Always in public!

Pitch dark it was all around. Nothing visible. One can hardly see beyond two feet. February it was. The double carriageway National Highway 56, linking Benares or Varanasi as is popularly known with Lucknow, remained silent. No vehicles at all. I could not fathom what the time was then: four? Five? No idea.

Anil Pandey’s snoring from the upper berth was discernible: loud and clear. Poor guy. He was in deep sleep. Somehow, I managed to snuggle out of the more comfortable lower berth. The fog outside had made the huge expanse of Tata truck’s front glass too opaque, adding to the sea of darkness pervading there already. Hardly a feet away, I noticed a bundle over the bonnet sandwiched between the two front seats. That ought to be Parvez Khan, second driver of the vehicle. Pandeyji, the senior most driver, commandeered the ship carrying 26 tonnes of Tata Steel’s wire rod for Ludhiana. It was a stock transfer from the company’s Jamshedpur mother plant.

Pandeyji’s mission was to cross the 1,650 km stretch crossing five states – Chattisgarh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab – in six days. We had been flagged off by Ramesh Benniwal, fleet commander of Credence Logistics, at the Transport Nagar in  Jamshedpur just before sunset two days ago. That’s when the entry/exit restrictions had been lifted permitting heavy commercial vehicles to ride onto the Tatanagar tarred road: National Highway 33.  

It was Valentine’s Day (February 14) and Credence’s Arvind Ambo quipped through SMS, “What a way to celebrate your Valentine’s Day in the company of drivers!” Valentine Day or no, my trip was planned well in advance. Moreover, if one has to celebrate ‘love for one’s beloved’, it can be any day. Why only February 14?

I rubbed my eyes and succeeded in locating my spectacles, lying next to the make-shift pillow. My biological clock was working fine and it was time for bowel movement. So I surmised that it ought to be past four because for fifty five years that’s how my bowels have been functioning. Wake up at the pre-fixed hour, empty one’s bowels, brush teeth and gulp down a hot cuppa: sugarless tea or coffee. In that sequence. This programme has not changed much all my life. Why should it today?

The only hitch was that I simply had no clue as to how to extricate myself out of this narrow 8 x 5 feet Tata horse-cum-trailer cabin. No way, I could get out without disturbing the young Khan tucked in a bundle over the bonnet. Gathering courage, I  hissed: “Parvez!” I did not want to wake up Pandeyji in the process.

A startled Khan woke up and sensing my need, made space for me to exit and thoughtfully handed a two-litre Pepsi bottle filled up water. What else, but for morning ablutions! It was no shock for me since it was not my maiden outing on a truck. I had been on a similar binge a few months ago. The only difference was the payload and destination: the payload was eight Hyundai cars for Delhi delivery from Hyundai Motor India’s Irungattukottai manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu and the distance was 2,800 km. With driver Umesh Rana and assistant Pinto Kumar Sahu, I had crossed Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi over seven days.

That’s when I realized that it would be next to impossible to look for a proper western toilet to relieve myself every morning. The young Rana – hailing from Chattisgarh – understood my predicament but could do nothing. “There’s no option, sirji,” he advised while offering a plastic bottle – a two-litre Aquafina PET bottle  – on the first night at Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu incidentally my birthplace! Tears welled up. What a shame! Am I going to defecate in public place? Even if this chore has to be done behind the bushes, still it would be a public place. Sir Vidya Naipaul’s castigating comment on defecating in public rolled over my mind screen.     The memory of opting out of attending a close friend’s family wedding several years ago in a remote village in southern Tamil Nadu purely because I was well appraised of non-availability of western toilet facilities there returned to haunt me for a while.

What now? You can control your hunger. Anger, too. Not this, I told  myself. Tried to reason that my forefathers would not have access to toilet facilities we are used to today. Holding the Pepsi bottle in hand, I climbed down on the NH 56 on a dark February night for the most important task of the day! Looked in both directions and walked a few hundred yards. There was no traffic at this unearthly hour, thankfully. Crouched behind a nameless tree on the kerb and completed the task in the shortest possible time and returned to the cabin. What a relief! Till the next day, I don’t have to be worried. For that, I need to be extra careful in what I eat during the next 24 hours. Just one shameful act a day is what I can concede. Nothing more. Luckily, I met that target effortlessly while completing 10,000 kilometres over the past six months in trucks.

Hardly once or twice in this entire journey, I had recourse to a decent  toilet facilities. For me, this kind of discomfiture was one off or temporary. But for the thousands of drivers and assistants moving tonnes and tonnes of goods across the arteries of India, defecating in public is a daily chore. Once at least, if not more. When I tried to analyze that perhaps they have no access to private toilet facilities back home whenever they return for a short holiday showed my darker side. I cringed.

Barring Gujarat whose highways are dotted with spacious halting spots with cheap eateries and toilet facilities, such a basic necessity does not exist in any other state. Gujarat is truly the most trucker-friendly state!

By and large, HCV drivers halt their vehicles past midnight for a few hours’ sleep. They prefer to halt at dhabas (roadside eateries) where other trucks are also parked for security reasons. There is always an torch and lathi-wielding private security lad – young or old who is not on the rolls of anyone – who ekes out a living by charging a princely sum of Rs.10 per truck per night. Drivers ungrudgingly “pay” for this service. But, these dhabas do not have toilets. Before steering their goods-laden vehicles away from the parking lot, drivers fill their empty Coke/Pepsi bottles, cross over the highway, find a bush and relieve themselves. It’s always in public places.

Why no concerted effort is attempted to meet this basic need of drivers beats me forever.  Whose responsibility it is? Well, it is a question worth pondering.

This was the opening chapter in my maiden book, 10,000 KM on Indian Highways  published in November 2011.

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