Mhais I

Mhais/ Buffalo

Prologue
Mhais is Marathi for buffalo. Now you must be wondering why this guy has written a blog about a buffalo!  But all I am doing in this blog is ‘trying’ to narrate a hilarious story written, told and enacted by my favorite author P. L. Deshpande (also known as Pu La)

I know a lot will be lost in translation, but then the story has to be told. As they say, an imperfection in telling a tale is better than not telling it at all.

Part I

This incident happened towards the fag end of the month of May. The 5 a.m. Ratnagiri-Mumbai State Transport (ST) bus roared to life as scheduled. By that I mean the engine started making noises right on time. But by the time it reached the highway, it was only 7 a.m.  Usually, this distance can be covered in 7 minutes.

I spent the first half an hour was spent in absorbing the individual differences between passengers and their collective differences with the ST.

Although, I was quietly observing the atmosphere (in the bus) I was getting extremely jealous of the passenger sitting next to me. Right from the moment he took his seat, he had managed to convince himself without a doubt that my left shoulder was a complimentary pillow offered to him by the ST. Finally at 6:30 a.m. when the bus finally got going with a loud noise made by the engine, he woke up and yelled out, “Honey! Go over to the other side and sleep quietly.” He was probably used to being woken up at wrong times by his wife. He then looked around and again quickly went back to sleep.

While my left shoulder was busy in entertaining this man, a hand now fell on my right shoulder. Assuming that it belonged to the guy on my right, I gave him a troubled look. But both his hands were busy holding to a jar of pickles, which was resting in his lap. Then where did he sprout a third hand from? I made a few futile attempts to crane my neck and solve this mystery, and then gave up.

While both my shoulders were engaged like this, an entire family took refuge at my feet. The head of the family had placed both his hands on my thighs with his palms outstretched. And the lady of the house was busy ensuring that the crying of the kid in her lap kept growing louder by the moment. They had placed a long broomstick between my legs. It’s other end was brushing my nostrils for the moment.

“Arre, why have you kept this broomstick standing?” I asked with a troubled look.

“If we don’t, won’t the handle be broken” the head of the family rebuked and swept me off with a broomstick.  A while later I came to know that the he had a tendency to throw up in buses.

I quickly started praying that I would not be a target of any thing that may emanate from his mouth.

Every few moments, detailed awareness of the bumps and potholes in the road was being felt in that part of the body where it should not have been felt. Even in this uncomfortable position I could not help thinking up a metaphor for the bus – that of a huge and speedy dumpling stuffed with the spicy mix of people and luggage.

In all this commotion, it would have been a miracle if the bus conductor had actually NOT messed up his calculations about the money. He tried to count the number of people in the bus some 7 to 8 times, and then gave up. Some khaki-clad ST employees gathered around to assist him in his book-keeping. And after a lot of investigation, it was revealed that one gentleman had bought a half-ticket for himself. That led to a bit of a verbal volley between the parties involved. The volley included swears unleashed by both parties on each other.

Right then, the bell in the bus rang. The engine roared briefly and went silent. It kicked back into life and vibrated for sometime. The engine displayed an admirable ability to produce a wide array of sounds. It would whistle and hum. It would screech and coo. At one point of time, I am pretty sure I heard the engine perform a few steps of Kathak too …

“All of this chaos is a result of taking the boats off the Mumbai route” one man said loudly. And that prompted a panel discussion. A khadi- clad elderly gentleman dressed in took it upon himself to chair the discussion, without any requests to do so.

The discussion continued regardless of the engine’s cacophony. Funny thing was that the engine’s horrible noises had an effect on the gentleman sleeping on my left shoulder and he now started snoring in a rhythm similar to the engine. Of course, everyone was sleepy. The bus was scheduled to leave at 5 a.m. so everyone had woken up at an unearthly hour and gotten ready. So majority of them were complaining that they could have slept for 10 minutes at home, If only they knew about this hold up.

I lost track of the panel discussion and when I looked over to their side, the khadi clad man, took a book out of his jute bag and pretended to read. He was seated on the conductor’s seat, so he started taking stock of the situation in an independent way. Before we boarded the bus, a lot of the ST employees had politely shaken hands with him and had nicely offered him the conductor’s seat. Sharper tacks among the passengers had then realized that his khadi garb was capable of covering up a lot more than just his body.

Finally after about two hours of trials and tribulations, the engine confidently roared into life and the bus got going. And as crowded as the bus was, people settled down into their seats for the journey, and started accruing their overdue forty winks. Finally when the bus went past the Hatkhamba crossing and got on the highway headed towards Mumbai, the only awake people representing the passengers and the ST organization were me and the driver. The rest of that travelling ecosystem was fast asleep.
 
Even the manner of sleeping differed from person to person. Some people, due to the roads’ bumpiness were alternately nodding their heads as if to say “yes yes yes yes” and shaking their heads as if to say “no no no no”. In other words, not quite unlike India’s foreign policy ….. Ambiguous.

