A gaseous misadventure!

One day when we ran out of cooking gas at home and my family expressed concern looking towards me for a solution, I put my foot in my mouth scoffing at their anxiety with the infamous words that man existed before gas cylinders came on the scene. The next day at meal time I found myself staring at a bowl full of uncooked rice and an assorted collection of raw vegetables. A bloody piece of raw meat completed the dish! “What’s this?” I asked my mother. 

“Lunch!” came the curt reply.

   

“Lunch?” I repeated incredulously.

“Lunch.” My mother confirmed in a grim voice.

“But…” I tried to clear things.

“Man existed before gas cylinders came on the scene,” my father, as always my mother’s staunch ally, repeated my infamous quote from behind his newspaper. It was evident that I was up against a unified front. I decided to take up the challenge.

“Oh! Of course!” I said trying to appear as cool as the cucumber in my lunch which I started munching forthwith, humming a lively tune in defiance. A tomato followed the cucumber and then an onion which brought tears to my eyes. This was the easy part. It was the uncooked rice that surprisingly presented a problem. Surprising because half my life I had been stealing fistfuls of rice from the kitchen store and relishing the same. But then I guess taking a couple of fistfuls of the grain and munching the same by way of a snack is different from taking uncooked rice as a meal. My jaws were sore by the time I finished. As for the piece of raw meat I did not even attempt to eat it. I palmed it surreptitiously and put it in my pant pocket planning to dispose of it later.

I was apprehensive about dinner time the whole day long though in between I did nurse a hope, that the point having been made, my mother would spare me a repeat performance. But obviously my defiance at lunch time had not helped matters. So there I was again at dinner time looking at green peas in coalition with a few cloves of garlic, a quarter of a cauliflower and a sliced brinjal, all uncooked. Almost as an afterthought my mother placed a piece of raw meat on top of these.  “Here take this. It would have been better if you had put it in the fridge though instead of your pocket if you wanted to save it for dinner.” I had forgotten to dispose off the thing and it looked and smelled its age.

“Man existed before refrigerators came on the scene,” Dad, hiding as usual behind his newspaper, rubbed in the salt. I had a sleepless night, cursing evolution, as my highly evolved belly contracted in protest against these indignities. Now tell me how long can a man face such a challenge? A couple more of these gut wrenching misadventures and I surrendered. Like the prodigal son who returned to his father, I woke up the next morning and shouldered a gas cylinder. 

“I am going out to buy some gas-shas.” I informed the family. Dad sniggered behind his newspaper but I ignored him. 

A mile or so from my home I saw a long line of people standing alongside their gas cylinders. I took up my position in the line beating three other guys to the place. Morning turned to noon and then into evening via afternoon but the line only grew bigger. Since confusion tends to move in circles ultimately the line which was a curve became a full circle and the last fellow in the line found himself in front of the first one! At last it occurred to somebody that the line was not moving at all. 

“Where is the Gas-wallah?” this somebody asked.

“Yes where is he?” someone else seconded the query. And people began to look around. The line dissolved into a crowd and it became obvious that no Gas-wallah could be seen.

“He has fled!” somebody opined.

“He has left us high and dry!” someone else chipped in.

Tempers began to flare. A middle aged fellow lifted his arms and shouted the refrain of a slogan. “Gas Ko?!” Since this was a new one nobody seemed to know how to respond.

The Guy was no quitter though. Again he lifted his hands in the air and shouted even louder, “Gas Ko?!”

Some wise guy amidst the crowd responded, “Pass Karo!”

Encouraged, the middle aged guy at the head of the crowd shouted again, “Gas Ko?!”

This time many voices in unison said, “Pass Karo! Pass Karo!”

For a while the whole area resounded with the slogans, “Gas Ko Pass Karo! Pass Karo! Pass Karo!” finally someone read the mischief in it and the sloganeering petered out. It was followed by the standard, all-purpose, “Narai Takbeer?!” which the crowd took to with relish. This naturally invited the police to the scene. The people, all of them at once, began to speak of their grievance against the Gas-Wallah. But who was the Gas-Wallah? Which gas agency was it? The police asked the same question and the strange thing was that nobody had an idea. Police investigation revealed that no gas agency or Gas-Wallah had been on the scene from the very beginning.  It turned out that a guy had just been waiting for his brother who had gone to get his bike repaired. Since this fellow happened to be standing with a gas cylinder by his side people thought that he was waiting for the Gas supply to arrive and in no time a line formed behind him! This was how my first attempt at getting the gas cylinder re-filled ended. Back home I found (to my relief!) that Dad had already arranged a refill from the neighborhood black-market. 

(Truth is mostly unpalatable…but truth cannot be ignored! Here we serve the truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of sauce (iness!). You can record your burps, belches and indigestion, if any, at snp_ajazbaba@yahoo.com)

snp_ajazbaba@yahoo.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

two × 1 =