One for the Team

‘Stage, do you mind taking one more for the team’?

Smi is spitting fire. She wants someone to put up posters, banners and direction signs on the road to Kanoi. She insists that it has to happen today itself. I haven’t seen her so animated since that time in Ladakh when she lost all pictures from her camera. Well, someone else deleted them actually but that’s probably a story suited for later.

‘And don’t you worry. You’ll have Den and Volunteer SK to help you out. Take a few labourers along. You might need them’.

‘Is that all, Smi’? Just the posters’?

‘Well, yeah, pretty much. Den does have a few other things to take care of but you need not stress about that. In fact, in that time, you can probably sit at a café and get some writing done. What say’?

‘I’d love that, yeah. When do you want me to leave’?

‘Right now’!

So we begin.
We take Young Zuzu along. He is a good driver for his age. I really trust his sense of the local terrain.

Deputy SK follows us in a pickup truck. He is supposed to bring with him a few labourers and some 24 bamboo poles. Two for each poster, I am intimated. However, we soon realise that the truck isn’t following us at all. It’s nowhere to be seen. We try getting in touch with Deputy SK but his phone refuses to comply. No network, it seems.

Den and I decide to head to the city anyway. We might as well finish what we can, in the meantime.

He tells me that he has to send a courier each to Pushkar and Ahmedabad. It’s for the caravan guys. They need a few banners for their buses. He also has some work at a bank in town. Money transfer, I presume. A lot of that has been happening.

He drops me at the fort and leaves.
I head straight to La Puerta Del Sol, my favourite restaurant in the city. The idea is to sit back with countless cups of chai and write some shit. Like always, it works like magic. Now that I think of it, I have probably spent more time here than anywhere else in the last 45 days.

Den comes back in a few hours with absolutely nothing to show for his efforts. He looks like he is going to pull his hair out of his skull. That could mean one thing and one thing only, a shit day. Apparently, all banks and courier shops in and around the city are still shut in lieu of Diwali. Lost and irritated, he chokes with anger.

‘Please tell me Deputy SK is here with everything we need. I can’t stand wasting an entire day, man’.
I make a final call to his number. This time around, it rings.

‘Where are you, dude’?
‘In the city. Why’?
‘What do you mean, why? We’ve been waiting for you for over 3 hours now’.
‘Waiting for me?
‘Arrey! Ajeeb aadmi hai yaar. You were supposed to get us some stuff from the venue, remember’?
‘No. No, I don’t. What are you talking about’?
‘What? Are you serious, bro? No shit, you are serious. What a fucktard, I should have seen it coming’.

Denver is absolutely shattered. He looks at the posters and cusses hoarse, like gentleman King Kong. I think he is a little too familiar with this act of taking one for the team.