Open doors and mixed signals

Mimmy Jain

WE had just stopped at a red light, the driver and I, when a man on a scooter drew up beside us. I began to get nervous and tried feverishly to remember how much money I was carrying in my wallet. Suddenly, I could remember every story I’d ever heard about daylight robbery.

“Your door is open,” said the man on the scooter, pointing towards the offending motor appendage. I heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s spoilt,” I replied, just as the lights changed.

That is the crux of my life at the moment: My car has a damaged door. In itself, that means little enough, for my car is quite old and has several parts that are damaged. But this door is assuming importance because it has begun to intrude into my daily life in a way that I would not have thought possible.

The next day, it was a man in an RTV. He beeped his horn thrice, and pointed towards my door. The noise emanating from his vehicle was such that I could only nod my head. He looked at me disbelievingly, and revved off.

Another time, it was the owner of a Honda City. “M’am, your door,” he said. “That’s all right,” I said, searching for the right words. “It’s not working,” I ended, very lamely for someone who spends her working day editing English copy.

How does one say that a door is, well, damaged? Damaged is simply too strong a word for the state of my door. Spoilt makes it sound as it were wilfully misbehaving. Not working is just not true—it does open and close, and isn’t that what a door is supposed to do? That’s why, in the last few days, I’ve developed a liking for commercial vehicle drivers. All I have to do is say, “Kharab hai!” A nice language, Hindi.

If I were to tell these tales of concern to friends who are visiting Delhi for the first time, and already shivering at the railway station in anticipation of the horrors that await them, I’d stand a snowflake’s chance in hell of being believed. To be fair to them, the way the door got, oh okay, that way is in itself a typical Delhi story. The driver had stopped the car at a red light, and was waiting there patiently, when an Ambassador came in from behind and rammed him. “I’m sorry, I fell asleep,” said the driver of the Ambassador ingenuously when the husband finally got there.

“Well, what could I do?” said the husband later, while telling me the tale. “The car’s not even in our name, and there’s no insurance. I took 500 bucks off him and let him go.” I shook my head in disbelief. The car’s been with us for almost three years now, and the husband has already started talking of “When we get you a new car...”, but its papers are still in the original owner’s name!

Meanwhile, I spend my long, daily commute, alternatively burying my nose in an Agatha Christie I’ve read at least 20 times before to avoid the inevitable query, and thinking up smart answers to the next person who stops me on the road and says, “Your door is open.”
It’s getting to be a bit like the cyst I have prominently placed on my forehead. If I could get a 100 bucks for every time someone asked me, “What’s that on your forehead?”, I’d be a rich woman, no longer hacking my way through life. Initially, I’d just riposte, “That’s where the husband hit me last night.” But since the time at a party, when listening to me, two women shuddered and shot menacing looks at the husband, he’s warned me off that one, on pain of an actual beating. Next I tried the “walked into the door” spiel, with identical results. Now, I say, “It’s a cyst.” Not as exciting, but definitely safer.

With the door, I can think of several options: “I like it that way”; “I’m practising a horizontal parachute jump”; “It’s easier to get out in an emergency”; or even, “I like lots of fresh air”. In Delhi, that should be a traffic-stopper all right. Unfortunately, when it actually happens, I’m reduced to fumbling for the right word for “damaged”. Like yesterday, I was reading my book in the car, when as usual, a car pulled alongside, and someone said, “Excuse me, M’am, your door...” I looked up and burst into laughter. It was the husband.

Well, the good news is that the car is due to go the workshop tomorrow!