Aasif suddenly stopped the car. A black, Mahindra Scorpio. It was dark, late into the night, and a pot-holed country road. He took a tissue and wiped his face. I realised he was fighting back his tears. ‘Aasif, are you ok’, I asked. ‘Yes sir’, he said, and what followed was a quiet drive up until the Taj Mangalore, where I was staying.

Aasif was sent by Strides to the airport to pick me and Sushil up when we went to Mangalore. Strides has a specialty chemicals plant in Mangalore. Sushil has done a ton of work for them. This time we were going to Suratkal engineering college to do a campus recruitment. They produce some bright engineers. Aasif was a hilarious guy in his 40s I guessed with a huge build and boyish behaviours. He made our local travels extremely pleasant. Sushil returned to Delhi that Friday night and I decided to stay back for something I have been looking forward to, for over 15 years since I left the law school. To meet Oorvi and Oormy. And their parents Kishan and Hyma.

Nagarbhavi in the outskirts of Bangalore used to be a village full of water buffalos. A cluster of village homes. Some huts made of mud. A vast stretch of grass land ending where the forest began. Clear sky. Mud roads leading you deep into the forests. A bunch of shops and a bus stop which the villagers used to call the ‘city’. A couple of academic institutions brought more life to this village. The students wearing clean clothes contrasted the line-printed, mud-laden cotton half pants the village elders used to wear while working in the paddy fields. The post graduate students’ hostel was outside the main campus, housed on the upper floors of the university’s guest house. Close to where the forest begins, on the side of an unpaved road, with no buildings around, the PG hostel had the feel of a wildlife resort. On my way back from the library building, one day in the early days, I happened to walk into a local coffee shop that sells tea and vegetarian food. That’s when I first met the Bhat family. Since then, that little coffee shop became the daily breakfast place for me and a bunch of my classmates. The Bhats became a part of our daily life, as if they got admitted to the graduate program! And Idli, an otherwise alien food for most of my non-Indian classmates, became their staple food.

Bhats, I discovered, were an interesting couple. They were together in a music college in Mangalore. Studying Carnatic classical music and used to sing together. Fell in love, first with music and then with each other. She was from a well-off family, so her parents opposed her marrying Kishan of modest origins. While in the final year, before the final exams, they ran away and married without their parents’ consent– as they call it in India, did a ‘court marriage’, and came over to Bangalore. They couldn’t find a music job. So, ended up starting a coffee shop. Then happened two beautiful kids, Oorvi and Oormi, then at 4 and 6. Bhats put them in a private school. Their life’s purpose became their kids’ education. That was the times when I met them. Through me came others into their life – Joychayan, Mazum, Moti. And others. Their life was tough. Kishan and Hyma used to do pretty much everything in the coffee shop. Grinding rice and lentils to make idlis, cooking through the day, serving and even dish-washing. By evening they used to look tired. We tried to make their evenings lighter by sitting together for a chay. Inevitably Kishan would sing. A raga. The kids first and then Hymechi would come around. It would become a musical evening. A little break from a tough day at work for the family. Music was their lifeline. Music used to lighten up their hard days. Oorvi and Oormi were amazing kids. Blessed ones.

One of the usual topics for those evening chats, in between a nice recital of ‘ksheera sagara shayana’….in ‘devagandharam’ or ‘samaja varagamana’..in ‘hindola’..was Krishnettan’s dream of home coming. He wanted to buy a car, a premier padmini make, and with Hyma and the girls wanted to drive into their village. That was his dream. Premier padmini in the 1970s of India was a fad. Something probably Bollywood movies of 70s brought to India’s romantic sense about a dreamy wedding, the car for the groom to take his bride home.

One evening, Krishnettan came, sat next to me and told me about his plans to expand his coffee shop. He got a contract from a company to set up a canteen. He said he is taking a loan from someone to set it up. As a young university student those days, I felt happy for him not knowing the nuances of building revenues around a P&L! We ended up talking about his dream coming true. I jokingly asked, if he would let me drive his premier padmini. He readily agreed! I came off from Nagabhavi to the tough terrains of global IP, to Delhi and elsewhere in the world which still continues, as I write this from a newly built pad in San Jose, CA making use of the quietness of a Saturday. It should be about 5 years or so after I left law school I got a call from Krishnettan while in London, on an early morning. His voice told me there is something wrong. He said briefly what happened. His new venture, the canteen of a company, didn’t work out. He couldn’t re-pay his loan in full. He paid the principal, but the interest was huge. The money-lender became abusive. So with no other options open, he sold off his coffee shop, paid up and left for a village near Mangalore where a relative offered to help start all over again. It is that village, and their new restaurant that I just visited, with Aasif.

I hadn’t told Oormi or Oorvi on any of my weekend calls with them that I would show up that day. So, when I walked into their place, they were dumbstruck. It took a while for them to collect themselves back and hug me tight. 15 years meant no distance. They let the last customer of that evening eat and leave. Turned the sign to ‘closed’ and huddled around me. What followed was so very nostalgic. Chay, karnatic music. By now, the girls have mastered classical music amazingly well. Their songs had purity of feelings. Rare expressions of unadulterated love. The Bhats were back to doing the same things, a similar coffee shop, but much bigger in scale. A car was parked outside, not a premier padmini, though. Kids have grown up into big girls, both in college. They started telling me just everything about their life, business, earnings, income, what next, all of it. Aasif sat next to me. Amused. He couldn’t absorb the intensity of that evening, I sensed. He was quietly listening, watching. Late into the night, it was tough to come off.

On the way back, Aasif started talking to me about his life. His struggles as a boy in a family of 8 children. His years of efforts to get to Dubai. Finally, getting there. Many years of hard-work, sending money back home every month. Getting his sisters’ married, and 4 of them. Ailing parents. And in that process missing out on his life and remaining single. Being funny was his defence to fight off all that hardships. Returning to Mangalore, and for a few years now a driver’s job at Strides. And suddenly he broke down, he couldn’t fight back his tears. But, soon regained himself. And that is when he reached out to a tissue box in the car, wiped his face to continue driving.

The quietness of that drive still remains.