Making up with hill retreat
It was the time of the pandemic when Covid-19 virus had taken the world by storm. One day, my car cleaner, Raju, came down a tad earlier than usual. After washing the car, he came to me and said incoherently, ‘Saheb, I am going back to my home town in Uttarakhand, along with others, for good. I may not come back to Chandigarh as there is hardly any work left to eke out a living.’ I bid him goodbye, handing out a Rs 100 note to him, besides his monthly payment. He left in a huff with tears in his eyes.
Being a septuagenarian, I rarely use my car, going out only for petty household chores. For a better part of the day, it remains parked in the garage. It was a brisk Monday morning, the other day, when my wife reminded me of my routine medical check-up for multiple age-related ailments. It was around 7 am when I got on with the job of washing the car, wiping the front and rear windscreens dry with a small towel to make it sparkle like new.
In no time, a tall man in shorts and spotless white sports shirt holding a staff in his hands appeared there. He had a long twirling moustache touching his cheeks. He stopped bang opposite me and said in his baritone, ‘Nicely done car!’ Without waiting for my reaction, he fired another salvo, ‘How much do you charge for car washing?’
His whimsical ‘compliment’ enraged me, but I kept my cool and replied, ‘Rs 600 per month.’
‘Ok, start washing my brand-new Innova from tomorrow. That corner house there is mine,’ he said, pointing towards the lane, adding, ‘I am a retired Colonel.’ I nodded in the affirmative without divulging my identity.
I called up the car cleaner known to me and told him to contact his new customer, telling him I had settled the monthly charges for Rs 600.
He promptly made it to the new customer to seal the deal. The Colonel was furious. ‘Send the person I had spoken to this morning,’ he hollered. The Colonel got the shock of his life when told that the gentleman he had met was a retired PU professor, who taught there for three decades. This revelation left him shattered. His wife asked him to apologise.
The very next evening, my doorbell rang. I opened the door and saw the Colonel and his wife standing with their hands folded. Offering a bouquet, he said he had come to apologise for the unsavoury morning incident. I escorted them into the house without a shred of animosity. My wife prepared ginger tea that we relished together. As they got ready to leave, he said, ‘Please accompany us to Subathu in Himachal Pradesh, if you can.’ The following day, we drove off to Subathu in his car in the sylvan surroundings of the heady hill retreat.
