Hussain

Fiction: a short story based on true events

It was not his fault, really. At least, not that much. All he did was drive his auto the wrong way. But, then, he does that every day. It was nothing new. Others do that. Bikers, carwale, even the maamu – the cop – goes the wrong way when the right one is too long. That day though, it cost him a lot of love, a lot of dreams.
Hussain was married only recently, and his was a love marriage. For a life with him, his wife had nothing to look forward to, but she married him anyway. Such is the power of on-the-phone romance. Luckily for both of them, Hussain had his own auto, and lived in his father’s own house, so there were no major monthly rents to pay. In his own society, he was upper-class.
It was her birthday that day. Her first birthday after their marriage. While he couldn’t really grasp the apparent immensity of such an event, his wife was extremely excited about it, so he had decided to do something special for her. In the life of an auto driver, there’s not much that could be special. But, he had heard of a fancy restaurant in the city where they’d serve some sumptuous biryani and play live ghazals. Knowing how much she loved good food, especially that which was not cooked with her own sweat, he decided to take her to this place. He knew she would reminisce happily about it for months to come, tell all her friends and willing-to-listen relatives about it. However, there was one major problem – he couldn’t afford to blow three day’s income on one dinner. He had never done so, and had never imagined doing so. His wedding was paid for by a multitude – his father, uncles, aunts, friends of all these people and also a few kind regular customers. Plus, he couldn’t just take his birthday girl to a fancy place in his own auto – the whole point of the special dinner was to make the wife feel special. He had decided to take an air-conditioned Uber cab for the commute, and that would add a good 30 per cent to the cost. Also, she was so excited that he just had to buy something for her. He figured that he would buy her a lovely dress – that way she’ll have something decent to wear to an upmarket restaurant and also have a birthday gift. All in all, he figured his wife’s first-birthday-after-marriage would cost him at least 3,000 rupees. No way he could pull out that kind of money from his savings – it was absolutely necessary to compound the savings untouched if he was ever to have any children, and he was going to have one this year itself.
His wife was totally against it, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway. He’ll work through the night for a week before the birthday, and then the whole day on her birthday, and get back home by 8, freshen up, dress his best, and book the cab. Thanks to the shameless persistence of his younger brother, his father had installed WiFi at home, so booking a cab from home wouldn’t be a problem, but he knew he’d struggle to book one to return home, with his painfully slow 2G. His wife wouldn’t agree, at first. She wanted him to take off from his work that day; spend time with her; she said he never talks to her anyway. Make an exception for me this day, she had said, but he went to great pains to explain to her what all he had planned for her and how he would need to work much more to make it happen. She had agreed only reluctantly; she still wanted him home that day, but he made her shed her insistence like you shed a dress that looks great on you – slowly and with some regret.
In the one week that he had worked at night – he would come back home by 8 otherwise – he had met a decent fellow by chance. It was about 11, and he was losing hope of finding a decent-paying customer, but this one young man just said yes to his fare and did not bargain even a bit. And then, when he dropped off the man, he gave him Rs 200 extra (who does that?) and said that he just wanted to help somebody in need, just like that, for charity. Hussain didn’t know how to thank the man for his surprise generosity, and just smiled and shook his hand once. The man gave back what looked like a genuinely contented smile.
On his wife’s birthday, he was desperate for long-touring customers. He kept looking for such people who needed to go to the peripheral parts of the city, but then he was afraid of not finding customers who would want to get back to the core of the city. He was willing to take the risk though, but as luck would have it, he didn’t get any such customer, and in his greedy search, he lost many short-tripping customers too. It was near afternoon when he reached the limits of his despair; he called up an old man he knew well, a good customer of his, and asked if there was any auto service he would need today. He did.

“I’m so glad you called, Hussain,” he said, “I had lost your number and so I couldn’t call you, but I really need you today.”

Anything, sir, said Hussain, and the old man told him what he would need.
Hussain would have to pick up the old man and his wife from Red Hills and take them to a wedding venue at the Inner Ring Road, about 6 km away, not a long journey, but he would have to wait for hours and take them back home too. They usually did so with him, whenever the old couple were refused being chauffeured around by their way-too-busy children. They being old people, hated to stand on the road for what would feel like eons of time, getting refused by one auto driver after another. So, they would spend three-four times the money but call Hussain to do the whole round-trip and the waiting. It was done twice earlier, both parties were happy, so Hussain thought this came as a major blessing to him today. He had already gifted his wife the pure-cotton dress in the morning. She couldn’t wait to tear the wrapping paper apart, and screamed when she saw the dress – it was her favourite colour.
This would easily be a 6-hour trip, or at least 5. The old man had said it wouldn’t take more than three hours in all, but Hussain knew he lies that way. Hussain also knew that this old couple never bothered to bargain – their bills were paid by their children these days, all of whom were earning well enough to have no time for their parents. He knew the venue, and also that it had enough parking inside, so he thought he’d get a nice little nap while waiting for his customers to come back, without having to worry about the money. He was happy now, really happy. When he rode to the house of the old couple, he smiled a silly smile all the way. When he rode back home after dropping them off in the evening, he desperately tried to hold back his tears. Never had he been through this much pain, physical and emotional, both pounded onto him at the same fateful time.
He was horrified to see the wedding venue packed this way – he had never seen it so busy before. Who’s getting married here, he asked the old couple, and they went on and on telling him how they are related to the bride and how the mother of the bride had called them time and again to remind them that they just have to, just have to come. He was stopped outside the main entrance, the venue entrance was still so far away for an old couple to walk, and he said so to the security guards. They didn’t relent – forget parking inside, there’s no space to even move in, they told him; “can’t you see?” The old couple finally told him to quit arguing with the security guards – we’ll walk in, you wait outside and come to the gate when we call you, Hussain, they said.
He had to go quite far to find a spot to park his auto. Lines of cars had been parked, no, double-parked, on the main road there. Both ways in and out of the venue were packed with cars trying to go in and come out – the security guards were blowing their whistles mad, and many exquisitely-dressed women were now getting out of their cars and walking to the hall. He looked at them and felt a deep pain – what fault is it of my wife’s that she’ll never get to look as pretty as any of these women, he thought.
When he finally did find a spot to park in, he slept like a child who had spent all day playing under the sun. The call came as a surprise – he woke up thinking why the old man called him in just a few minutes of going in for the wedding. Was it called off? But no, they were done, and stuffed and happy, and couldn’t stay any longer, it was 6 already and they needed to get back home because the grandchildren were waiting. It was six? He had slept for more than three hours? Wow! Anyway, he turned the auto around, and, knowing that the venue gate was only a minute ride back the wrong way, sputtered his auto there.

