at his folded-up newspaper. “Who are you talking about? Thanawala? Let him be. He is a Bawa and they are like that only. I will talk to his mother. She will know what to do. We can visit her at Flora Fountain. You come with me. You cannot go about killing all our tenants who are not able to pay up. You have already forgotten the mess that you created last year with the Malabari family. You thought that they were just local shopkeepers who were selling fake goods by labelling them as smuggled goods. You did not realise that they had a big background support. It took me quite a lot of trouble and five months to settle everything down. Do not start again.”

The third man was watching me intently. He was suspicious that I was not fast asleep and that I was probably listening to their conversation. I was getting worried. What if they did notice that I was awake? Full stop or what?

The youngster was not convinced about taking it easy about whosoever that Thanawala was. “I know all about your patience, Boss. You tell us to be polite and patient and yet you want us to collect as much pending rent as more than possible. We have to answer to you. This Thanawala knows it entirely. He threatened me by saying that he will complain to you. He says that his business was down for the entire year and he cannot pay and that we cannot remove him from the house because he has his receipts from earlier years and he has sent letters to the owners about it. Just let me handle it in my way. I will return with Richard and Pakiya and we will take care of him. New tenants will pay.”

I sat up in alarm. These fellows were talking about knocking off someone. It would be better to move to another compartment and get away from them. The third man smiled in triumph. He had guessed correctly about me. At the same moment, the elderly lady with the family on the 8-seater screamed. She probably thought that I was a thief.

“Do not shoot, do not shoot,” she shouted. She was holding up her hands in absolute filmy style. Her daughter-in-law had bent down to hide. The middle-aged man was looking very apologetic at us and shrugging his shoulders.

The three men looked at me in alarm. They must have thought that I was a threat to them and was traveling in the train to cause them harm. I was in an absolute state of panic. I shouted at the elderly lady and her family, waving my hands and saying, “No. No. I am not trying to harm you. Do not worry. I am not going to shoot you. Do not worry.”

Saying thus, I turned to apologise to the three men. They were gone. They had probably jumped off at Bombay Central.

From "the very short short stories on first edit" 

(c) Bharat Bhushan

12 February 2022 

Being of service to the family is the purest prayer to god - memories of my father and mother (2)

Our tiny and very compact kitchen was in the balcony of our 320 square feet ground floor apartment in a single-building compound in Wadala, Mumbai since 1972 when we had shifted from the suburb of Chembur in the then northern part of Bombay, which is now very much overtaken by the growth of the entire megapolis. My father, Balapila Naga Bhushan, was with the Ministry of Technical Education, Government of India and worked at Churchgate, while my mother, Sharada (Indumati) Bhushan, was a school teacher and later served as the headmistress of the Andhra Education Society’s High School and Junior College at Wadala.

My mother had to be at school, right on dot, for the morning shift that started at something like 0700 hours while my father would leave home at 0905 am to catch the 0924 harbour line local train to VT (as we knew it then) and onwards for a crisp walk to Churchgate to be at his office by 1010 am. Their schedules never changed through our school and college-going years during the seventies and early eighties. My mother would be up by 0530 hours and would make enough of a polite disturbance to nudge my father awake within five minutes.

They would not talk to each other in order to avoid waking us up, me and my sister, Sarala. The two of us and our parents always slept on coir mats through all the 70s. As we were told in those years, that as kids we were privileged to wake up later, though not much of a sleep-in, but we had to be up and about by 0630 or at the latest by 0645, as though that was much of a luxury.

There is one image that I have in my memory, through all these years, of the morning scene at my house, apart from the one of my father making filter coffee, and my mother going through her early morning routine of prayers, dressing up, conjuring up a magical spread of food items for breakfast, school tiffen, and emergency snacks and savouries. This other image is of my father quietly standing at the kitchen sink through the early hour when my mother would need monopoly over the bathrooms and almirah and the full-length mirror. During this time, my father would be silently at cleaning up all the left over utensils from the earlier night, and would do a complete washover of utensils to be used by my mother for preparing breakfast and other stuff.

The magical aspect of it was that my father could do it in an almost silent manner which is impossible for most others, men or women. He would examine the cluster of leftover utensils, analyse the threat factor like an airforce pilot and pick out the utensils that can be first removed for cleaning without bringing down the other utensils. These initial utensils would be wiped with torn-up newspaper to remove the grit and wet layers of gravy or oil. Those were the days without the green scrub pads or the metal wipers that we have now. There was no liquid soap and there was none of the magical utensil cleansers that we have now.

My father always claimed that the first wipe with the newspaper would make it easier to wash the utensils. The second attack would be with some dishwashing powder. The entire cluster of utensils would be coated with the dishwashing powder and kept aside for some time, before finally washing them clean with tap water. This was not any brandwala dishwashing powder. My father, as would most middle-class simple households do, would go to the wholesale soap markets of Dadar, near Ranade road, and would purchase a 5 kg pack of dishwashing powder. He had a routine for storing it and using it carefully, but that’s another story.

I did not notice it much, but after the entry of black and white TV and doordarshan and a whole lot of forced programs, I realised that it was the lady of the house or the kaamwali bai who was supposed to do all the cleaning chores in the household and not the man of the house, ie the lord and master of the house. I had not known about this separation of tasks and had always accepted that my father would clean the leftover utensils and make the first round of coffee and whatever while my mother would get ready to go out of the house to go to work at her job. My parents would share their tasks in the evening and later at night, my mother would have crashed out to sleep early enough to allow my father to clean up and get the kitchen and the bathroom ready for the morning.

Much later, when I had left home for my various research stations and started working, of a sort, and had learnt about various other matters, I asked my father about it. Why would he, the lord and master of the house, take up the task of cleaning the leftover utensils and the menial tasks of making the first round of coffee, etc.?

My father did not think about it a great deal but replied in a very matter of fact manner. “That is not any other work. That is when I do my prayers and recite my routine of saying thanks and conveying gratitude to god everyday for keeping us all happy and content. It is when I am cleaning the leftover utensils out of my own intentions and not because someone else has asked me to, it is only then that I am in service to my family in the purest of ways. I keep reciting and repeating the god’s name and I have a long list of gods to whom I say thanks to, and they seem to be happy about it.”

“The best prayer is in the act of service without any expectation of goodwill or return. The best way to send our prayers across is during that moment and not when one is sitting in front of the prayer place, or when one is lighting incense or when one is visiting a temple or when one is conducting a puja or whatever. Each utensil that I clean is a manner of cleaning my inner self.”

On that day, when my father explained it, I did not understand the perspective. I did not try to. I was only happy that my father had done that particular routine because he wanted to. Later, much later, in January 2009, he had returned after hospitalisation and had been advised bed rest at my campus residence in Pune. He was staying with me in my study room and the two of us had converted it into a bedroom. He was restless at not being able to go about on his own as he would have done in our small house at Wadala, Mumbai. He told me in a very tired voice, “Go and get some 10-20 utensils from the kitchen sink and bring it over to the attached bathroom here. Let me wash them daily. I need to do my prayers in peace.”

He passed away in March 2009 in that study room at Pune without having been able to return to Wadala.

11 October 2019