Who'll plug the gaps?

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

The season was changing fast and before it got really hot a few of us decided to go on a drive for the day.

We were trying to explore a few business opportunities in and around Santiniketan, but in a car with five Bengalis, business is always secondary and food primary.

So in between getting off to look at plots of land or sites to check for potential for floriculture, schools for traditional crafts and such, conversation always veered around to what we would do for lunch.

Two friends had accompanied us: Magda, a Polish computer engineer who was studying Sanskrit at Visva Bharati and Gerard, a French potter who spends winters in Santiniketan, were concentrating on the food available at hand (cakes, fish chops etc, packed for the drive) and were silent about their lunch preferences.

As it happens, there was not much choice. Many of the dhabas on the highway had finished doing lunch for the day and the employees were snoozing outside in the sun. Anyway we managed to find one, and parked our car.

Although it wasn't really warm yet, the afternoon sun was beginning to make its presence felt and I asked the dhaba owner if he had anything cold to drink like a Coke or Pepsi. He said, "Of course, why don't you come in and sit down."

I sat down, relieved that I could soon indulge in the luxury of sipping a cola. All the others, food fanatics as they are, looked at me in indignation. I ignored them and reminded the owner about my drink. That's when I got to know the truth.

"There isn't any Coke or Pepsi, but I can give you Doulas," he said. "What on earth is Doulas?" I asked, irritated at being denied my indulgence. "It is a local cola," explained my friends and the owner of the dhaba.

Resigned to my fate, I said I would try it. "I hope it will be cold, this Doulas", I said to the owner. "It's not, but I'll put it into the freezer compartment and it will get cool in a jiffy," he said. By then I knew that it had been a bad idea to ask for a drink, but circumstances had clearly overtaken me.

Literally. Suddenly I saw a flurry of activity in the eatery. We realised then that the refrigerator was being switched on! Once it came on, the Doulas would go into the freezer, get cooled and served. In the meanwhile, the others had gone ahead and ordered the food. So thankfully the food arrived and we started eating.

That's when I noticed that the young boy who had earlier been dispatched to fetch the drink from the store was now holding on to the refrigerator plug where it went into the socket. "That plug is loose," the owner said.

"For god's sake, why can't they fix it?" I asked in anger. That was when Magda, who had been longer in Santiniketan than I, spoke. "It's always like this isn't it?" she said rhetorically. "Everything is somehow made to work, till a point of breakdown". It did indeed sum up the attitude in these parts of the country.

Gerard was philosophical. "Even if we run really fast," he said, "at the end of our lives, all of us will be at the same place. So for me this is fine." Anyway we had our lunch, I downed my warm Doulas and left.

It was at night that the incident came back to me. There has been a controversy brewing for months now over MP Somnath Chatterji's efforts to "develop" Santiniketan. He is trying to build apartment blocks and entertainment parks, while the environmentally sensitive wonder if he has any appreciation of the essence that is Santiniketan.

As I fell asleep I wondered who would be found to hold on to the plugs that might run the entertainment park. After trees have been felled and water bodies filled to make place for "development", it would be a pity if the switches don't work.