Love Dancing In The Shadows Masked By Laughter

Truck Driver: Tumhara Shaadi ho gaya (Are you married)

Me: Of course not. Do you think if I was married, I would be able to roam around like this

There is laughter all around. The unmarried ones, who are a majority laugh a little louder. It is probably one of the most cliched retorts I can come up with for a question like this but it does manage to get a laugh every single time. A lot of times I have wondered whether these unmarried men really value the freedom that being single entails or is freedom the silver lining in the dark cloud that the loneliness (and the infrequent sex) of being single entails.

I met these truck drivers in the morning when my bike had broke down and I needed help to truck it to the next town and get it fixed. The previous night, I was stuck in a small village called Barak in Manipur and a very kind lady - Veronica had given me a place to sleep in her shop. With tears in my eyes I left Veronica's shop in the morning but the tears dried up soon as soon as I hit the road. You see slushy roads have a way of making you forget everything and your mind is only concentrating on how much to accelerate on the first gear (second gear if you are lucky) and making sure you have a firm grip on your bike. The wheels move haywire sometimes and you are constantly concentrating on the road. There is a convoy of trucks that are stuck in that slush in front of me. I stop behind them and contemplate.

The ground on the left of these trucks is more firm but there is very little space to go ahead. On the right side of the trucks, the road is a lot more slushy and the bike tyre is very likely to get stuck somewhere in between but then there is enough space. I also have an option of waiting till the trucks start moving but the truck drivers are all out and it may take some time before they start moving. Also the left side is a deep valley and one slip here or there and I would end up down that valley. If that happens I presume I'll be dead. I do think about death once in a while but I always imagine it peacefully in my sleep or sometimes a bomb blast in a crowded bus. A motorcycle accident in the mountains is my least preferred option in ways to die. I think of waiting for a while but I can see one of those truck drivers is very excited to see me and if I wait it is inevitable that he will strike up a conversation with me. A tourist on a motorcycle in a God forsaken place does intrigue a lot of people and I am pretty used to it now. The truck driver who looks at me with a lot of excitement is one of the most sweetest people you will ever come across in life. I can say that just by his looks and demeanour but still I want to avoid that conversation. It is not that I hate people or conversations with people. In fact I love them. It is just that the kindness kind of unsettles me. I am always worried that I will never be able to reciprocate the same amount of love, compassion and kindness that I receive.

I take the road on the right side of the roads and as I had guessed the back tyre did get stuck just 20 metres ahead. The truck driver came rushing towards me with the cutest of smiles and pushed my bike out and said some kind encouraging words. I smiled, thanked him, waved him goodbye and carried on. Hardly have I traversed another Kilometer my bike breaks down. The engine is on but no amount of acceleration gets the bike to move forward. As I came to know later on, the clutch plates had got burnt. A local guy on the road helps me push the bike to the side of the road where the ground is firm and he tells me to wait for trucks and ask them for help in carrying it to the next town.

I wait for some half an hour before I see a convoy of trucks approaching. One good thing about the roads being slushy is that the trucks would be slow and they won't be able to speed past without noticing me. There are 6 trucks in that convoy and I and that local guy call out to the truck driver to help me out. People in Manipur have been very kind to me and I am pretty confident that they will help me out. In the last 3 days I have been on the receiving end of two acts of extreme kindness (You can read about those stories here and here) that suddenly the skepticism you have about people fades away and you start trusting in the goodness of people. Add to it the fact that one of guys coming out from one of these trucks is the same truck driver who came to help push my bike when it was stuck in the mud a while back. I just knew I was in luck.

Let me just pause for a moment here and give names and some information about a few characters. The excited truck driver who rushed to help me - let me call him Mr X. He is married and his wife is pregnant and they are expecting a baby soon. There is one very benevolent truck driver - let me call him Mr Y. He is married and has two kids. He is the married guy who I mentioned at the starting of this story. Then there is this angry young man. Let me call him Mr Z. He is unmarried. I spent the whole day with them and I know I am a very pathetic person because I don't remember their names. In my defense, I can only say that Manipuri names are very hard to remember. I should have written it down. 

So let me proceed again  

There are about 10 people in these 6 trucks. As I learnt over the course of time, a convoy of trucks has two sets of people. One are the drivers and the others are the cleaners. The drivers are the bosses and the cleaners are the ones who do most of the ancillary stuff as guided by the drivers. They also take care of the cooking and washing utensils and all that stuff. All the decisions are to be taken by the truck drivers. The cleaners just follow orders. Gradually they pick up the requisite skills and ideally they would progress to be truck drivers. In fancy corporate lingo you could call them interns. The truck drivers amongst them are in an animated discussion. They are speaking in some Manipuri language but I can get the jist of the conversations with their body language. 

