About two decades ago, I was on the way to my sister’s grihapravesh  (house warming). Logistics forced me to get off the car on the highway and take a rickshaw to her house. The colony was new with very few constructed houses. I had been there many before but always by car. With the rickshaw moving slower,  my orientation of time and space got affected and I took a much earlier turn. A couple of more wrong turns and I  ended up near some deserted fields in the dead of night.

It was late and there was no one on the road to guide me. To add to my misery I was wearing a lot of jewellery, some of which was fake. As the rickshaw puller rode on,  repeatedly asking if I could recognise any landmark, a sense of doom engulfed me. What if he robs or kills me ? We continued deeper into the desolation and then he got off the rickshaw. I panicked and wondered if this was the moment I should hand him over my jewellery or at least hint that all of it is not real. Before I could make the ‘offering’ the rickshaw-wala said, “ Madam aise nahin ho paayega mein aapko phir se main road pe chalta hoon, wahan se modh pehchan lena.” ( Madam, I will take you back to the main road. You will be able to recognise the turn from there).

So he took me back, I located the right turn and reached my destination. The promised fare was five rupees  but I handed him a  fifty and asked him to keep the change. He told me that it was a fifty rupees note not ten, the amount he expected. I told him I knew and walked away. It was a small price to pay for a lesson in trust. A lesson which I recently realised, I hadn’t learnt too well.

And now the incident that triggered this memory. Having taken to the roads six months ago, I am still a greenhorn when it comes to driving. I manage to get by most of the times. But was recently caught in a tight spot when I tried to make a rather tight U-turn. Midway I realised that I won’t be able to do it in a single swoosh. As I struggled to reverse, traffic began to build up on what I always thought was an empty road. I grew more flustered with every impatient honk and derisive look. That is when I noticed a young boy on a motorcycle, about  twenty five years old, trying to help me with hand gestures.

Moments later, with my car still stuck at an impossible angle, I stepped out and asked the boy to do it for me. He obligingly parked his bike on the roadside and got in. He first moved the car out of the way so that vehicles could pass and then asked me which way I intended to go. I told him, he nodded and then sped away, faster and further then I thought necessary. For a  moment I thought he was driving off with my car. I felt like an idiot for handing it over to a complete stranger. My  purse and mobile were on the front seat. As I tried to figure out my next move, he made an U- turn and brought the car back. He smiled and quipped that my left wing mirror needed to be repositioned.

Still shaken from the experience I told him that I had doubted him,  then lamely added that he did look trustworthy though. He smiled again and said that  he had taken the car further down the road to avoid the parked vehicles which were obstructing the manoeuvre. He must have sensed my remorse because, to make me feel better he said, “ It’s not your fault, we live in such dangerous times.” 

And my only thought was, “How little we trust…..”

(Carried as a Spice of life in HT on 29/1/2019)