“Our soul longs to be of service in some way. It's why we are here. If you weren't meant to touch the world in some way, you wouldn't be here. What act of service calls to you? Even the smallest thing has an effect in eternity.”
― Eileen Anglin

A
re you marooned at City Bu Stand in Kasaragod? Do you find no transport to your remote village in the night? Sathar could be somewhere near to take you home.

His father would not come back. He knows it too well but hops on hope:”Some day, he would be spotted in town at a wee hour. I need to take him home.”

In June it does not rain but pours in these part of the country .Sathar summons back the vivid memory of an early June day in 1979, when as a kid clinging to his Bappa’s fingers was on their way to the Subah at Talangara mosque. After the Subah Namaskar he followed his father to the railway station waving him off to Bombay. Hassainar,his bappa(father) was a sailor with MV Kairali ,a merchant vessel owned by Kerala Shipping corporation. It was enroute for Rostock in Germany crewed by a team of 51 aboard. The ship was lost at mid sea moving at a good clip to Jibutha in Africa for fuelling. There were no news of shipwreck that left the family with faint promise of return. Rumours had it that the ship was sunk either in a PLI operation or hijacked by sea-pirates.

Hassainar was dear to the villagers and the family alike. It was his second marriage to Sathar’s mother Rukhiya. They were Darby and Jhon. When he was home, it was gaiety and merrymaking like a wedding day. The separation was a rude shock to his mother and after two years she died nursing the agony. Sathar stopped school going. He helped his uncle in laterite-wall-constructions. He forgot his father. Life was a treadmill.

Years after, when Sathar became a father, when his own children grew up before him he remembered his father. He began to ask; ’’Uppa, where are you now?” The thought that his father would one day turn up in the town was poignant and eerily evocative. He ran his scooter to the nooks and corners of the town, to the railway station, to the bus stops hoping his father would one day show up in the night of the town. During such wistful wait for his father he would ask those strangers stranded in the night where they wanted to go and volunteer a ride. He took them to their destinations without recompense.

Sathar once stumbled upon a man in the bus stand at midnight with his six year old boy –a cancer patient. With them on the pillion he rode 70 Km in that night through the rugged terrain to the remote destination, telling them that he is also on to the same place. His method is to accost the estranged passenger, ask where he wanted to go and reassure the poor mortal that he is also going to the same place and will only be pleased if he would not mind sharing the pillion. The heartfelt words like:”let God grace you” are the fuel for his two wheeler .He has a method in his madness. Safe home, he would say the truth that the journey was actually meant as a help. It was a make-belief, a clever ruse else they would fight shy off and resign. The child’s father was so happy that he embraced him, tears of gratitude run down his cheeks.

Another night a man spotted running on the road in panic was rushed to the Railway station on his scooter. The man’s wife was to undergo a surgery next day at Chennai. He was to deposit a tidy sum of money before the surgery and was in the town to scrape together enough cash .When they reached the station the west Coast was ready to leave.

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