Mr Z is angry and saying something on the lines that we can't waste time with this and we need to reach somewhere and we will get late. Mr Y doesn't say anything but then just by the way he is looking at me I know that he wants to help me out and he is feeling bad about it. Then Mr X does the most amazing thing that one human being can do for another. He stood up for me. He just told them "You all go if you want to. I am staying back and helping him". I never understood the words he spoke but these are things you can feel. I will never forget this in my life. Mr X was my guardian angel. Just this small act of standing up for me turned the tide in my favour. Mr Y also started to convince the other people and in under 5 minutes, he managed to convince Mr Z too. 

The bike and the luggage is loaded in Mr Y's truck and I sit in front with Mr Y. We carry on. The whole day till now had been so eventful that I had forgotten the events of the previous day. I had left the morning from Veronica's shop with tears in my eyes that had quickly dried up with the road conditions and the break down of the bike. My thoughts again go back to Veronica and a tear trickled down my face. Mr Y notices my tears and with all his benevolence tells me not to worry and that my bike would get fixed in the next town. I smile in my mind. Sometimes life just gives you such comical scenarios. I want to tell him that I am a courageous man. I am not a man who would cry for such things. I want to tell him the story about the previous day. But I keep quiet. The kind of love that I could feel was just magical and I did not want to ruin something that beautiful. 

Finally we have hit proper roads and we stop somewhere on the side of the road near a waterfall for lunch. The cleaners are busy cooking lunch for everyone. The drivers are all out there in the waterfall for a bath. I join them. I can't help but wonder that every time in this trip when I am with truck drivers, I end up taking a bath with them. This happened before in Manali (you can read that story here) and again out here. Just my luck I guess. In an ideal world, I would have been bathing with Victoria's secret models under waterfalls when I go on a motorcycle trip but I guess the world is not that ideal a place. Anyway it helps in bonding and Mr Z doesn't seem upset because of me anymore. After a simple meal of rice, dal and a very hot Raja Mirchi chutney, we carry on.

We pass Jiribam and cross into Assam. We reach Lakhipur a small town in Assam, at about 3 pm. We stop just on the outskirts near a bike mechanic shop. I ask the mechanic if he could fix my bike. The mechanic tells me he cannot say. He says he will have to check and if its not a major fault he can fix it but if its something major which would require some spare parts it could be difficult to source Enfield spare parts and I would have to take it to Silchar some 35 Km away to get it fixed. I liked his confidence.We take down the bike from the truck and I take it to the mechanics place. I tell the situation to those truck drivers and I tell them that I would manage from here. I'll find a lodge nearby and dump my luggage there and get the bike fixed and carry on the next day. They have other plans. The 5 trucks carry forward to the place where they had decided to camp for the night. Mr Y's truck which has all my luggage stays back. Then Mr X & Mr Y accompany me to the bike mechanics shop and Mr Z sleeps inside the truck because all my luggage is inside the truck.

The clutch plate is burnt and I need to replace it. Luckily the mechanic has a spare Enfield clutch plate in his warehouse. It takes him about 2 hours to fix the bike. Mr X & Mr Y wait with me the whole time till the bike gets fixed. The mechanic charges me Rs 800 for the clutch plates. Mr Y tries to reason with him that the printed price on the back of the cover is Rs 280 and he should maybe be more reasonable. The mechanic knows that I lack options and doesn't budge. Not that an extra 500 bucks bothered me. I was just amazed at the two different sets of people I met on the same day. I am just grateful that the mechanic wasn't one of the truck drivers. These truck drivers never even hinted about money for helping me out. Even the thought that they could make some money out of my situation never crossed their mind once. These were people who had hearts full of love. People who go the extra mile to help a person in need.

I pay the mechanic and Mr X sits behind me on my bike. Mr Y and Mr Z go in the truck to join the other trucks who are camping some 15 - 20 Kms ahead just on the outskirts of Silchar. I have a feeling that their original plan was to reach the Silchar godown by evening, load the goods in the truck and start off back the next morning and because of me they are camping in the road for the night and they will head to the godown, early the next morning. Mr X asks me what my plans were. I told him I'll take my luggage and head off to Silchar to find a room for the night. I want to tell him that I do not want to head to Silchar. I want to tell him that I want to spend more time with them. It wasn't just to express gratitude. It was more because I felt so loved in the company of these strangers. But somewhere I am never able to express these things in person. Mr X again comes to my rescue. He tells me its already getting dark and suggests that I spend the night with them. I lap up the offer, ask Mr X if there is an alcohol shop on the way. I buy some whisky and we head to the place where the trucks are camped.