The first blow came completely unexpected. He had stopped his auto to see if he could even reach the gate or not – there were so many vehicles stuck, so many people fighting, so many cops. So many cops? Whack! He was slapped so hard he couldn’t feel the pain. Whack! He was hit on the shin like he was years ago, no, decades ago, when he was a kid and a bully had hit him with a cricket bat for bowling him out. Whack! This time it was a round object, from the back. Somebody hit him in his lower back with a round, hard object? Did it break his spine? He turned around to look at a cop glaring and shouting on him, hurling abuses, threatening to hit him in the head with a helmet. Whack! Another one on his neck, and he fell to the ground, but got back up in an instant as his nervous system reacted subconsciously. He regretted it later. He should have stayed on the ground, pretending to have broken a bone and unable to move. That would have saved him from the dozen more blows he got after he quickly got up in his unintentional defiance.

There was a young man arguing with the cops. That almost saved him. Or, at least held back the cops from hitting him until the old couple found him and asked him if everything is okay. The cops left him alone after seeing his ageing customers, but they were hotly going after the boy, who said he was from the press and that he knew for sure that they, the cops, had no right to beat up an auto driver so mercilessly just because he was coming the wrong way. They threatened him, said they will take him to the police station, but Hussain couldn’t care less. At least they didn’t hit the journalist. They certainly wanted to, he could see it in their eyes and their body language. The now-press-card-wielding young man was hitting raw nerves, telling the cops they had no guts to hit any car-owner from the dozens of car-owners who were refusing to follow their directions of moving away from the venue. There is no space for any vehicle to move any which way here, go away, park on the other side of the road, the cops were shouting their lungs out, but these were rich people, who wouldn’t even bother sliding down the window glasses of their swanky SUVs.

Hussain lied to the old couple. He told them nothing happened, and that the cops just abused him verbally, and that it’s okay. It was not okay. Every time he hit the brake, a sharp pain shot through his leg, starting from the shin and ending only in his thigh. Every time he pressed the clutch and changed the gear, he nearly shouted from the pang of pain in his wrist, probably the result of trying to block rapid stick blows with his bare hands. Every time he turned his neck to look at why somebody behind him was honking persistently, he immediately regretted doing so – he thought they broke his neck and that he would never be able to look anywhere except in front of him. His whole body was hurting, but, knowing that the old couple would insist he see a doctor, he refrained from telling them anything. But, much more than his body, he was hurt inside. He was now broken. They succeeded in bringing him back to reality. What was he thinking? He’ll go to a fancy place? Get chauffeured in a cab? Have food and send ghazal suggestions to the singing party at the request of his precious wife? Who did he think he is? He was Hussain, he now realised. Just an auto driver. A peck of dirt in a world that belongs to the rich. A nuisance in a world that wants to do away with all poorly-dressed, ill-mannered people, but has to bear with them for the sake of labour convenience. A world where a poor man has no chance of realising his dreams. A world that does not even give a poor man the right to dream. To make his wife happy. To smile in the afternoon without having cry in the evening. He is Hussain, he realised, a man defeated by fate.

When he reached home, his wife greeted him with a gleeful shriek first, and then a horrified shriek. She first did a pirouette for him, showed him how glamorous she looked in her new birthday dress, all ready to go have dinner with the elite of the city. Then, when she looked up into his eyes for the gleam she had hoped to see, she saw tears, and she took a step back, and saw that her husband looked shabbier than ever, and tired; exhaused, weak, and, yes, broken. He wasn’t standing straight. Something was wrong about his posture. She begged him to tell her what was wrong.

“We can’t go,” he said, in a voice at once gravelly and whisper-like.

“Why?” she cried out, stuck between two pains, one of feeling dejected, and another of not being able to look at the pain in her husband’s eyes.

“Can you please give me your painkiller tablet?” he asked her, his voice still low, his question coming out slow.

“What? Is everything okay? Did you get into an accident? Should I call Abba?” she went on asking him many questions, but he couldn’t really understand what she was saying.

“Please,” he said, “two.”

She ran to the kitchen, and he lumbered to his room. He started unbuttoning his shirt, but then buttoned them back – he had no energy to explain to his wife how those blue marks had come to paint his body.

She got him the pills and some water, he gulped it all down, and dragged himself into bed.
She decided to just watch him and not ask anything – there was nobody home today, no shoulder she could cry on. She would have to cry alone tonight, silently, watching her husband drift off to sleep, off to a place where her Hussain, her loving Hussain, would feel no pain.