The Raconteur

(Cab drivers here are an interesting lot. Following is a tale that a cab driver narrated to us while driving us back home from Walmart. I recount the incidents of that particularly chilly evening and the tale that emerged from his mouth verbatim et literatim -- word for word, letter for letter; exactly as he would have liked it to be told.)

"Come on in," exclaimed the cabbie outside Walmart, motioning us over, "and be rest assured of a ride worth every penny." "She has enough space for the three of you and three more." he assured us, ushering us into his yellow cab in a sprightly welcome. "You can dump all of that in the boot," he opined, pointing at our trolleys that were filled with groceries for the next two weeks, "Only, the integrity of the chips is bound to suffer a little; and the bread loaves may find themselves in the danger of a drastic makeover. But, I'm sure she has enough space for all of you and more."

We sank into the cushy seats of the yellow cab and slammed the doors shut. “I told you they'd all fit into her boot to the T, didn't I!” he mused contentedly, “And to a T did they fit. Well, merely a matter of knowing your square centimetres and square feet, you see.”

“Knowing your cubic centimetres you mean,” a rather high-sounding voice butted in.

It was the Lower Jaw. He was exactly the type you would expect to make such a bumptious remark. It is a widely believed rumour that once upon a time he was wont to barging in everywhere and obtrusively making stiff upper lip remarks. In fact the canard runs that everywhere he went, to every new acquaintance he made, he introduced himself as Stiff Upper Lip Jeeves. On a particularly pleasant day, he strode up to a bunch of nice gentlemen, and, in a debating frenzy, ejaculated, “White pigs are white, but so are all the black ones. Are you keen enough to challenge that?” It would have certainly made for a good debate, especially on a day as pleasant as that. But, as things turned out, it did not. ("Those thugs" he winced later, "lacked debating etiquette.") For it never occurred to him that the black gentlemen, whom he had cheekily challenged, would be chagrined by possible undertones of the statement. Passers-by unanimously maintain till date that, after thirty seconds of ensuing silence, all that they heard were three voices that shouted “Commo maen!” in a chorus. And later some muffled sounds like those that arise when cross cute damsels box their pillows. Three left fists, and people soon began to call him the Stiff Lower Jaw. (The more vengeful lot elaborately called him Stiff Lower Jaw Peeves.) I think people quite liked the name, for it spread like cheese on macaroni.

“Cubic centimetres, alright,” said the cabbie, brushing him aside (we grinned, rather enjoying the dismissive rejoinder; the Lower Jaw was peering through his spectacles like an owl), “I can see that I am missing my evening coffee. You kids are students at the U, I presume. Was once there myself, I mean, as a student. A PhD in Physics, and I realised that Relativity and the world were far from related. Pursued jobs for tuppence at a couple of labs; that was before I realised that this was where I was most comfortable -- in the safe anonymity that a yellow cab provides.”

“In fact, I relish the prospect of maintaining my anonymity” the cab driver continued, “while getting to know so many interesting characters that occupy the very seats that you are now occupying. In fact, the most interesting of them all disembarked five minutes back. He was awfully penitent. For reasons other than having boarded my cab, of course. For this was the second time in two weeks that he accepted the misfortune of riding with me. Last week, I was undertaking one of my usual evening trips with my lovely lady in bright yellow (he patted his cab) -- I call them incognito trips -- when I saw a couple of youngsters -- this lad was one of them -- outside a saloon particularly notorious for its strange concoctions of an alkaloidal nature. It did not take much for me to figure out that they were already on a dizzying level in their quest for vertiginous acclivities. I stopped beside them, for they were frantically waving for the cab. They flopped into the cab and began talking to each other in a boisterous excitement. Their acquisitive ambitions having got bigger under the influence of the alkaloids, they, in a spate of unfounded unchristian invectives, decreed me to proceed to another landmark even more notorious for its strange concoctions of the fairer half of mankind. I could not refuse the calling of duty; moreover they looked like they could do with help, whichever quarter it came from. So I drove them down to the place that all knew but a virtuous few visited. I was nearly there, when the two of them spotted a woman on the streets, outside the very building. The rascally blokes almost rolled over me in an attempt to stop me right there. They tumbled out of the cab and accosted the woman, who strangely seemed to recognise this lad (the lad who was penitent during his second ride with me). She grew volatile even as she saw him drunk and outside the building that all saw but few sojourned in. She seemed to, amidst howls and bawls, say something -- very unpleasant I presumed then -- about his father. Or it could have been the mother; I just could not hear. The very sight of her screaming her throat hoarse infuriated this bugger. He, with the help of his acquaintance, bundled her into the building, slamming the doors behind them. I wished them a good night and relapsed into my self-imposed anonymity. I mused then that any business of this kind should be conducted with a certain commitment to the monetary transactions involved, lest someone else suffer the same fate at the hands of an unknown woman in public as this young lad. For once, my reasoning and deductions were proved to be faulty. Apparently, (the chap confessed in his second outing in the cab) they had had a good night’s workout and had collapsed into a tired slumber in that very building. When this chap woke up next morning and found his sister beside his bed, not in her senses and not in the most decorous state either, he suffered a more severe hangover than he had ever bargained for in his life. He swore that he would never again touch bottles with alkaloid substances. And -- what did I say? Well, I marvelled, not for the first time, at the universality of the Newtonian axioms: indeed, everything that goes up has to come down.”

Later that day, the Lower Jaw banged the table and asserted that the tale was spurious as was the cabbie. He said that the cabbie was a vain prick who craved for audience for a piece of script plagiarised and memorised. In fact, he seemed to vaguely recollect himself having composed a short story along similar lines. We professed to him that we indeed saw a bright future for him. In the safe anonymity of another yellow cab.

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:44:00 am

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