Alcohol has a way of getting out the most intellectual of conversations in people. We talk about the prostitutes in Silchar. They tell me Silchar has prostitutes from Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Assam and Burma too. I tell them some stories about my bike trip when I was in Bhutan and tell them that Bhutanese women are indeed very pretty. These guys seem to be more into Burmese women. I make a mental note to definitely visit Burma one day. Mr Y is a little embarrassed about this conversation. He tells me he is married and doesn't indulge in such stuff. Mr X on the side looks at me and smiles shyly and in the cutest voice says "Mera Shaadi ho gaya par mein kabhi kabhi jata hai" (I am married but I go sometime). Mr Y admonishes him gently and says now that his wife is pregnant and a kid is on the way, he should stop it. Mr X agrees and says he would stop it. Somewhere I have a feeling Mr X will succumb to temptation once or twice more before he finally stops doing it. I don't judge him. I love his honesty. There are so many of us who cheat on their spouses but use clever word play to blame it on something else other than their own weaknesses in resisting temptations. The way Mr X stood up for me, I am confident he will stand up for his family when the need arises.

Mr Z turns to me and says that you must be coming from a rich family. I don't know what to tell him. We all like to believe we are middle class and there is lot more money to be made before we can call ourselves rich. I mutter a Yes. He says even if he had a lot of money, he wouldn't have the courage to be alone on a motorcycle like this. I felt really good. Coming from a truck driver, it meant a lot to me. Truck drivers are tough guys. Changing a tyre of a truck can get you killed and driving a truck through bad roads is one of the toughest things in the world to do. A motorcycle trip is not that difficult if you think about it. I wonder why a truck driver who has gone to so many states in his truck feel that way.

I kind of get it why he feels that way. I am lucky to be born in the right social and economic class. Truck drivers are generally unlucky in that front. My view of the world differs from theirs. I am treated nicely by most people. It is only my words or actions that can make a person hate me. I am smart enough to know what kind of words could make the other person hate me and wise enough most of the times not to say it. I have had conversations with truck drivers -  here and once in Ladakh. They are the easiest pickings for most policemen, Octroi officials and local goons. Their worldview is defined by their experiences and the experiences I have, are not something they tend to have. 

In hindsight, I love the fact that my bike broke down twice in the trip and I got to spend some time with truck drivers. The world has been segregated on economic lines and very hardly do people get to interact with people from a different economic class as equals. Till the time we don't get to have these interactions how are we supposed to trust people from a different economic class. When we become adults it is inevitable that our interactions become more frequent with people who are professionally in equivalent positions.The sad part is even as children we will fail to have these interactions. My children and his children are never going to be in the same school even if we both end up living in the same city. I start thinking if he was stuck in his truck in the middle of the road and me and a group of friends were in our cars, would we have stopped to help him out. I don't quite know the answer to it. I guess I do know the answer and it is something that doesn't make me proud.

Mr Y: Tumhara Shaadi ho gaya (Are you married)

Me: Of course not. Do you think if I was married, I would be able to roam around like this

Mr Y: (After all the laughter subsides) Its alright. Travel, roam around and enjoy yourself. But one day you should find a woman and get married. It will make you a better person.

There was something about his words and the way he said it that somewhere deep down, I believed him. If a man with so much love and kindness feels marriage has made his life better, then I think it is safe to believe him.

I slept underneath a truck that night. The next morning we woke up early and I bid my goodbyes to these men. Every time I think of this day my heart is filled with warmth. The lunch stop at the waterfall, the waiting at the mechanic shop and the drinking session on the side of the road - there was love and there was laughter. If you were there you would have seen our laughter and if you looked more closely you would have seen the love dancing in the shadows.

About Me:

A 7 month motorcycle ride that took me to every state in India, parts of Nepal and Bhutan and one town in Burma. These blog entries are inspired by this trip. Stories about people I met, stories about places I saw. Things that intrigued me, things that amused me. They say traveling changes you, they say traveling inspires you and they say a lot of other stuff. I don't know. I think a gun on the head is a better way to change people. I just hope that my travel stories entertain you

Right now I am in the process of writing a book based on this trip and figuring out the difference between a writer's block and procrastination.

You can find more information on my Facebook page and Instagram account