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There was only one shop in the village which sold school charts. Those dusty, dog-eared, A4 sized, sigle page catalogues of everything from fruits to freedom fighters. Monuments to modes of transport. +
Kunwar took these charts very seriously. He would try to get to the shop before his classmates could. So that he could pick the least tattered of the charts. He annoyed Guptaji, the shopkeeper, no end. +
Guptaji stocked around 15 of each chart. They were stacked in one tottering pile. Shuffled over the years, by grubby little hands, into a state of disorder beyond redemption. +
Guptaji dreaded Kunwar's visits. He called them chart swayamvars. The pesky kid would go through the entire collection, and extract all the available copies of the required chart. He'd then examine each one like a buyer at Pushkar's cattle fair would scrutinise camels. +
He would gradually, by a process of elaborate whittling, arrive at his chosen chart. The only reason Guptaji didn't tear out his (own) hair was that other kids wouldn't have to rummage his precious pile to find 'Famous Scientists of India'. +
But I digress. None of this is really important to the story. Except the Modes of Transport bit. That chart gave Kunwar's life a purpose that no impassioned Headmaster delivering a Republic Day speech ever could. +
The day he submitted his 'yatayat ke saadhan' homework was a landmark day in his life. With some clever cropping and intense space optimisation, he managed to accommodate ten modes of transport on the designated left side page. +
They were from top left to bottom right - tonga, cycle rickshaw, scooter, car, tractor, bus, train, goods train, motor boat, and helicopter. That day, Kunwar from Gopalpur Village, Dist.Jaunpur, resolved he would use all these modes of transport at least once in his life. +
Kunwar was a practical boy. So, he left out the rocket. Even he knew affordable inter planetary travel was a while away. He gave that picture to Sarita, the girl whose pigtails drove him crazy. Cycle was too easy. His own father had one. He gave that to Awdhesh. +
He needed to cover land, water, and air. So he chose the exciting sounding motor boat, and the adventurous helicopter. He always knew that the copter would the tough one. The others would be challenging for a poor village boy, but not so utterly impossible. +
He knocked off tonga, scooter, and cycle rickshaw quite easily, without having to leave Gopalpur. The scooter involved a lot of pleading with his twice-removed cousin. But a promise to introduce him to Sunita Didi, his pretty neighbour, got him a ride. +
Sarita's father's cousin's neighbour had a tractor. In exchange for three pictures of the next homework (domestic animals), he wangled a ride. Tractor, done. One day, the goods train passing through Gopalpur was slow enough to jump on and off. Goods train, done. +
It took three more years for Kunwar to tick off three more. A relative's wedding in Benaras. Train, done. The bride's party sent cars to receive the guests. Car, done. They organised boat rides for everyone. Alas, they weren't motor boats. +
It had to be a motor boat. The motor boat rides were 2500 rupees an hour. He couldn't explain to anyone why it was so important for him to get on one. His mission was a pact between him and Laxmi Prakashan, printers of high quality edication matrials since 1962. +
Luckily for Kunwar, a foreign photographer who had chartered a motor boat, took a shine to the brightly dressed kids from the marriage party, and took them for a ride in exchange for some photos on the ghats. Motor boat, done. Click pro quo.
The bus was easy. Over the next thirty years, the helicopter dream gradually receded into oblivion. A childhood fantasy banished into that place where unrealised fighter pilots, police officers, doctors, air hostesses, and actors exchange stories of their unrealised exploits.+
Kunwar traded his urban ambitions for domestic bliss. Over the years he fancied Sarita for more than her pigtails. And agreed to stay on in Gopalpur and grow rice and children if he could marry her. +
The rare occasions a chopper flew overhead would bring a wry smile to his face. Meanwhile Guptaji's son still dispensed charts to school kids. CV Raman and JC Bose continued to be neighbours, staring unblinkingly at generations of Indian students. +
But for the goods train (and the helicopter of course), Kunwar used all other modes many more times in his life. He even owned a scooter, though everyone told him to buy a motorcycle. He had made that choice in Class 3. +
I'm afraid, gentle reader, this story doesn't end too well. But it's too late to stop now. +
One particular year, Kunwar and Sarita finally found the time and resources to go on an Amarnath Yatra. This pilgrimage as you all know, for the most part, used the mode of transport, which even Laxmi Prakashan neglected. Walking. +
Anyway, what happened is that, somewhere along the trek, a small part of a mountain, decided in a very untimely way, to detach itself and roll down. It took Kunwar and a few others along. Sarita escaped. By inches. +
Kunwar was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. The doctor on duty couldn't but help comment that he had never seen a body with a more happy face. But the din of the blades of the Air Force helicopter, taking off for its next batch of injured, drowned out his words.
ANTHE.
ANTHE.
