Street encounters of the better kind

Recent newspaper articles about strangers who offer help on the street — and the outpouring of views from readers — took me back several decades to a couple of encounters on Indian roads.

My first experience of being stranded in the middle of nowhere happened when we were driving from Delhi to Mussoorie one summer. There were five of us in a Fiat — and while mother and father were relatively comfortable in the front seat, we three large siblings were squeezed into the back.

We were on a gradient, our overburdened little vehicle straining as it climbed, when suddenly it gave up the ghost and puttered to a stop. We groaned and got out as father opened the bonnet and looked at the engine. That the engine lay there was the only thing father knew about his car — and when he saw a trail of smoke billowing, he made sure all of us moved to a safe distance, not knowing what would happen next. We stood there, looking helpless, hoping that someone mechanically inclined would pass by and help on seeing us stranded. Someone did — and that person knew a little more than father. “Your radiator has overheated” he said. “You need to put water into it to cool it down,” he said before driving off, confident that we would do the needful and be on our way soon.

We retrieved our ice-cold water from the icebox and Dad poured it straight into the burning hot radiator. There was a crack and a hiss and a lot of other sounds and we thought the problem had been solved, but when we looked again, there was no water in the radiator. We thought it had turned to steam, so we tried again — and when it disappeared again, we realised that it had all spilled through! The radiator had cracked!

We held our heads and sat down by the side of the road. Soon someone else stopped for us. He looked at the ruined radiator, he looked at us, wilting in the heat, and he piled us all into his vehicle (no easy feat, given that we filled our own car to overflowing) and drove us to his house in Roorkee, promising to get our car towed in and repaired once he reached home.

I’m sure our parents wondered whether he would really do all that he promised — but we didn’t, happily hopping into his car and enjoying his hospitality with no questions asked!

Indeed, that encounter was almost too good to be true — the Good Samaritan not only did all that he had promised, but he also housed us and fed us in the bargain — and it was no ordinary feat to cater to big eaters like us in our heydays!

A day or two later, we were on the road again, lesson in radiators learnt and we had made a new friend.

Perhaps it was this childhood experience that made me accept help from strangers very readily, whenever I was stranded on the road on my two-wheeler. Movies, stories and other people’s experiences had taught me to be a bit suspicious, however, and I sensibly made sure I stayed in public view at all times while I asked mountains of questions to trace the family tree of the stranger who had offered to help ... It was only when I struck a familiar name during the interrogation that I at last let my guard down. Got the help. Gained a friend.

And continued to believe that some street encounters can be of the better kind ...

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.