Serendipity on a 620

Serendipity on a 620

Had a great time ...... But the best part was the 11pm blue-line bus ride home with dad.

Serendipity, I think has got to be the most beautiful word in the human language.

Just last night, I went out for dinner with my large family of masis, cousin grand moms and cousin granddads, and the bossy older brother whom no younger sibling can ever get rid of. Had a great time because the essentials of a great evening were all there: good company, good food, good music, and good wine. But the best part was the 11pm blue-line ride home with dad.

And this is where serendipity comes in. During dinner, we chanced upon friends we hadn’t met in ages, and included them into our melee. On the way back, our large brood could not all pile into the space available, so while the rest were chauffeured home, this father and daughter duo set forth to make alternate transport arrangements.

Using this heaven-decreed opportunity to guilt’trip him into increasing my paltry allowance, I used my most pathetic tone to hassle him out of a taxi ride, and into agreeing to live the life of a teen-age dirt-bag---a role that is forced upon me when I don’t budget or when the scrooge inside me gains control.

Thus it came to pass that my father and I joined the homebound motley assortment of humanity waiting at the bus stop on the seventeenth of January 2002, at 10:40p.m. During the twenty minute wait for the bus, I tried explaining to my father, my funda of "calculated risks"...it is an oxymoron I use to gloss over rash impulses, carelessness, idiocy, goof-ups, or sheer laziness and miserliness... such as the bus rides home at night on “safe” routes, the mad dash to Hazrat Nizamuddin from R.K.Puram with barely ten minutes to spare, the helmets/ seatbelts/ raincoats etc I don’t strap on.. the list is endless.

A blue-line 620 arrived after a twenty minute wait, and my arthritic father impressed with the agility he displayed when he clambered onto the bus, [and when he got off] while the driver just slowed down, never quite stopping [I am eternally glad that I listened to the physics teacher the day she explained the laws of motion with the example of jumping off a moving vehicle]. The bus weaved its serpentine course past A.I.R., past Nirman Bhavan, past Teen Murti, past Rose Garden, over the Railway Museum, past Moti Bagh and people got on, people got off. Then we stopped to re-fuel, alcohol breaths wafted in with the occasional breeze, and I mentally rehearsed the argument about the health hazards in every mouthful of chowmin available at the Chinese vans stationed at our bus stop that we were bound to have during our five minute walk home from the bus stop. The bus started, Sangam Cinema arrived, we got off and we argued all the way home. Pretty tame and boringly mundane, huh? No, not dull for me because the journey was also interspersed with the songs playing [“ yeh shaam mastaani”, “akele akele kahan jaa rahe ho?”] in the background that brought to mind childhood antakshraris. Dad reminisced about his D.T.C days at univ before he bought his Rajdoot, we gossiped about filial idiosyncrasies and family scandals, and I bought my father his rs.6 fare home.

Serendipity is this Rs.6 ride home with dad on a winter night, when stuffy bureaucratic etiquette did not prevent him from boarding a bus. Serendipity is numerous other times such as these when he really surprises me and I am forced to re-examine the box I had slotted him and our relationship into. It is these times when I forget [and forgive] his “screwed up values” denunciations just because I came home and ate because the food bill, in addition to drinking and dancing turned out too expensive; as also his tightly reigned in and very ill concealed impatience while the damn car splutters to a jerky start or an equally undignified stop. And I know, [for a brief moment until the next showdown], that I have the Bestest dad in the world, never mind that he has clay feet.