Some people were tasting their sleep. Others were swallowing their sleep. Some were sleeping with an obviously high amount of determination. Others, with their eyes open, were trying to summon back the sleep that had slipped away from them.
After a while, the smell of the jackfruits and mangoes people were carrying with them, assimilated with the stink of the dried fish others were carrying, and those two formed a formidable coalition with the aroma of the flowers stuck in the hair of female passengers, and a potent scent spread all over the bus, seemingly waking up most of us. Furthermore, the road from Ratnagiri to Mumbai has a lot of twists and turns, which makes sleeping in a practically suspension-less bus almost impossible. Our bus-world yawned and stretched into life. Tamarind chocolates, lemon drops and other such snacks usually eaten to avoid puking started exchanging hands.

The khadi-clad politician had also caught up on his sleep, and he woke up and started with the second round of his pretence of reading the book in hand. Sitting in front of me was a buttoned down shirt, and next to it a Chinese collar kurta. Next to the kurta was an almost-pretty almost-petite young woman. Her family was probably taking her to Mumbai to meet prospective grooms. Next to them were Usman Seth and his ‘phemilee’ (read family) i.e. his daughter and son-in-law who had come to visit him for the summer. Usman Seth was going to Mumbai to keep them company.

Next to them was young Madhu Manushtey, a guy who defined what a whipster is. He was going back to Mumbai to start the next semester. And most of the other people were workers, clerks and other assorted salaried class types who had just used up their quota of leaves, and were returning to Mumbai with their wife and kids.
I, on the other hand was returning to Mumbai, as usual wondering “why the hell did I come here?”. While going to Konkan, “why the hell am I going there?” and while returning from Konkan, “why the hell did I come here?”; apart from these two, I find it difficult to have any other thoughts during my Konkan visits. Anyway, the whole bus was now more or less awake and I could also now move my left shoulder as its use as a pillow had drawn to a close. 

And then suddenly I heard, “Mhais, mhais mhais!!!!!!!!”, people were yelling the same thing in different voices from the front of the bus. Immediately after that, a sound that the letters from A to Z are incapable to describing – the sound of brakes being slammed very hard. And holding on dearly their noses and their lives, fifty or so men, women, children, and their trunks, suitcases, barrels, bed-sets, jackfruits, mangoes, brooms, ropes, tools… and an infinite number of purses… were rudely displaced from their respective locations. After that, you can imagine the scene. Some had their hands around someone else’s necks and shoulders; others had landed at someone else’s feet or in their laps. A few seconds passed in these rather unorthodox poses and positions, before everyone restored their dignities. And after a few more seconds, we all had a collective epiphany – a mhais had been run over by the wheels of our bus.

The driver had already jumped down from the bus. A lot of passengers also started rushing outside through the back door. A big crowd of passengers started heading towards the front wheels of the bus where the mhais was. Suddenly, a group of about a dozen or so women from the nearby fields gathered around the mhais with their few dozen children, and they all started wailing at the top of their voices. The mob around the mhais was so big, that I couldn’t quite gauge the precise nature of the relationship that had formed between the mhais and the bus’ wheels.

In all that commotion, I manage to steal a peek of the mhais. It seemed like she was trying to come to terms with all the wailing and crying that was going on around her. Plus she was nodding her head once in a while. You know connoisseurs at a musical concert or an opera nod their head in appreciation when the singer performs a particularly admirable vocal feat? It seemed as if the mhais too was periodically expressing its admiration whenever one of the ladies or the children let out a particularly amazing cry.

As I craned my neck a bit more, I saw a steady stream of blood flowing from the side of the mhais’ back which disconcerted me a little. The sight of blood makes me feel like I am going to faint. Even the blood from a swatted mosquito is enough to make me dizzy… and here was an entire mhais bleeding! Of course, I wasn’t the only one squeamish about blood. Because I wasn’t the only one from the bus who first ran enthusiastically towards the front wheels of the bus, and then made a swift retreat at the sight of the mhais.

In about five minutes or so, the number of voices in the crying chorus started dwindling. When the accident happened, all these ladies had for some reason assumed that it was their mhais that had been hit by the bus, and started bawling. As they took a closer look, the ladies started realizing one by one that the mhais didn’t belong to them, so they got up and went back to whatever they were doing. Pretty soon, not a single crying lady was there at the scene.

Then the driver, conductor, khadi-clad politician, and other enterprising passengers surged ahead for closer scrutiny. They crowded around the mhais and started examining the scene.

The mhais is still alive!” came the first update.

Then suddenly some of then started yelling, “Water! Water! Get some water!”

A gentleman who worked in an American company in Mumbai offered his thermos. For some reason, this man had informed everyone on the bus that he works in an “American company”. As he started advancing towards the mhais with his thermos, one guy stopped him and said, “Hehe. Just this much water? What good is that to this huge animal? Hehehe!”, and promptly chugged down just this much water himself.

