Doors Unlocked and Opened: Let It Be?

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Let It Be?

It’s a typically crowded evening in the bustling streets of Mumbai. Our dear friend Cyrus is comfortably seated at the back of his BMW, his iPod plugged in as he grooves to some Beatles classics, on his way to Wadia Uncle’s 50^th birthday party. A shrill siren interrupts Let It Be and his earphones fall off as he jerks his head around to glare at his oppressor. He curses. It’s an ambulance.

A few cars around them slow down, hesitantly. His driver, Rajesh, slows down too, but only in order to swiftly open his door and spit out his accumulated paan.

“Rajesh, jara fast chalao boss, bahoot late ho raha hai,” Cyrus manages to say in his first-class dialect of Hindi.

“Yeh bloody ambulance sahib, I tell you koy patient-vatient hai bhi nahi, nonsense kahi ke!” Rajesh replies in his first-class dialect of English.

Cyrus tries to encourage him to speed up but his squeaky voice is drowned out by a symphony of car horns as Rajesh Schumacher cuts across the on-passing emergency vehicle with a vroom of the BMW’s powerful engine, causing the ambulance to brake violently. Rajesh laughs and curses triumphantly into his rear-view mirror.

*****

It’s said to be the most difficult part of a doctor’s job and it was the part Dr. Vipul Gawande dreaded most.

“I’m so sorry,” he ventured, helplessly, as a wife could only stare horrifically while two children let their tears flow.

“Perhaps if the ambulance reached a few minutes earlier, but it was just too late...Mumbai traffic, you see....there was nothing we could do. I am truly sorry for your loss.”

God, I am horrible at this, he thought angrily. A husband, a father, is dead. And why? Probably because somebody was too late for a goddamned party to make way for an ambulance!

*****

As per the Rules of the Road Regulations 1989, if a driver is in the path of an approaching Fire Service Vehicle or an Ambulance that is displaying a flashing blue or red light or sounding an alarm, the driver must move out of the path of the vehicle as soon as he can do so safely.

1 comment:

SalmanFebruary 3, 2012 at 6:12 PM
Loved the "first class dialects" and the rajesh "Schumacher "
Another excellent piece of work
Keep it up
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I've always loved writing. You can say that I grew up with a pen in one hand and a notebook in the other. Over the years, the innumerable pens and notebooks were replaced by qwerty keypads and electronic screens but the affection for words remained unchanged. Through all my years at school, the English language was my favourite area of study and the days we were allowed to write essays in class were something quite special.

Like most kids growing up, I wanted to be something different every other day. Some days an architect, some days an international sportsman. But most days, I would settle for being a big businessman and an author. It was during one of these author phases that I wrote the first few pages of what was meant to be my debut novel. Eight neatly handwritten pages of The Adventures of Haroon and the Hairy Hypnotiser. Unfortunately, that novel didn't materialize but I'm okay with that, in retrospect, considering I was only eleven years old at the time.

Then one day, five years later, while clearing out an old drawer, I came across the notebook where I had begun my premier novella. It made me realise that for years, I had written in private, nurturing endless ideas. Of what use is an author, if he himself is his only reader, right?

And so, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, pieces I write from here on will be displayed on this blog. You will find fiction, reflection and even some journalistic writing here. Feel free to rate, comment and share my work.

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