Revisiting an old but not forgotten incident ....
I am reminded of an incident from the year 1985, the year our son was born.
Our son was born on 18 May. I was posted in Gorakhpur but deployed in Leh, and returned there the day just before his birth, on a short break. After finishing my tour in June, I came back to fetch my family, my wife, our five-year-old daughter, our one-month-old son, and our Lhasa Apso, Tootsie.
In Chandigarh, I bought my first car, the good old Ambassador. With our luggage loaded in the boot and on the roof carrier, we set off for Gorakhpur via Delhi, where my in-laws lived. Since it was the height of summer and air-conditioning was uncommon, we travelled in the early mornings.
My sister-in-law joined us from Delhi to help us settle in, with our two young kids. The journey to Kanpur was uneventful, but shortly afterward we hit a pothole, and the right leaf spring of our heavily laden car broke.
We somehow limped to Lucknow in the afternoon and stopped at the first mechanic we found. I explained that we had a one-month-old baby and needed to reach Gorakhpur before dark. Chaitanya, our newborn, was crying nonstop because of problems with his milk and water, which was worsened by the heat.
The mechanic immediately began straightening the spring. When it was time for namaaz, the neighbouring shops closed, and all the other people left. Several of them stopped to tell him, “Namaaz ka time ho gaya.” He heard them but continued working.
Finally, a man asked, “Kya paison ke liye namaaz bhi bhool gaya?”
The mechanic replied, “Yeh bhi to namaaz hi hai. Inka chhota baccha roye ja raha hai aur inko Gorakhpur raat se pehle pahunchana hai.”
The man became angry and said something that upset the mechanic. This triggere the mechanic, who stopped work and left for namaaz.
We lost about half an hour. When he returned, he apologised, completed the repair, and assured me the car would reach Gorakhpur without trouble. I paid him and left, thanking him.
This illiterate mechanic understood what most of us never seem to fathom.
Yet, despite understanding that simple truth, he had to bow to lesser mortals for fear of being ostracised by his own friends. We ultimately need friends and relatives to survive in this world, unless we are willing to renounce it all.
The incident has stayed with me ever since.
Perhaps the question is not simply who was right. The mechanic understood that compassion, too, can be an act of worship; the other man understood only the visible form of devotion, and presumed to judge what lay in another person’s heart.
The mechanic’s brief surrender was not a surrender of faith, but a concession to the pressures of belonging to the community.
That is what makes the memory uncomfortable. We may recognise the larger truth, yet still lack the courage to live by it when the crowd is watching. And sometimes the person who knows least about theology understands most about God’s intention.
Who, then, was right, the man who guarded the ritual and forced the others too, or the mechanic who was wanting to serve the human beings before him?
I still do not have a final answer. Perhaps God does.
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