“Your thermos is really good, by the way” he further added. “Must be American!” came his backhanded compliment.

The driver and conductor realizing there wasn’t much they could do but wait, ambled away to a corner and lit their bidis. Meanwhile passengers started splashing water on the mhais. And boy, did they splash! They splashed so much water, that if the passengers hadn’t decided to keep some of the water for their remaining journey and stopped, then the cause of death for the mhais in the autopsy would not have been “hit by a bus”, but rather, “drowning”.

After a while, the animal’s actual owner reached the accident site with his wife. The bawling started once again.
“Oh my chandi… my poor chandi… used to give 10 liters of milk everyday!”

10 litres! Buffalos are known to be very productive of course. But considering that this mhais was from Konkan, my guess is that the figure 10 liters probably referred to the sum total of all the milk she had given in her lifetime.

Now everyone gathered around the owner and his wife. The buttoned down shirt from the bus turned out to be a doctor. He started suggesting medicine for the mhais’ wounds.

“Hmpf! I won’t let anyone touch her!” the owner roared. “Let the police come and then we’ll see what to do about this.”

Police!!!!  None of the passengers had thought about this possibility.

“Yes yes. That’s right. That’s right. It’s an ak-shi-den. Unless the police come and an FIR is filed, nothing can be done when there’s an ak-shi-den.” said a jacket with a black cap.

Police.. FIR.. as these known terms started making rounds, some experienced passengers took down their bedding sets from the top of the bus. Walked over to an empty shed by the side of the road, and spread their mattresses.

“Hmmm….Bagunana… we are assured of a 4 hour nap now, what do you say?” said Jhampya Damle as he unfolded his body on the mattress.

“4 hours? Are you crazy, Jhampya? Remember, when the bus ran over a chicken last year near Hatkhamba, we were sitting around for 3 hours. A chicken! And here we have a full grown mhais. If a chicken took three hours, then a mhais will…? You do the math!” Bagunana said as he lay down, “We’ll be here till evening for sure.”

Meanwhile the sun was getting brighter, and people started looking for shade to take refuge in. Then some of them got together to look for water. Cigarettes and snacks started exchanging hands.

"You know, if she keeps bleeding like this, the mhais will die in about 15-20 minutes," Dr. Buttoned down shirt was trying to convince the politician.

"I don't care even if she dies," the owner overheard him and shouted, "but if I don't make the ST people regret this blunder of theirs, I won't go by the name Dharma Mandavkar again!"

Some new information for us all - the mhais owner's name was Dharma Mandavkar.

Suddenly, Usman Bhai caught hold of a kid, sent him up a Jamun tree nearby, and got a basketful of Jamun plucked out. Then some clever passengers sent Usman Bhai up a gum tree, as the expression goes, and got their own tongues blackened. That lead to another panel discussion - this time on the medicinal value of Jamun. Chairing the discussion was the khadi clad politician, as expected.  

As soon as familiar words like diabetes, hypertension and so on started being bandied around, the doctor joined the panel.

"Eh? No. What are you all talking about – Jamun and all? Nah, nothing in them." Doctor opened his mouth. So far it had been busy eating those Jamun.

For about five minutes or so, he delivered a jargon-filled and unintelligible monolgue, and the only useful information to come out of it was that he was a Doctor of Homoeopathy.

"Does your homoeopathy work on a mhais?" a curious mind asked.

"Don't be absurd. How can homoeopathy work on a mhais," came a dissenting voice from the corner.

"Why won't it work?" the curious mind bristled. "If it can work on humans, it must definitely work on mhais. You just need to follow the dietary restrictions sincerely, am I right, Doctor? But I must say, your homoeopathy's dietary restrictions are very hard to follow. What do you guys have against coffee?"

"Coffee has a toxin in it named tanin," said someone else, definitely a teacher. Because giving such an obviously wrong piece of information with such unshakeable confidence is something only teachers can do. This was the same guy who used my shoulder like a pillow.

"Who told you coffee has tanine in it? That's not correct. Tea has tanine." the curious mind responded, "Coffee has coffin or something like that. Am I right, Doctor?"

The doctor spat out a Jamun seed and was about to say something when,

"What nonsense are you talking about?" the teacher now bristled, "Coffin? Coffin is the Christian peoples' funerary box!!"

The teacher said the words "funerary box" with such self-righteous emphasis, that it summarily ended the debate on what coffee exactly has in it. And people returned to the panel discussion on characteristics of the Jamun fruit.

That's when we saw half a dozen men walking towards us with a few cots in their hands. 

....  to be continued 


** The portrait depicting the scene belongs to Ravish Dhanawade.
His blogs can be found at:
 http://ravishdhanawde.blogspot.in/2012_06_16_archive.html