Night of might

A lesson learnt would be to not fear taking the road less taken even if it be at the dead of night. For, the night holds so many secrets which the sun to the multitude of the day denies. Trudging from Park Circus to Gariahat, through Ballygunje Circular Road, did not seem enough, so I turned towards Kalighat and wondered how much life had changed in these six years. In my earlier stint in Kolkata, I would get off at Kalighat metro, walk on Rash Behari Avenue till Gariahat and turn right towards Golpark. From there I would walk back to Gariahat, then back to Kalighat to catch the metro back home. But now, my present address enabled me to enter Rash Behari Avenue from the Gariahat end. Maybe like in the good old days, I thought, I should walk down Rash Behari, something I have always loved doing.

On reaching Sarat Bose Road, however, I decide not to go any further. It was already past 10 pm when I was on Ballygunje Circular, there would be no metro to catch at Kalighat. I turned right, onto Sarat Bose Road. Those toy shops had shut for the day, only a few people could be seen. Those still standing were on their way home, those immobile were trying to sleep, on the pavements. It was cold, I pull up my jacket zipper. Well, no, it had been cold all along, but now the streets were more deserted. And, just two days after losing my phone in a bus, I didn’t want to take any chances. Not that I was carrying much. But it was more like an aunt's greater fear of the mosquitoes' buzz than of their sting.

I walked on. This road ran parallel to Ballygunje Circular. At some point, I am not sure when, it becomes Lansdowne and meets AJC Bose Road. I decide it was becoming too tiring already. Maybe, if I turned right and kept going I would return to Ballygunje Circular, closer home. My sense of direction was not always trustworthy, but I drew a map many times in my mind's eye and everytime it told me going right meant reaching Ballygunje Circular. So, turned right I did. This was the road less travelled, Hazra Road. But it was one of those nights I wanted to get lost, to walk on the fringes of sanity, maybe cross it.

After walking for ages the road still did not end. There were fewer cabs now, some people gathered around a sweet shop, one easing sweet curd into his mouth from an earthen bowl. For a while I thought of asking them if I was on the right track but then abandoned the idea. I wondered what would happen at this hour if the road went on like that, reaching nowhere, like Alice’s unending fall. I knew very soon there would dogs barking at me at every turning.
Hazra Road it was where I had first got lost in Kolkata, and that time, too, it was my mistake. The cab was rightfully turning left towards AJC Bose Road, coming from Howrah, but I had seen Rabindra Sadan to my left and assumed going straight would take me to AJC Bose and had forced the helpless cabbie to do so. On reaching Hazra Road, on that earlier occasion in 1998, I had blamed it on the cabbie, even drawing the sympathies of passersby I approached for directions. They admonished him saying he had taken the wrong route, his pleas about me having forced him to do so drowned in the aam aadmi’s sympathy for the ‘wronged’ passenger.

Today must have been that cabbie’s payback time as Hazra Road just would not end. I wondered if one of the cabs retired for the night on that stretch belonged to that cabbie of years ago.

Just when I had half a mind to turn back, I saw ights and a major road crossing Hazra Road ahead. The closer I got, the more it looked like Ballygunje Circular Road. Soon, I could identify the familiar petrol pump. Home was not far.

The long journey was coming to a close.

I must have walked for hours. But the watch on my now borrowed mobile told me it had just been an hour. It was just 5 past 11. Late for Kolkata, you might say, but the night was still young for some.

C-c-c-r-r-a-a-s-s-s-h-h-h-h.

What was that? That was loud. Sounded like an accident, but where. What use was my staying out for so long if I could not even witness this from close? I hurried ahead. Could see a car had stopped. Some people got off it and began looking to the right, across the road divider to the other one-way. There a Maruti Swift had hit an auto. A crowd has gathered. I tried to cross over to the other side to take a closer look, pausing briefly to let a speeding car go. By the time I crossed over, the car and the auto had moved to a nearby lane so as not to block the road, not to stop other cars, not to draw the cops' attention. Meanwhile, speeding vehicles ran over broken parts of the car, perhaps its radiator grill, on the main road.

I could make out there was a lady at the wheels. She was not daring to lower the windows, not a wise to thing to do at this hour anyway. A man, walking with a limp now, threatened the car-wallahs with his fist. The auto driver was blocking the car's way, not letting them go. I could not make out if there was anybody with the girl or if she was all alone. I decided to stay on. Soon, I could make out one or two people outside were from the car and were trying to negotiate with the man with the limp, the autowallah and any number of people who had gathered, all of whom seem to be siding with the autowallah. The girl inside was constantly on her phone, texting or calling up someone. The people on the other side of the argument had been busy with the Prophet’s birthday all day, it was apparent from their garb.

“Let her go, let us negotiate,” said one man. “Nobody is going. You have to pay that man who is injured, and the auto driver, too,” said another. The girl should come to no harm, I decided. The other fear at the back of my mind was that this should not assume any communal colour in these fragile times.

