Saravanan was very happy. He just kept pressing the accelerator. 5………10.….20….25..35.45 the speedometer galloped like inflation. The odometer reading was in three digits & showed that the vehicle was very new. The feeling of driving a brand new vehicle made him feel great. He started loving his vehicle right from the first sight so much so that he named it ‘Cheetah’. To race past the other vehicles on the road – wow! That was a superb feeling. He maneuvered the steering wheel with effortless ease & felt like he was gliding on the road. He still had quite some distance to go. He was just crossing Mandaveli. He had to go to Tambaram and then reach home.
For a second he thought about his childhood. He never had a continuous happy phase in his life. Somehow or other he had to face some problem and then struggle his way out of it. He was born to a mother, who sold the free TV that the government gave her, to buy rice & a father, who sold the rice, buys KF at TASMAC and returns the government money to the government. He was the usual boy-next-‘without door’ house. He went to a government school because they gave free lunch. He used to go to school regularly and wished that the school remains open on Saturday as well so that he can get relatively good food on Saturdays too. Maths, English and good luck are things that eluded him all the time. But he never whined! He just kept going.
He had to stop opposite Anna University. There was a bit of traffic congestion but thankfully the vehicles kept moving slowly. He looked at the students there. So many days he had felt jealous about those studious & lucky engineering students. He generally thought that life is a cakewalk for most of them. He also believed that those guys were highly self disciplined and that’s why they were lucky. But he did not know that ‘Happy husband’, ‘Disciplined college student’ are oxymoron. One thing was very clear- He envied them badly. But today the story was different. The students were dumbstruck on seeing his cheetah. A few mechanical engineering guys who only got a few occasions like this to boast their knowledge & attract CSE girls, started talking about the make & stuff. “These engines are Euro V compliant” one guy said. “In the whole of Asia, this model is available in India alone” said the second. “Pristine white” shouted the other guy. Saravanan beamed with a smile. That was normal human tendency – Feeling good about getting attention.
He kept moving. So did his thoughts. “School life”. It was anything but amusing. The only thing that made him happy was driving. When guys used to play cricket, he used to take his friends’ bike; go get water, bat & other things for them. He always thought that cricket is not a sport but an entertainment. These were the times when he got his friends’ bikes for small rides. He did not want to lose that out by making fun of the game they loved the most. And so the journey continued.
He halted. He had reached the Kathipara flyover. When a few buses and cars found it difficult to negotiate the gradient, he just overtook them & sailed through. The two wheelers on the way just ran to the sides helter-skelter like the bees flying from a disturbed beehive. “This is great” he thought. “When I grow up, I will get rich and will drive my vehicle on the roads in such a way that the whole world pauses for a minute & looks at me”- he used to say during his school days. Now he felt his dream had partially come true.
He reached OTA in a flash. Just 2 minutes and he will reach Pallavram. OTA…Officers Training Academy. How can he forget that place? After the useless western education system decided that he was not fit enough to receive the Higher Secondary Certificate, he came to Chennai to try out his luck in army. There were rumours in his village that the army was recruiting people at the Island grounds & hence he gathered some courage to try his luck & reached Chennai. He noticed that the biceps size of most other guys in queue was slightly more than the sum of the size of both his biceps put together & hence he decided to try out some other job. Though he did so many other daily pay jobs, his ‘driving dream’ was still alive. As they say, dreams are not the things that you get in sleep. But they are things that stop you from getting asleep. His jobs kept changing; but his dream - never.
“Chromepet chromepet” He heard a conductor screaming. He waited till the bus before him moved. Even here people looked at his cheetah with awe. He pressed the accelerator and moved forward. There was the sound of melodious music being played in some bus nearby. “Many people in TamilNadu are able to travel to long distances in bus without getting tired not because of the seats or Ac or other facilities; but because of one man: Ilayaraja” he thought. “But with my cheetah I can travel any distance now without a hint of tiredness; even without Ilayaraja. This is the pinnacle of comfort” he said to himself. His face was as bright as a bachelor who checks out the railway reservation chart & notices five “F 22” s in his compartment. He just could not control his pride and happiness.
Ah!! He reached tambaram. It looked like he just started. But in no time he had reached Tambaram. He took a right turn; entered the depot; parked his Cheetah, the new deluxe Volvo bus & got down. His shift as a MTC bus driver was over. He had to start back to his house now. He started walking with pride.
