A HITCHHIKER

by Manish Kumar Jaiswal (India)

I didn't expect to find India

It was going to be a cold night, and I will have to endure it on a red cotton t-shirt and hiker’s shorts. The light from the ATM vestibule was dim, everything around me bundled up for the night, and not a human sniff for my senses. The streets were dark and sky moonless. The green hills of Munnar were hidden, but the stream that came down it was suddenly noisy and full of frolic. I pulled out my companion from the blue rucksack, on which I depended to get me through the night. John Buchanan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps failed to shield my focus against a rising cold breeze and a stomach that rebelled against an index-finger scoop of peanut butter for the dinner. A mild headache made its presence felt too. It was the first night of my hitchhiking trip, and I was already in regrets. I repented to have challenged myself to survive the five-day trip on five hundred rupees and to have naïvely believed that Munnar wouldn’t be “that cold”. The guard of the ATM was anxious of my presence, and had only reluctantly allowed me till the black granite steps leading to the vestibule. How was I to busy myself till the next day’s dawn? Sleep eluded me even after I pulled my arms in through the half sleeves to the warm company of my stomach. The small fonts of the yellow pages and the flickering light too were a dismal hope. I had started my hitchhiking trip on hope of making new friends, busting wild parties, and dining in stranger’s homes. At least, Arvind Subramanian painted such a picture, who himself was on a cross-country crowdfunded bike trip. He had stopped to deliver a talk in my college, and I was immediately inspired to start an adventure of my own, only shorter, and self-funded, and across the adjoining small state of Kerala. And my first night halt turned out to be the cold Munnar. ‘Are you still there?’ a muffled voice inquired from inside the vestibule. The bald, old rotund had heard my tragic adventure with scornful eyes, an hour ago, and knew that I had nowhere to go for the night. So, the question irritated me a trifle. ‘Of course! Where…’ said I, checking myself in time with a reminder of his generous granites and hopeful flickers. ‘Beta! My son!’ he said after a very long pause, ‘home is an earthly paradise. Parents are its guardians. They can be strict at times, but they never mean any harm.’ I had clearly been taken as a runaway, and my earlier explanations had been set aside as usual lies. But the mere mention of home churned my mind and a flood of self-reproaching words rose. Idiot! Rash! Childish!... ‘You look to be from a good family, beta. Aren’t you?’ ‘We are from an Okay Family.’ ‘Do your parents know that you are spending your night here? Like this?’ ‘No. I mean to tell…’ I stopped unfinished for he had started again after just sniffing my “No”. ‘Go back home, beta. Apologize! They would understand. Go back!’ his voice grew melancholic. ‘We do wild things in youth. Don’t let it ruin your life.’ Silence followed. I felt insulted, and rummaged the thought of going somewhere else for the night, but the brutal darkness around me settled my refugee thoughts. ‘I was too young to remember anything, and I had a bad temper as a child,’ he spoke almost in a whisper, ‘but I remember their faces, the big mango tree in the courtyard, and the hibiscus bloom of the front yard.’ ‘Where was this?’ suddenly the story seemed a partner for the night, and I was in acceptance of it. ‘When was this?’ ‘I don’t remember the name of my town. My father had slapped me for something and asked me to “Go Away!” Stupid I was to take a random train and leave. Never saw them again. I am a father of three now, I know what he would have meant…’ At dawn, when the usual morning candles rose at the horizon, I left the stairs and the snoring hitchhiker for a journey of my own.