After ma's passing
away, I've started dividing my memory into two halves: The Ma Days and Without
Ma Days. Since Without Ma Days is only about a month and I am still brooding on
what is happening, allow me to hatch incidents(for the time being one) from Ma
Days.
This episode I name: Chasing Poetry.
As those who know me,
know Ma, should also know the kind of bond we shared. She was actually a person
who could understand me better than I can ever comprehend myself. May be all
mothers have this quality. But all mothers are not their daughters' partners in
adventures and misadventures.
This incident belongs
to one of those sultry early summer evenings when you almost get consumed in
ennui. The only antidote to such a depressive trap, ma and I believed, was going
to a cinema.
So we checked show
timings at theaters near our house, booked a cab, slipped into something handy
and smeared double coat of lipstick for lipstick always elevates a woman's
mood, if not her morale.
Incidentally, we chose
to watch Secret Superstar: an incredible film which other than anything
portrays the bond of unflinching love between mother and daughter. Certain
dialogues of young Zaira, in fact reiterated a particular proposal that I had
always kept open for ma. After I becoming self reliant, I used to tell
her: do hell with your daily drudgery and fare away to a far away place with
me. But she never complied. You know mothers and their responsibilities!
The movie ended around
9:45. Even before leaving the multiplex I booked a cab without wasting time.
Most of the shops had closed. So we couldn't do any window shopping. It
was ma's idea to wait for our cab outside the mall. As always, compulsively I
chose to obey. The crowd started thinning but our cab didn't turn up. We
waited. It was past 10 o'clock. Seemingly our cab driver was finishing a trip.
And he was playing this in rewind and play mode for the past twenty minutes.
I had already called
him four to five times but he was nowhere to be seen. I started mulling other
options. And this moment of absent mindedness was fiendishly utilized by
a shaggy looking man wearing the shirt of a taxi driver.
In a fraction of a
second he snatched my smartphone from my palm smeared in grease of cheese
popcorn. Albeit, he could seize my phone from my right hand but my left hand
grasped his collar almost reflexively. Naturally he tried to let himself
loose, knocked me off and hopped on the driving seat of a taxi which he had
parked on the other side of the lane. Fully charged by Zaira's daredevil
attitude I could feel the power of Wonder Woman in my gut… I chased the driver
clutching his collar and tried to drag him out of the taxi. But before I could
get an upper hand over him he turned the engine and the taxi started wheeling away.
Like a lunatic obsessive creature I hung on, until the taxi speed and I was
nudged aside by a stranger. " Have you gone mad! You think yourself
to be some action woman? Why did you do that?", the stranger and many
others railed at me.
Why did I do that?
Well, I have an explanation. To start with, it was an average Lenovo smart
phone where a couple of function keys had gone dysfunctional. Still, I had a
reason. All those stuff in document section… could be worthless to all
and sundry but they were priceless to me. And that was reason enough to chase
my phone… the phone that was stuffed with poetry.
Coming back to the
scene: luckily, few good Samaritans, rather young knights on shining bikes came
to rescue this damsel in distress. " Ma'am
don't worry. It's a dead end. We'll catch hold of him." Saying that,
they vroomed off. Humanity is not lost,you know! A couple with a child even
cancelled their cab. They didn't want to abandon these helpless
mother-daughter duo at such a dire situation. The lady asked me to block my
phone and inform the police, asap. Getting the idea, my mother who was utterly
drained out after seeing her daughter's heroism, started calling the
police…frantically, yet futilely.
Within ten minutes if
not more, the three bullets zoomed back into the crime scene along with my
doper phone-thief, squeezed between the biker driving the second bike along
with his pillion. I saw my antique piece swaying in the hand of the third biker.
My phone was returned to me, almost like a wooing gift to a coveted queen.Ma
made the bikers feel worthy with kinds words. Rejuvenated, they realized their duty was not yet over.
That is why,
enthusiastically they took up the charge of the thief's retribution. As if, it
was a chivalrous responsibility levied upon them. And the mob thought no
differently.Remember, the humane couple I mentioned earlier? The husband, with
all due respect asked me and ma to step aside. The wife and the child were
instructed the same. He rolled up his sleeves, rubbed his fist and charged
ahead. Now I doubt, if he at all stayed back to protect us!
To my utter
embarrassment, the traffic had ceased to cross that area. My defenders had
positioned themselves in circular formation keeping my golliwog of a thief
in the middle, predisposed to his own predicament. In no time battering
started. The dance of democracy… unleashing the epiphany of human nature.
Alas! I really didn't
want this. I mean it. Unfortunately, ma couldn't reach the police, despite
trying repeatedly. Seeing the scene turning into a horror show, even I
started dialing their number. In the meantime, a person from the mob, in a fit
of mad zeal picked up a bamboo pole to hit the poor fellow. Horrified, I
rushed to grab the pole before it could be launched on my brutalized
little doper-thief. I wonder, which gland in human body secretes such venomous
hormones of animosity.
Poor chap, now he was
at my feet not pleading for mercy but pleading to be rescued. I felt pity as
well as guilty about this ripple effect. Mob lynching can never bring justice.
Above all, mob lynching can not be a punishment for a petty theft. Is it that
we deride some crooked pleasure by lynching someone who is in not in a
position to retaliate? If society progresses in cyclic order, would I be wrong
to say, we are, in that case heading toward days when might used to be right;
the era where big fish ate the small fish. In fact, at times I feel we have
become fishes gasping in turbid and contaminated water.
Finding it unbearable,
I intervened. My assortment of words which the world calls poetry can never be
more precious than a human life. Moreover, I had got my phone back and the
thief got his lesson. So I pulled up a stern voice and cried out to stop the
fiasco.
Thankfully, a taxi
driver offered his services to drive ma and me home. Promptly I plucked that
lump of a thief and shoved him into the cab, telling my well wishers I'd get
him arrested. But, under ma's prudent counsel we dropped him somewhere in
between and returned home pondering which part of the incident would haunt us
the most.
It was almost 11'o
o'clock when we reached home. Phone rang. It wasn't the Police calling me back.
It was our cab driver. He had just reached his pick up destination.
