Mrs C. is given to scoffing. An act, as we know, that is directed at others. One rarely scoffs at one’s self. Scoffing, in turn, requires that one be judgemental. That is a prerequisite, because the ‘scoffed at’ are eternally on a lower level. These miserable ones have to be at least at a level below the olfactory organ of the scoffer which, I guess, is where the saying, ‘to look down one’s nose at others’ has its origin.
Mrs C., of course, has a post-graduate in judging others. She is the Judge Judy of scoffers and nobody escapes her withering assessment. An interesting character trait about scoffers such as Mrs C. is that they can, remarkably, find a way of going easy on themselves. A vague explanation; a wave of the hand; a feathery dismissal; or, in an odd extremely rare moment of self-confession, a light joke at one’s expense: “Oh, I can be so stupid sometimes.” For all that, Mrs C. is very devout. Her sitting room walls carry framed evidence of ancient wisdoms that one supposes are intended to act as beacons lighting the way forward. From time to time, she is wont to break into a series of quoted extracts from an assortment of good books. She is, also, a stickler for playing by the rules. She cannot abide deviousness; or anyone trying to work around the system.
“I was brought up to keep my back ramrod straight and my head held high,” she’s been often heard saying, to be followed by the appendage: “Not like some others I know. I’ll stop short of naming names, but if this continues I will bellow their identities from the highest tower.” Enough to make any offender cringe, fall flat, seek absolution, promise never to ever go down the devious route again etc.
And so ... two of Mrs C’s very close relatives wrote to say they would be visiting her, staying for a week. The news brought a softness to her features and put such a happy glint to her eyes that several of those in the small town, those who had been at the receiving end of her wrath, wondered if she had possibly undergone one of those epiphanies, and come out on the other side miraculously transformed.
One of Mrs C’s first acts on receiving the news was to pick up her mobile phone, put on her spectacles and scroll through her contact list before halting at S, for Selvam. The autorickshaw driver. An autorickshaw also being known as a “tuk tuk”, but not in this small town. It had been an “autorickshaw” since British times and though Shakespeare Sarani is now called Gownda Veethi, an autorickshaw it has remained, sometimes fondly abbreviated to ‘auto’, as in ‘Get me an auto.’
Selvam, one of Mrs C’s loyalists, who drove her wherever she wished to be driven to (except round the bend, one can safely presume) for an extremely minimal wage, well, Selvam turned up as soon as he received the mobile-phone summons. On the appointed day at the appointed hour, Selvam was at the railway station, parked at the ready and when M&M, the two relatives disembarked, he drove them to Mrs C’s and demurred when they asked how much he wanted for his services. They, not being cognizant with foreign exchange rates, paid him a kingly sum, which Selvam pocketed. He probably went home with his head spinning, for $100 can fetch Rs6,000 (Dh367), the equivalent of several weeks’ driving, if he got lucky.
The following day, while driving Mrs C and M&M to the shopping mall, the auto broke down.
“Serves you right, you thief,” said Mrs C, flouncing out, and in a fierce whisper: “I thought so highly of you. Well this is divine punishment for cheating my relatives.”
“Look at it this way, madam,” replied Selvam, “If I didn’t take the extra money, who’d pay to fix this axle? Maybe it’s practical foresight?”
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
