Twinkle Khanna reveals her love affair with autos
I got a package in the mail last week, and when I clumsily ripped it open, I yelped in sheer excitement as the parcel contained five copies of my very first book. I sent one to my mother right away.
The next day she called me, and wanting to know her views on the book, I picked up the phone with great enthusiasm.
She began by saying, "I am telling the cook to make massor pulao for lunch. Should I send some over to you?"
I screeched, "Mom, forget the pulao, I sent you my book last night. Did you see it? You didn’t even call?"
She replied, "Yes, beta, I got it but first I wanted to keep it in the temple for a day."
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I giggled, "Mother that totally makes sense. God, sitting in one place, with an itchy marigold garland around him... the only highlight of his day when the tone-deaf panditji screams the gayatri mantra in his ear and startles him awake. Yes, he must be pretty bored all day in that temple and would probably enjoy a fun read." Mother snapped, "Stop it! I hope you haven’t written nonsense like this in your book!" I promptly replied, "After god finishes reading it, have a look mom and find out for yourself."
As I was about to hang up, she said, "All good things should start with god’s blessings, silly girl. I will read it tonight and by the way, it is good to see that your old love for rickshaws has found its way to your book cover."
A simple illustration of a woman in an autorickshaw, ferrying her children to unknown lands, is pretty much the description of the cover of my first book. We finally arrived at this particular design after arguments and tears, where I insisted that I didn’t want my twinkling mug on the cover and the marketing department tore their hair out, and then probably started making wigs with the same, stating that a photograph is worth a thousand illustrations.
When I doodled a dodgy sketch of the rickshaw with my children bouncing around to explain what I had in mind, it was simply because a rickshaw played a prominent cameo in the first chapter, but mother dearest had hit upon the real reason, it was love...
Just the way some people love riding carousels while others rollercoasters, I love riding in our good old autorickshaws. Though if you think about it, a rickshaw is also a combination of both a rollercoaster because of our potholed roads and a carousel since you often get lost and go round and round the same spot.
My tryst with these black-and-yellow chariots started in my teens. Limited pocket money and in hindsight, a rather lazy streak led to me ditching my trusty cycle and zipping along in my rickshaw, bravely going where (unlike the Star Trek slogan) lots of men and women had gone before, namely, Juhu, Santacruz and Bandra.
I grew up, made some money, bought a white Maruti and that should have been an end to my auto days, but curiously it didn’t stop there.
Drivers not turning up, impatience, cars breaking down, were all excuses to hail my meter-wielding knight, because unlike an air-conditioned car where you are insulated, a rickshaw is where you see the world without barriers.
There are odd smells wafting in, fragmentary sounds blaring in your ears, a eunuch with a bright bindi thrusting her head right next to yours, tobacco-chewing policemen scowling in corners and along with this hurricane of sound, light and noxious odours pirouetting around you, there are invariably adventures...
1992
"Bhaisaab, how many years have you been driving this auto?" The diminutive driver replied, "Memsaab one year now, before I do embroidery work. I didn’t like... but good money. Saved and bought seven gold biscuits, all gone in daughter’s marriage now. But memsa'ab, I still have one gold biscuit left at home so god is kind."
While getting off the rickshaw I gave him some kind advice, "Don’t tell anyone about the gold biscuit bhaisaab! One never knows what kind of people are out there. Someone may murder you." He blinked rather manically and in a hackneyed manner replied, "Ma ka doodh piya hai, let someone try, I will cut his throat." Which was all well and good, Bollywood influences and all I thought, till he pulled out a butcher’s knife from under his seat and said, "See this!"
I quickly gave him my fare of Rs 26 and jumped out of the rickshaw, worried that in the heat of the moment, all that mother’s milk would suddenly boil over and in a frenzy he would thrust his knife at good samaritan me.
2010
A lizard fell on me while I was sitting in a rickshaw and when I squealed the driver patiently explained, "Madam, there is meaning in where lizard fall. If lizard fall on right cheek then male child born, if it fall on head then death, if it fall on moustache then many problems. It is science, gauli shastra, I have studied in my village, 53 places lizard falling and meaning different, different things, so tell please madam where did lizard fall?" I gave him a fitting reply, "It fell on my head bhaisaab, so should I jump under your auto and die just to fit in with this lizard prophecy?"
2013
The monsoons had hit Mumbai and typhoid had hit my poor driver. So I clambered into my yellow-and-black substitute and off we went. At a traffic light in Khar, an old beggar in a torn sari came up to our rickshaw and said something to the driver. All I heard him saying was "Haan maji". They had a brief hushed conversation before the traffic light changed and we sped away.
Curious, I asked him, "You know her? What was she saying?" That’s when I found out that she owns this rickshaw and two others and anticipating heavy rain that evening, she was giving him instructions to park under her shed.
The rickshaw in my book symbolises a window to the convoluted world around us, which is what the book structured around my columns is all about; how a modern woman looks at India and how India looks right back at her.
I sit on the rear seat of my open-air chariot almost like Arjuna sat behind Krishna in their chariot during the Mahabharata and like Arjuna I learn about life. Well, perhaps not about the immortality of the soul and how it’s a good idea to kill your warring cousins but simply about the magic of India as I travel along paradigm universes where beggars are entrepreneurs, tailors have gold bricks, drivers are well-versed in reptilian prophesies and nothing is as it seems.
(A shorter version of this piece first appeared in India Today.)