I tried to connect with a guy who seemed to be from the car. He was almost bald, a V-shaped growth under his lower lip reminding me of someone on TV. I asked him in Hindi, “Aap is gaadi me the? (Were you in this car?)” He ignored me, making some movement of his head which sounded like a ‘No’.

Earlier that day I had bumped into an ex-coll ieague at the British Council. I didn’t know what the provocation was but he was telling me: “Wherever I go, people talk to me in Bengali. They assume I cannot speak English.”

I heard the other side calling someone on the phone, “Accident hua hai yehaan, sab ko bhejo. (There has been an accident here, send all the guys). God, were they preparing to fight it out, I wondered. I tried again, “Wouldn’t it be better if we called the police before things went out of hand?” I ask the balding man again. This time he looked at me. But before he could say anything, I heard both sides saying, “No police, let us settle this among ourselves. Police means we would have to keep going to court.”

That sounded sensible. They were willing to negotiate. Maybe I could go now. But, no, there was a girl in the car. Maybe I should stay to ensure she is safe.
Her friend told the others that they should leave the girl alone. The other side reacted. “What @#@$, if we had to do something we would have done it by now. It is only because it is a girl that we have not raised our hand or voice.” I reach for my phone, it is still not clear if things would go out of hand. But why wait till then. I search for my editor’s number. I have my thumb on his name and wonder if I should or should not call him. I instantly remember what he had told me a day ago -- “You must have your finger on the button. Else, the system will collapse.”

Some more people, friends of the carwallahs, have arrived. One of them is wearing a white Panjabi and jeans. “He is the right man, I called him. He will settle it for us,” the carwallah tells his friends inside the car. I suddenly notice there is another man beside the girl at the wheel, I had all along thought there was only one guy negotiating on her behalf. I still don’t know which side the bald man is on or where he came from. Their envoy says the girl could go, the others would settle it. “Yes, we never stopped her, let her go. The rest of you come with us and let us settle it. You have to pay up.”

A negotiation is coming through. Just then the police land. Two cops on a bike. “What happened? What’s going on?”

He was asking the girl in the car, who is still on her phone. I could not hear what the girl said, but suddenly all hell broke loose.

“There will be no settlement. The girl told the cops we are harassing her. We had almost reached a settlement but she is now complaining against us.”

A guy fishes out his mobile and tries to photograph the car’s licence plate. But just then his phone starts ringing and he attends to the call. The cops too start taking down the numbers of the car and the auto.Suddenly everybody is around the car and despite the sudden display of anger, one of the guys begins humming: "Aunty police bulayegi, aunty police bulayegi... (A song in a Hindi movie which goes 'Aunty will call the police, aunty will call the police..)"
But soon the two sides are back at the negotiating table. Another guy arrives. He asks them to let the girl go. The other side says they never objected to her going away. But the rest should accompany them for more talks. The new guy says the girl’s brother is arriving soon for negotiations. But I had heard at the very beginning that her dad was on his way. At one point I thought a tall baldish guy walking towards the commotion was her dad, but he turned out to be another curious passerby.

The cops are begin talking among themselves. “They are negotiating, there is nothing we can do.”

One of them turns to me, “And you? Why are you here?”

I told him I was taking an evening, err night, walk. Saw the accident and commotion and decided to stop by. I told them how I had asked the carwallash if they would want a cop to arrive at the scene, but they were more keen on negotiating.

“It would be easier if they went to the police station.” The vehicle is damaged (I assume he means the car), their case is stronger. They are doing the wrong thing. But we can’t step in as of now.”

I urge them not to go away just yet.

Asked if they were patrol police, they said yes. I wanted to know how one called the police, they told me one needed to just call any police station and give the location where the commotion was taking place. I told them I didn’t know any police station’s number. “Isn’t there an easy-to-remember number?” One of them said no, before adding: “One could dial 100 and specify location”.

I asked them which police station they were from. When told, I said, “Why, I was there just two nights ago, to report the loss of my cell phone, pinched from my pocket on a bus.”

At that moment, the negotiators told the girl and the guy beside her to leave. She started the car, but the bumper in front had come off and was grazing the road. They broke it down and put it in the car’s hold. The girl stepped on the gas and zoomed away with a screech. “Saw that?” asked one of the guys from the aggrieved crowd to the cops.

“Was it a smart phone?” the cop asked me.

“Yes.”

“Did you provide the IEMI number in the missing diary?”

I said yes again. Then I might get it back, he tells me. “Just go to the headquarters and ask for the cyber crime cell. They can track your phone. The last time we had caught a mobile thief by locating him through the phone’s IEMI position,” he told me.

That’s music to my ears. But soon the other cop butted in to say, “Not any more. Nowadays they don’t sell the phone in one piece. They sell it in parts.”

O, then they might just get hold of a part of my phone if they tried to track it, I tell them. They burst out laughing. Everyone’s done for the night. We take one last look at the negotiations and head our own way.