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Round the Bend on Wheels

by Sabir Mustafa
INVENTOR of the wheel be damned! Today, the whole countiy Is held hostage by wheels.
Crazy kids on two wheels: lungt-clad haraklrl fanatics on three; homicidal maniacs on four (large-bodled) and officedrivers. a breed possibly not covered by any definition under the genera! heading The Human Race, on small-bodied fours.
Then there Is the other one. called Wheel, which is not a wheel at all. but rather a square and pronounced Hooo eeel.
"Bouma, aren't you using Hooo-eeel?". a satanlc mother-in-law shrills on a TV ad.
"No mother. I'm not using jfooo-eeel". coos a cute but idiot-looking daughter-in-law, full of embarrassed apology.
It must've been an ad for a new birth control pill.
Judging by the amount of baby clothes hanging on the forest of washing lines among which the secret conversation was taking place, it was clear the pea-brain daughter in-law had given birth to enough brats to warrant a demand for ex-
But the magical wheel does not only control birth. It can also have decent rolling effect on life Itself.
Take the three wheel thing, for Instance.
How Is II like to put your Hie In somebody else® hands? Not advisable at all. but ...
Unwillingly we do Just that every day It ha* to lx- unwittingly because we wouldn't do ft In the first place If we had our wits about us (And no. Im not talking about our destiny being tn Cod's hands)
Whenever you board a rick shaw. everybody else around thinks. "Ah. that fellow is get ' Ung on a rickshaw' Nothing extraordinary In that, as you are never prepared, first thing in the morning, to differentiate between a straight forward observation and a warning of Impending doom.
Neither are you In the frame of mind to look at a rickshaw as anything other than what It obviously is — a little. Innocent rickshaw with three wheels
But that wonderful feeling of peace, tranquility and general satisfaction with the way the world Is structured — Europe st the top Australia al the bottom and you in the middle — lasts for about a minute and half.
Suddenly the rlckshaw-puller wakes up and finds himself riding on the far left-hand.
meaning the correct, side of the road (how dtsgusUng!): he sees he is also keeping at least 10 yards distance from the ve hide in front (the guy must be out of his head): and he is still managing to keep his tricycle on all three wheels (a sure candidate for the lunaUc asy lum).
But the rickshawallah doesn't want to go to a lunatic asylum, does he? No. he would much rather go to Heaven Instead.
Thoroughly disgusted, he mends his misguided ways without further ado. and swings into the wrong side of the road with a brilliant manoeuvre of the handle-bar (That's right, keep going!', he yells to himself in feverish excitement).
Then his front-wheel makes valiant attempts to get un derneath the front of a minibus driven by a psychopath and navigated by a demented dru nkard ("You are doing bril liantiy. you Jewel of Noakhall!'. bellows the rickshaw fellow recalling his ancestry for gtx>d measure).
Suddenly. his tricycle rickshaw becomes a bicycle with a serious tilt (Till away, you fabulous freakster of Feni!'. screams the wallah in a chequered lungl with an equally chequered career as a rickshaw-peddler).
While the rickshawpuller goes boldly forward to where other rickshawpullers have gone quite frequently In a bid to become ex-rickshawpullers, it is lime for you to wake up.
"Ah. that fellow is getting
on a rickshaw". You remember people watching earlier and laughing under their breath.
Now. with the Haraklrl champion from Harlrampur about to attempt another ritual performance of his fabulous art. you realise the spectators, cleverer than thee, were merely grinning tn sadistic delight.
By then, you arc screamirtg yourself at the wallah peddling the rickshaw down a path which could only lead to AzImpur or Banani (there are other places for a decent burial, out the rickshaw guy doesn't mind, as long as It Is six feet underground).
You can scream, but that doesn't mean you are going to gef any response, especially when there Is a transport strike on in the city, and rickshawallahs realise their services are more sought-after than even those of psychla trlsts in San Francisco
A transport strike, putting all other wheels off the roads, raises their self-esteem, pro portlonate Io the rise In their rate for going from A to B
The rickshawallah suddenly sheds a lifetime's habit and refuses to bargain. He simply asks for the moon (thtnly-dis gulscd as a "price") and looks at the sky. whistling, chewing paan. smoking blrl. or anything that Is likely to get on your nerves.
Instead, he would venture to bargain over your destination. and suggest that It would really be better for you to go to
X. Y or Z. when all you want and need to do Is go to B.
You may wish to tell the rickshaw guy to go to hell and slay there, but that is one thing you would be well advised not to do.
With time ticking away and nckshaw rates going up faster than the decline In the prospects of H.M. Ershad getting an Ekushey Padak for poetry. the last thing you want to do Is tell the man where to go.
Even if agrees to take you to B. he may still decide on a detour through G or H. Just so he can wash his dirty wheels tn the even-dirtier puddles of water by the roadside
In that case, all you should do Is smile and agree whole-licartcdly.
"Cleanliness ts part of Faith", you should tell the wallah appreciatively, preferably with a finger pointing to the sky to Indicate the unimpeachable source to which the quote could be attributed.
Il's not for you to complain about your brilliant white pyjamas getting splashed with dirty, muddy waters.
After all. your wife. Mrs. Farida Hekmatyar of Dhaka, uses Hooo-eeel.
"I use Hooo-eeel because my hubby's clothes arc always muddy from out the outside, and full of sweat from Inside. My hubby always gets sweaty out of fright when he travels on three wheels, so 1 rely on a fourth wheel to get It all clean", Mrs. Farida Hekmatyar of Dhaka told Mohammad Jahangir in a recent BTV programme.
The programme might have been Sanglap or Obhlmat. It looked suspiciously like a commercial, it couldn't have been because. M. Jahangir with a microphone in his hands, looked as if he was presenting one of his TV shows.
"Now I'm In Khulna", declares the same M. Jahangir, as he wheels around to face the camera
And the same goes for the delicious-looking Mrs. Selina Gamsakhurdia of Khulna
"Hooo-eeel Is my hope", honey drips from Mrs Selina Gamsakhurdia of Khulna's lips as she continues. "My mother always relied on Hooo-eeel. So did my father, infect he was widely known In our street as a wheeler-dealer. He dealt in wheels, you see, big deals with big wliecls. Anything I need to clean — from my Indian cotton sarecs to my reputation — I do it with Hooo-eeel. It leaves my fingers all soft and nimble, ready to do you-know-what".