37.Presence of mind of a simple farmer

For a change, this is the story  of the unique presence of mind and faith in himself of  a farmer  from our  village, Monkompu in the backwaters of Kerala. Of course, he is none other than my uncle, father of my wife. The incident is relates to his  first visit  to REC  campus.

This incident happened about 40 years back. We, myself and my wife, had started living in the REC campus after our wedding and  her father wanted to visit us  with family. They are simple people born and brought up in a typical Kerala  village  without any sophistication or inhibitions. The travel party consisted of  the uncle, his wife, and my wife’s two brothers and her little sister. As they were  visiting us for the first time, they thought of bring whatever  they could with them. The  luggage   thus consisted of a  10-20 coconuts, a jackfruit, a bag of mangoes etc, all  almost ripe and ready for eating at least on the next day. They boarded a bus from Alapuzha  with these  luggage and reached  Calicut  by evening 6PM. It was on a Saturday and they boarded a KSRTC bus going to Kootaranhi from Calicut at 630PM. The bus was terribly crowded and they managed to squeeze in with their  baggage at different  locations inside the bus. As they were not very sure about the place and it was becoming dark, he had reminded the conductor several times to drop them at REC Canteen bus stop. My wife and myself were waiting at the bus stop and somehow all of them got down from the bus with their baggage at about 730PM. We reached home comfortably.

From the moment uncle reached home, he was searching for something. When I asked him he was trying to locate his snuff box. He checked up with his wife, children one by one, but still could not find it. Finally he remembered, it was in his hand bag. Then he started looking for his band bag.  It seems he had kept it in the bus and forgotten to collect it while getting down from the crowded bus. Knowing that uncle keeps his cash in that bag, I asked him, how much money is kept in the bag. He coolly said, may be about Rs.3000/ or so. I know the value of Rs.3000/ then as my monthly salary was less than Rs.500/. If it is snuff alone, I could have bought some snuff from the shop in town even if his brand of snuff may not be available here in Malabar.(He  uses one  blackish coloured tobacco  snuff , but what is available in this part of the state is an yellow finely powdered stuff available in Tamil Nadu)

I wondered how to recover this kind of money? Anyway, I discussed this matter with my neighbour  Sri. Ramachandran Nambissan. He  said, “Let  us try, we will try to follow  the  bus  in a my (Lambretta) scooter”. As no other vehicle was available, we tried to follow the bus. By the time we reached Mokkam, the  bus has already left Mokkam. We knew from the local people that this KSRTC bus will return only next day morning as it will remain in Kootaranji for the night. As our scooter could not go through the  poor road after Mokkam, we hired a jeep  from there and proceeded to Kootaranji.  Luckily for us when we reached Kootaranji, the bus was there and the conductor and driver was counting the money. We thought they may be counting the days collection, but when they saw and heard our story, they said, they have already tallied the collection, but what they were counting was the money from a  bag found in the bus.  They showed me the bag which I could easily identify as it was a complimentary bag given to the farmers from the service coop society in our native place. When we explained the loss of uncle’s bag, he could easily remember the typical country team consisting of an elderly man, his wife and three children getting down at REC Canteen with two gunny bags and a jack fruit.   The conductor was familiar to me, one Muhammad and he said “Sir, anyway, it is good that you have come. We were counting this money to be handed over to the KSRTC bus station master at Calicut tomorrow morning and get a receipt so that they can try to identify the person and hand over the money to the owner. Now that you have come, our job is less. Please take this bag and money and hand over to the old man with my love.” The  snuff box with  black tobacco powder was a clear identification for the  bag  along with some receipts  of money from our Champakulam Service Coop Society.  We gave some money to the conductor and driver, but they politely refused to accept it telling that what they have done is their duty and nothing more. For us, the real wonder, more than the model behaviour of the KSRTC staff, the fact that this bag could be recovered from a crowded bus with almost 80-100 passengers with the contents intact.

When we returned home after paying the rental for the jeep on our scooter, the first thing that my uncle asked eagerly was “ Did you get  my snuff box?  I am in bad need for a pinch of snuff.” That is the raw human being of our native village, the real son of our soil. He was a teacher in a primary school and we were overawed by his self-confidence, presence of mind and the belief that his hard-earned money will not be lost. And of course, the commendable honesty of the conductor Muhammad and his colleague and the  passengers  who  never tried to   take away the  deserted  bag from the bus.