Known Strangers

During my childhood, there was an old lady who used to sell roasted chickpea (kadala) and peanuts (kappalandi).  She was very old, short, and thin with a stoop.  Even at an advanced age she had to work to make both ends meet.  She always wore plain maroon or blue colour saree with black border.  Of course, the color of her saree was always dim.  She carried chickpea and peanuts in a big cloth bag on her shoulder.  She had a small cylinder-shaped measuring vessel made of aluminum.  She used to sell one heaped vessel of nuts for 10 paise.  She carried the bags on her shoulder and walked from street-to-street shouting “Kadala, Kadala, Kappalandi”.  Her voice was feeble and the pronunciation not clear.  Still, most of the people, including us, bought nuts from her.  More than taste of the nuts, lending a helping hand to her was the reason behind many people buying from her.  She was a quiet lady, who never spoke anything.  She would just come, give nuts, collect money, and keep moving.  I didn’t know anything about her; name, place of stay, her family, nothing was known.  I suppose the same was true with most of my neighbours too!

Another character that comes to my mind is a beggar, whose name was Hussain.  He was dumb.  Though his name was Hussain, people called him ‘Pottan’.  Pottan in Malayalam means idiot, but in colloquial language, it also means one who is dumb.  He used to come to our house almost twice or thrice a week.  He would stand near the gate and keep knocking till some of us saw him.  We used to give him something (mostly 10 or 20 paise coins).  He used to collect it and move to the next house.  My grandmother believed that no alms should be given on Tuesdays and Fridays and my parents continued this tradition.  So, when Hussain came on Tuesdays or Fridays, we used to ask him to come the next day.  He would still wait for some more time before leaving.  During festivals and other special occasions, we used to offer him food.  Beyond his name, we didn’t know anything about him. 

As I grew up, the frequency of visits by these two came down and eventually they stopped coming.  I am sure we all have such characters in our lives, whom we would have met a hundred times or more, and still, we didn’t know anything about them.  It could be anyone, the candy seller in front of the school, the rikshaw/cab driver, peon who rang the college bell, boy who served tea in the canteen, fruit vendor on the pavement, and so on and so forth!  Have we not met them so many times? Yes.  Do we know them? Yes.  But do we know them enough? No.  Still, their faces, voices, mannerisms, everything is permanently etched in our memory.  Yes, they are known to us, yet they are strangers.  W B Yeats says, ‘there are no strangers here, but friends you haven’t yet met’.  But the people mentioned by me are ‘strangers whom we met many times’…. So, they are ‘Known Strangers’!

Rajkumar

My cousin Venu did his Master’s in Engineering from Manipal Institute.  As part of his course, he came to Bangalore for internship in an organisation in 2000.  I invited him to visit me and spend a weekend with me at Tumkur.  So, Venu came to Tumkur on a Saturday morning.  He was supposed to return to Bangalore on Sunday evening.  I forced him to stay back.  Since the organisation where he was working was on the Tumkur-Bangalore highway, I told him, ‘You can go directly from Tumkur to your workplace on Monday morning’.  Venu agreed.  Venu is a good cook, so my intention of forcing him to stay back was to enjoy his cooking for another day!  As planned, Venu left for Bangalore on Monday early morning.  When I went to my Institute, I saw people discussing something serious.  One of them told me that the Kannada super star Rajkumar had been abducted by sandalwood smuggler Veerappan on Sunday night.  Initially I didn’t realise the gravity of the situation.  Later, when I came to know that shops and establishments were pulling their shutters down, traffic was being blocked everywhere and there was riot like situation in Bangalore, I grew anxious.  Since we didn’t have mobile phones, I could not contact Venu.  He had given me the phone number of his office.  I tried that number many times, but nobody answered the call.  As time passed, I grew more and more anxious.  I was also feeling guilty.  Had I not insisted on him staying back, he would have reached Bangalore on Sunday evening itself.  By noon I got a call from Venu that he safely reached his place of stay.  I had a sigh of relief.

Few years later, I was working on a World Bank funded project of MHRD in my Institute.  Every month we were supposed to visit the State Government’s monitoring cell and present the progress of the project.  The cell was functioning in a building close to Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore.  One day, four of us from the Institute hired a cab and went to Bangalore.  By the time we finished our work, we could see that the road in front of the building, which used to be very busy, had almost become empty.  Police vehicles were seen plying on both directions.  We got the news that Rajkumar had passed away.  Suddenly there was gloom everywhere.  Taking advantage of this, anti-social elements started creating trouble in the city.  The officers in the cell told us not to venture out till police brought the situation under control.  So, we stayed back in the office till 8 in the evening.  When we felt that things were under control, we came out.  As our car was turning near Hotel Chalukya, we could see a mob attacking a car on the other end of the road.  Our driver immediately turned the car to a small lane and sped through that.  Luckily our driver was well versed with the topography of that area.  So, he kept driving though small lanes avoiding all the main roads.  We could see trouble everywhere.  There was tension all around.  Anytime an angry mob could jump on to our car.  But luckily that didn’t happen.  Finally, when we hit the Tumkur road near Yashwantpur, police had brought the situation under control. 

Dr. Rajkumar was not only a superstar, but a nice and humble gentleman, loved and respected by everyone.  I never got an opportunity to see him live.  But whenever his thoughts come to my mind, I remember these two incidents.