I was about to catch an AC sleeper bus to Bangalore from a small town called Manvi in Karnataka. I was looking for a shop to buy a cigarette. It's quite late at night and by the standards of this village- aspiring- to -be a small town it must have shut down all the shops before sunset.
I hate the idea of travelling on buses, especially at night but this is the first time I'm going to travel on a sleeper. Only me, Frank and a couple of youngsters with backpacks are waiting for a bus on that deserted roadside. This place is like the wheat ball put inside white flour which is about to be pressed and rolled into a chappati. The dust is omnipresent, it never subsides.
Most of the sewers are open. Filthy pigs, dogs and all kinds of cattle roam around in this dust adding to the miserable atmosphere. Even at this time, this place stinks like how it was in the daytime. I had been carrying two bags with cameras and a tripod since morning as we were travelling all around and documenting stuff. Stuff that attracts money for the poor and goodwill for the ones who spend it. Money that hardly lose any value even after crossing borders just because it's meant to serve the poor and maybe some of them might choose the path of The Lord.
Whatever. I too get a share of it, so hail Mary!
Frank pointed to a bench inside the shed of a closed workshop with its name written in Kannada. Stacked tyres in dirt can be seen in a corner of the shop which looked like a makeshift tent. Before I finish putting my butt on that thin bench the bus came to the stop.
A car was parked near the shop and someone was waiting inside it for someone else on the bus. Two brown bulky dogs with white dots on foreheads were barking at the person sitting inside the car for some time. Is he/she a drug peddler?
I and Frank rushed with our bags in one hand and phone in the other checking our seat numbers. Frank with his 55 years of travel experience took a glance at the bus and said instantly that this isn't our bus. He figured out from the shape and size of the bus that it was not air-conditioned.
To confirm it I asked Kili ( the guy who accompanies the driver ) in my broken Hindi whether this bus goes to Bangalore. That guy told me that he don't know! Yes, he said so. I asked same question to the driver and he said that another bus will reach in some time. Sometimes we yearn for assurance no matter what from whom it is.
I walked back to our shed to find a gunny sack placed in the middle of the bench. Frank and I wondered where from the earth did this pop up. I looked around and near a tree that must be growing a century into the shop, and saw a boy who is very shy trying to hide behind the tree.
I asked him with my hand symbols whether he had put the sack on the bench because no one here speak any other language than Kannada. He nodded his head like most other Indians do, making me wonder whether it was a yes or no. He was wearing a black full sleeves t-shirt mixed in the dust just like that town. Even though he was shy, he had a beautiful grin attached to his face all the time.
It was only after a moment and Frank sat on either side of the sack that we got the idea of homeless people using sacks to sleep on roadside shops with wooden benches. The social scientists in Frank woke up and we both got up from the bench politely asking the boy to use his place.
He was still smiling and not interested in giving a response other than his trademark ambiguous nod. Like Pachalam Bhasi, I used all my dumb charades skills to make him sleep on his bench.
After repetitive failed attempts, I walked near the road waiting for my bus. Frank also got busy on the phone with his boyfriend who took a vow to call him every half an hour despite being in the army training camp. I took a 90-degree turn to see if the boy went back to his bed. But he's standing close to me looking at the road. Is he waiting for the bus to come so that he can sleep peacefully? Or is he looking forward to start a conversation? Or is he a thief like the one in Bresson's Pickpocket?
That took me to my recently developed desire to meet more human beings which I pretend as my new year resolution to anyone who is too concerned about my new year and resolutions.
I asked in Hindi if he knows Hindi and he replied in Hindi that he doesn't know Hindi. Then I asked him a couple of questions in Hindi for which he doesn't even seem to understand anything.
I asked to google to translate my questions from Hindi to Kannada and tried reading it to them to him like 'nivu yake nimma manega hogabaradu' which should mean 'why don't you go to your house ?' .
Maybe after listening to my terrible Kannada, the boy replied to me in his terrible Hindi, ' chori karna' (to steal). Like the Punjabi girl1 who confirmed with Ramanan whether he is a thief, I too asked him if he is really going to steal the shop. But he didn't say a stupid yes like Ramanan and instead put his hand on the head gesturing the level of fool that I'm. Using another nod which meant 'no' he said the same sentence in another tone so that I understood that he sleeps there to prevent theft.
Ok. So he's an employee in that shop.
The social scientist in Frank again wept for the poor boy who's not only homeless but also forced to do child labour. I asked some regular fieldwork questions.
" do you go to school"
"no".
"why"
"I don't like to".
I asked him to read the name of the shop( obviously written in Kannada) to test his reading skills, and the chap doesn't seem to be worried about his skill to read anything at all.
The bus was approaching and he signalled me about it. I was feeling restless as I didn't finish interrogating him. I asked him who's the owner of the shop and he said that his father owns it. A bit puzzled, I asked him the name of the owner for which he said some word that was difficult to process. Before entering the bus I asked him whether the shop was also in his father's name to which he again said no and that it was in his own name. I got onto the footboard and before the kili closed the door I looked at him and asked his name and he said 'Ram'.
Refer Punjabi House- A Malayalam movie released in 1990s.