When Memories Turn To Stories

A few years ago, a middle-aged man I know was travelling to Lunglei from further south. It was the sort of day that was so hot it was loud. Sweat beading and running down the skin, evaporating and making the skin stick to random bits of clothes and dust from god-knows-where kind of a day.

He is not a tall man, possibly standing at 5 feet at a generous estimate. But otherwise, has a lot of reserve strength from having engaged in heavy physical work his whole life. Although he was unwell at the time, a cancer warrior, undergoing treatment.

The first thing he noticed when they seated themselves in the Maxicab – a Sumo, of course – was that he was the only male passenger. He remarked to his wife that he hoped they would have a good ride because if anything should happen, he was useless in dire straits right now and everyone else looked less than Xena in terms of crisis management.

Unfortunately (for him; fortunately for me, because I got a good story out of it; the Germans call this schadenfreude), the Sumo got a flat tire. The driver was this crappy, skinny young man who had forgotten to bring with him a spare tire. The only thing he had with him was a hand pump. He looked at the manual machine and the huge Sumo tire and calculated just how much effort it would take. He was already angry at the future he knew was coming, as surely and as inevitable as tax and/or death.

Just as The Man had feared, he was useless in an exigency at the moment. And the rest of the passengers were women, damsels in distress, in other words. So The Driver had no other choice but to get down to business and manually pump the humongous flat tire of the impressive Sumo. Sweat ran freely down his body like rivulets in the peak of monsoon. Heat rose in him and threatened to consume him like 3PM on a North India peak summer.

Everyone was quiet.

Then finally he proclaimed the tire adequately fixed till they could reach the nearest town. Unable to straighten up all at once, and exhausted from all the pumping, he decided to ask someone to check if the tire was sufficiently air-filled. Just a good thump on the rubber would be enough; he just could not muster the strength himself to do it justice. He looked at the only man in the assembly and rasped: One hit!

The Man knew he was addressing him but he not only was no driver but he had no understanding of tire dynamics. Possibly the only thing he knew was tires are round and filled with air but beyond that? Zero. What could “one hit” mean?

Hesitantly, he walked over to the bent, wheezing man and thumped him solidly on his back!

Dear Reader, imagine the face of The Driver at this moment: tired, angry, hot, sweaty, sticky, alone, bone-weary… and presently assaulted by the one person he would have thought from his gender alone (save for the cancer, of course) was supposed to have helped him pump the damned tire.

And the face of The Man who, immediately upon pummelling his Saviour, realised with sudden, impossible clarity that he had meant: Hit. The. Tire. To. Check. If. It. Was. Filled.

I always laugh at the memory. I hope you enjoyed the story, too.