An ode to the unsung
Being in a transferrable job , one is prepared to move places every now and then , thankfully , it was within the city I was in, be it Mumbai initially or later in Bengaluru . Yet each time , I had to move the anxiety of a new surrounding , new people , transport to reach the place and adjusting to a new set up got the heart aflutter .
It was the same when my last ( or at least I believed so ) posting came , the choice , a quandary between what I was doing for almost three decades and something totally new ! In a rare moment of courage , I chose to take the new challenge which meant a bit of travel to work , choosing over the comfort of doing what I was always doing which was just a stones throw from where I reside .
The choice made , the travel to and fro to the office was not exactly a challenge compared to what people these days travel , yet , there was a nagging thought of it bothering me since public transport can be a challenge at times.
I always had a regular auto that had picked me from home and dropped me off to work , I had just about told him that I will be just a hop , skip , jump away from home and he will have to find someone else to ferry. With my choice , to go with a new challenge and the office , now at a distance , I had to call him and tell him , I will need his services again . If he was glad to get back his regular auto customer or not I really didn't get to know , yet he religiously dropped me to the office , on rare occasions when he could not, arranged for another auto in the interim days !
A blessing it indeed was , in our ooru where the auto guys have a unique selective hearing when we keep shouting out for them , at times , they just drive away or stop by and then cringe or make faces and say they are going in the opposite direction of your destination .
Given this situation , it was indeed such a joy to just go and sit in an auto waiting for me , sometimes , his wife giving me company when they had occasions to attend and driving her in the morning with me was an easier option for them to attend their work later .
The morning taken care of , like I dwelled upon earlier , the rare occasions when Automan A could not make it , Automan B came along to drop me in the morning , offered to pick me up again in the evening !!!!
Now if this isn' t a blessing , what is ! Automan B started coming regularly in the evenings , squeezing in time between school trips where he had school children to pick up after school and tuition trips , where he had to drop school children to tuitions . This arrangement of two autos one to pick me up and another to drop me back home was indeed Providential !!
Automan B even gave in to my whim of stopping by the roadside to get pictures of the pink Tabebuia , Automan A leading me to a caterer whose services I could use to host a pre retirement lunch !
Anna , my late , dad was a perennial worrier . He called me daily at 6 pm to check if I had left the office and got an auto . Tried telling him about this providential arrangement many a time but since he was hard of hearing towards his later years , sometimes simple stuff got difficult to convey . Yet , somewhere , it must have been his prayers for my safety that brought these what seemed like providential arrangements into my life !
Some blessings come in the form of Automen ! Unsung , yet worth an ode !
