Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Tochi drove to Kumhrar Road, where he caught a couple of fares: two white-saried widows carrying trays of unlit dia lamps to the Radha Krishna Mandir, and then a father and son who wanted to fly their kites on the ghats. When he got back to Sheetal’s, he still had to wait a full fat hour before the peon opened the door and the woman came down the steps, talking over her shoulder to a friend who followed. They stopped beside the auto, still talking. Something about someone’s kitty party. Tochi couldn’t be sure: their tongue was half English. He wanted to try for a few more fares before the evening grew too thick and he had to go home. He looked at the glassy timer in the centre of his handlebars, and maybe the woman’s friend saw him looking and made some sort of gesture with her eyes, for he heard Madam say, ‘Oh, he’s just a scheduled.’

There was an excruciating silence, and the woman’s friend smiled in a squeamish way and said she’d see Radhika next time, later in the week maybe. Madam waved and reluctantly turned round. She was biting the corner of her lip, like a schoolgirl. She got into the back without once looking at Tochi and asked quietly if he wouldn’t mind going next to St Joseph’s Sacred Heart School. They needed to pick up her son.

The next day, Tochi drove right up to the gate where Madam was waiting for him. Her chin was up, eyes peering down her nose, and she climbed into the back of the auto in a single swift movement. Determined not to speak, it seemed, as if to illustrate the proper relationship between driver and Madam. It didn’t last long. Tochi had only turned onto Ganapathy Drive when she flopped forward, elbows on knees.

‘Acha, I’m sorry. But it’s so hard to know what to say these days. I mean, are you even still called chamaars? Legally? Am I allowed to say that?’

‘You can call me what you like. I only want to drive you and get paid for it.’

‘So what should I call you?’

Tochi said nothing.

She fell back, sighing. ‘I’m not a horrible person, you know. I do feel sorry for you people.’

Through the rear-view mirror he could see her looking out the side, agitated, frowning, as if again her words had come out wrong.

When he returned to pick her up, she appeared at the window, waving far too excitedly, and suddenly the door was thrown open and she was coming down the steps, sari hitched up and six, seven, eight women pushing up behind. They arranged themselves around the auto, beaming at Tochi. Collectively, they gave off a pinkish, fruity scent.

Madam spoke calmly, though there was something strained about her face, as if she were trying to check her delight: ‘Can you fit us all in?’

Tochi asked where they were going.

‘Bakerganj,’ said one.

‘The maidaan,’ said another.

An obese and middle-aged third shunted her friends aside. ‘The Women’s Shelter. I’m patron of their birth-control programme. Actually, I should tell you that we have a real problem with birth control in your caste group. Are you married?’

Tochi twisted the key and the engine puttered up. ‘I’m only allowed to take four.’

All nine forced themselves into the auto, sitting on each other’s laps, standing, singing, as if this was a great adventure.

He skirted potholes and speed humps, avoiding police checkpoints, and as each passenger alighted they gave their address and a time to collect them the following day.

‘Most of us have sold our private cars,’ Madam said. ‘We want to help the poor in society instead.’

It was just her and her son left. The boy bounced about in his white shirt and fire-engine-red tie. Twice his mother pressed upon him his sunglasses, and twice he threw them off. At the compound gate, he jumped out and ran towards a waiting kulfi cart. His mother gathered his satchel into her lap.

‘Same time tomorrow? Or are you too busy now?’

She was smiling, pleased with herself. Tochi just said he’d come tomorrow as normal.

*

He got to know the city well. All the branching bazaar alleys that hid the frilly-roofed salons and Danish-style tea rooms. After dropping Sarasvati Madam off at Charlie’s Chai Corner, he’d take the newly built flyover and collect Bimlaji from Nalanda University and go from there to Sheetal’s, via Radhika Madam’s compound. That used to make him late delivering Jagir Bibi to the gurdwara, but once Susheel shared with him the tanners’ lane shortcut Tochi could avoid the bulk of the afternoon mandir rush and the old lady would be at the gurdwara well before the ardaas. The late afternoons were busier still, full of school pick-ups and last-minute runs to the market. Over time, passengers began to recommend him to others: an opportunistic friend and his daily visits to a dying ‘oil-in-law’, a father whose driver had taken to drink. It felt as if no sooner had he washed the auto and set off from his village, than the next time he paused and looked up from the road the sun was sinking away, and he’d again forgotten to eat the rotis his sister had packed, and the night was starting its smoky occupation of the sky.

‘I hear you’re doing well,’ Susheel said.

They were at the Drivers’ Dhaba, sipping sweet tea.

‘Maybe you’ll earn as much as me one day.’

Tochi nodded. ‘How old are you?’

Susheel’s face turned serious. He understood. ‘Seventeen, bhaji.’

‘Family?’

‘Just my ma and papa. My ma’s ill.’

Tochi nodded.

His last stop in the city before heading home was always to pay the brothers their share of the day’s takings. They lived in a one-roomed shack under a stairwell, behind a new hotel, with both their families. At least eleven different faces he’d counted over the weeks. He’d duck to enter and the children would huddle off into a corner to give this uncle room to sit. A sister handed him tea and as he drank the brothers liked to hear of his day. Where he’d been, who he’d taken. Afterwards, they’d say that the auto truly was proving much luckier for him.

*

He slept in the back of the auto, as a precaution. One night, Dalbir lay collapsed over the handlebars. He’d been working in the field and, Tochi noticed, had forgotten to wash the mud from behind his ears.

‘We should buy another auto so I can be a driver too,’ Dalbir said.

‘Who’ll work the land?’

Dalbir thought on this. ‘I’ll hire a manager.’

He heard a woman rustling down their lane. It was Palvinder. She brought Tochi a glass of milk — they could afford to drink it themselves now — and collected his dirty bowl and plate.

‘Ma is asking for you,’ she said to Dalbir.

‘Why?’

‘Since when did you start asking “why”?’

‘I have my rights.’

‘Go,’ Tochi said, and, grumbling, Dalbir rose and went slouching up the lane. Tochi gulped at his milk, handed back the glass. ‘Did Ma tell you?’

Palvinder nodded.

‘And you’re happy with the match?’

‘Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?’

Tochi nodded. ‘I’ll see what they say tomorrow.’

She stood the emptied glass upside down in the bowl and followed her younger brother.

The servant showed Tochi through to the breakfast room, where Babuji was sitting at the scoop of a long kidney-shaped table, spooning sugar into his tea. When he glanced up, sunshine seemed to fill his face and he reached for his walking stick.

‘Don’t get up,’ Tochi said, touching the old man’s feet.

Babuji tapped his stick against the nearest chair and Tochi sat down, balancing on the lip of the seat. ‘I came as soon as I returned. But you were away.’

‘Calcutta business,’ the old man said dismissively, because what he really wanted to hear was what Tochi had been up to. Where he’d been and what he’d done and how long he’d been back. Was it true he’d bought an auto? Tochi said it was.