Too often we all face a trust deficit when it comes to bus, rickshaw or taxi drivers in the context of lost/stolen valuables. Their ignominious reputation stems from the many larceny cases we’ve all been privy to and it effectively seals the predetermined notion: Say goodbye to your valuables once you lose it in any of these. The following incident completely decimated my prejudice;
While travelling back from a friend’s wedding at a distant place, my friends dropped me off at a place relatively near my home which required me catching 2 buses for short distances. It was 5.30pm in the evening and the bus was teeming with people returning home after work, sweaty school children returning after tuition class or sports lessons. Not wanting to be late, I got into the first private bus that came my way and squeezed myself into the overly crammed vehicle. After taking the ticket, I managed to count the minutes and got down gladly when my transit bus stop arrived. Rummaging in my handbag for my purse, I found to my utter dismay that my precious commodity was missing. It had to be quite recent for just minutes before I had bought my ticket. To make matters worse, the bus had already long gone leaving me in a post-traumatic state with no immediate recollection of the bus name or colour. I had no money on me as everything was packed into the said purse so I trudged home walking in the wedding finery drawing queer looks both for my glittery attire and for my wan face. Once home, after facing a barrage of reprimands and recommendations, I blocked my 2 ATM cards online and went to the local police station to lodge a complaint. The policeman on duty courteously informed me that he has very little hope of retrieving it as I could not furnish him details of any sort regarding the bus except the route and the time of plying, for private buses are abundant in our city. Everyone around me including the policeman, friends and family absolutely ruled out any remote possibility of getting back the packed purse and lectured on the avarice of bus drivers and conductors in general.
At 8pm that night, my father got an unexpected call from an unknown number. To his utter surprise, the caller asked to identify my father’s nature of relationship with me and whether he knew anything was missing from my side. My father responded that he knew I had lost my purse and the caller thence identified himself as the driver of the bus in which I had lost my purse and asked my father to collect the purse from him the next day morning and we fixed on a time and place.
Arriving at the predesignated spot before the predetermined time, my father and I were on the lookout for a bus described by the magnanimous driver. A white and red bus screeched to a halt at the stop just then and a man in his fifties sitting in the driver seat began scanning the crowd energetically. Rightly guessing this was the bus and the man we were waiting for, we hurried over. The man looked quite intimidating with a bulging belly, beefy face and bloodshot eyes from a distance. As we drew near, he leaned out and handed over the purse to me. Overwhelmed by gratitude, I thanked him profusely and his kind eyes broke into a genuine smile of understanding and said, “I have a daughter of your age. She recently lost her purse and never got it back. I watch her everyday lamenting her badluck and scrambling to get her license and other cards back. I don’t want to see another daughter going through the same.” In the background I heard his conductor whisper to him to ask me for some ‘compensation’ for the trouble he took but the driver silenced him with a cuss and a glower. With another paternal smile and a wave, he revved up the engine and went his way.
As I looked into my purse, I found my entire contents intact – the odd notes amounting to nearly 3000 rupees, my driving license, 2 ATM cards, other membership cards and photos. Wondering how he managed to trace my father’s number, I finally understood that he came across my old college ID card which had my father listed as an Emergency contact.
I felt the prejudices I had so long ago harboured against drivers in general and recently bolstered by the negative anecdotes and opinions of others dissolving away as profound gratitude filled its place. Here was a man who could have easily misused the purse contents who safeguarded it and who painstakingly and intelligently unearthed my father’s number and strove to reunite it with its owner as soon as possible. All I know is that his name is Suresh and that he drives a bus named ‘Baselious’ plying in Kochi city. Let’s not let appearances and blind associations ever generalize the character of an individual. May such of his tribe increase!
