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Surenjene had just acquired a wicker sofa from his brother-in-law. It was light, bulky though, and awaiting to be transported to his house.
“How are you gonna transport it to your place. It’s on the other side of town, right?”his brother-in-law continued,”it surely won’t fit in your car”
“Not a big deal, I’ll flag a shared pickup”, Surenjene said.
Thus saying Surenjene marched off. He went towards the local market and scrutinized the place for a tempo. He specifically looked out for a license plate which matched his car’s prefix.
“Help me load the sofa onto the tempo.” Surenjene said.
The brother-in-law looked on as the wicker sofa disappeared in the back of the tempo. He looked at the time. His lower lips protruded and eyebrows raised.
“All within an hour”, he said to Kunti, his wife, “That guy has some talent.”
They did not have phones and had to coordinate by looking at each other; the tempo driver and Surenjene.
“I will follow you”, the tempo driver had said, his thumb raised.
The first couple of check-posts they held their spots. As they turned off the expressway nearing their destination, Surenjene signaled towards the side and turned on his left-blinker. He watched as the tempo parked behind him seamlessly. Surenjene pointed towards a pani-puri stall. Both of them enjoyed the crisp globules of masala filled water. The best part about this pani-puri-wallah was that he had six containers of different flavours to choose from – one was regular, then tamarind, followed by cumin, mint, garlic and ginger. Each with it’s own unique twist of taste.
They continued their journey towards Surenjene’s house and that is when Surenjene lost sight of the tempo. He slowed down on the left of the road. He stopped for some time. The traffic was thick and slow, the tempo couldn’t be far behind. Another traffic signal, again he strained his neck. He had lost the tempo. And he had not given the driver his address neither did he know any other details.
He circled a few blocks and reached home.
“I have lost all hope in humanity”, Surenjene told his wife.
He argued how any driver who had followed behind his car all the way could take a wrong turn. Deliberately perhaps.
“Get me the bottle of whiskey”, he told his wife.
“That is why he agreed for almost quarter the price of what the official price list was”, Surenjene said.
“Why did you trust in him in the first place?” His wife continued, “That has been your problem always. You trust everyone, always.”
“I looked out for a guy with our area’s license code so that if he did not have to do a return trip, it would work out well for both of us – financially.”
“It was a good plan, but see the outcome. He must’ve seen you and decided to dupe you”, his wife continued, “What triggers others as signals, you take it as faith.”
Surenjene gulped in a huge sip from his whiskey glass. He would never hear the end of this. To top it all, her brother the previous owner of the wicker sofa would also pipe-in. Oh the in-laws’ jibes!
“The cheap numbers was the trigger, I was referring to, by the way” ,his wife had continued her pricks, “Your biggest idea of him not having to go back to the other side of town, has made you land the sofa onto his lap, or the tempo-driver into the sofa’s lap”
“But we had pani-puri together”, was what Surenjene could keep saying.
He was restless in bed. Then at one o’clock the door bell rang.
It was the tempo driver with the wicker sofa. He had taken the journey back to the brother-in-law’s side of town and driven back with the exact directions to deliver Surenjene’s lost faith in humanity.
— THE END —
Length of blog: 650 words.
Genre: Fiction
Written as a light read during these dire times of pandemic quarantine as a reminder to the reader to not lose faith in humanity.
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