Taxi khaali hai

ever so often, he looks yellow-`n'-black. a sallow yellow when he's scared silly that he won't have any cash in a flash. and a greasy black when he's been splashing like a duck in motor oil. shiv shankar jha from madhubani, bihar, is yet another wannadrive cabby. it's his dream to own a taxi, offer discount fares to kids and senior citizens, ensure personalised security to lone women at night, all in a bid to affirm that where's there's a wheel there's a way.so far, so brood. shanky, as he's called, has been brooding for many full-moon nights now. whenever he begs, borrows and steels his nerves to invest a heap of money in a second or third-hand fiat, something goes dreadfully amiss. his taxi runs smoothly for a week, maybe a fortnight, at most a month, and then it dies on him, gasping for the last breath in his trembling arms. "meri baby kal raatko mar gayee," he narrates poignantly, before consigning the automobile's body to a graveyard. for days, shanky's in a daze. he crawls back to normal, only on being repeatedly consoled that perhaps his taxi baby will have a safer delivery the next time. the driver emerges,then, from his indira nagar shanty-dwelling, pretty close to my house, and requests another hefty loan. "i won't ask you again," he promises, only to ask all over again after yet another month, yet another deceased taxi, and yet another condolence ceremony. it's widely believed that a city is known by its cabbies. either they can spin more woolly-bully yarns than salim-javed ever did, in the process yakking out a volume of words thicker than tolstoy's war and peace. or they can be as silent as the sphinx, sitting there millimetres away from you, in a perfect imitation of a phalke-era silent movie. truly, either cabbies can drive their steeds through the thickets of traffic like frisky hares or they can move in slo-mo like octogenarian tortoises. yeah, so that's mumbai, swift and sluggish alternately. and shanky fits into the city's scheme of things, the only difference being that, to date, he's been more of a loser than a winner. whatever he touches, turns into junk. tell him that and he still exhibits a sparkling chameli-white smile. a profoundly long pause and then he maintains, "koi baat nahin, ek din hum zaroor jeetenge." jo jeeta wohi shankar, hopefully. suggest alternate income sources and he seeks a clue. "lekin kya?" he wants to know. "errrr...how about setting up a stall of boiled eggs outside the lovely country bar?" "chhhheee." "how about giving private driving lessons?" "try kiya. magar ek madame paagal ho gayee." seems the madame collided into a milkman on a bicycle at the chowpatty crossing. she bolted from the spot, leaving shanky holding the can-plus-police-inquiries. obviously, there's no point crying over spilt milk. somehow, shanky retrieved his driving licence from the cops, was given an expletive-peppered dressing-down by the madame's adam, besides a lifelong psycho-complex about crossing the path of milkmen at chowpatty. no, shanky can never be a cool doodh ever again. still, the desperate need to own a cab, persists. he guesstimates a neat profit of rs 500 every day, enough for him to send for for his long-cloistered wife and three kids from that madhubani muluk, just an std call away. that'll shut the loud mouths of the shanty colony's gossipmongers who keep linking him with every woman in the vicinity. hmmmm... it's not only the salman khans and akshay kumars who have to contend with pssst pssst rumours. shanky's name is, unjustifiably perhaps, associated with hanky panky too.be that as it may, quiz him finally on where he sees his life's going. and his thick eyebrows shoot up in the shape of question marks right upto the far-end of his forehead. shiv shankar jha doesn't know what on earth to say about the morrow... because the colour of his rainbow is only yellow-`n'-black.