My second Trip to Chennai this Year
My previous blog on ‘Babu - The Auto Driver in Chennai’
brought to you proof of how God turns apparently bad situations into one that turns
out to be a blessing. Did God bless me on my second trip? I will be honest and
not hasten to give a testimony that sounds affirmative. I enquired on the way
with co-travelers on the bus and landed at where I had to. A college guy on the
bus who had overheard my conversations checked with me if I would like to join
him one the journey further for we were headed towards the same direction. His
idea was to split the taxi/autorickshaw expenses. There was nothing suspicious
with the situations or the expressions of the guy and I could probably manage
him if he created a situation and so I affirmed that we would go together.
He pulled out his mobile and checked for the cheapest plan.
That was when I learnt ‘OLA’ had so many features and not just the defaults
that I had tried on my last trip as a first-time user with my fast discharging
mobile. However, that did not seem to help and so we bargained zeroed in a Rs.
5 more expensive autorickshaw ride. It was interesting to see the mind of a
street-smart youngster work after a long time. Campus recruited IT employees
with whom life had got surrounded did not seem to exhibit that kind of a
skillset, though it could also have been a case of a family man living in
ignorance of such lives.
The shared autorickshaw drive was an opportunity to probe
into the life of a perfect stranger. The skilled Tamil speaker who had did most
of the bargaining for the autorickshaw ride turned out to be a Malayali, who
was doing his engineering in Chennai. The guy was born and brought up in Saudi
and did not speak his mother tongue as fluently as the language he had learnt
during his engineering study in a land strange for him when he had joined
college. More probing, and he turned out to be a native of town close to my
village, just 13 kilometers away to be exact. That made me ask him of his
family name and in return I had to reveal mine.
It wasn’t unusual for me or my brother(s) (if cousins are to
be included) to experience perfect stranger feel a ring in their heads when
they hear our family name. Nonetheless, each experience bewilders us every time
and so it did when this random internationally bred guy who had overheard my
conversation on a bus journey and proposed to share a ride with me, now had
bells ringing in his head when he heard my family name. He recollected the name
of the guy he knew from the family and wanted to know if I knew him too. The
name he was excited about sounded familiar. But now when I say family here I am
referring to a large extended family that comprise not just second or third
cousins but also the second and third cousins of my father’s and their children
or grandchildren. Nonetheless, the name was so familiar I had to rack my brain
with information in the WhatsApp group of our ‘that family’ (I had solved the
issue with my rapidly discharging phone – How? There’s a blog on that too! J). It hardly took me a
minute to pick the guy out from the group and we both could stare at his
picture and recognize. My internationally bred stranger was now known to me as
Justin, a nephew of a second cousin of my father.
Justin took on the role of a local guide and lead my way to
an accommodation that best suited my need and my pocket. I thanked him and
allowed him to move on only to realize a little later that I could have at
least paid the autorickshaw bill myself and not made the college guy to spilt
the bill. In such a short journey, he had become a distant relative well within
the 7 generations of relatives that the bible considers as distant enough for
not being fit for a marriage to a family member. Well God would take care of
him and he would take care of me too.
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