Yusuf

The Saturday was turning out to be as predictable as it could have been. Rains lashed the city and the clouds seemed to have taken the sky captive while sending the sun to an unending exile. It is exactly the kind of weather you don't wish for on the day of a table tennis tournament, especially if you are participating in one after ages. Quite normally, I lost after a couple of rounds. Refusing to trust logic, I was being too harsh with myself, grumbling and cussing myself. The usual sequence. Drenched and dripping, I boarded an auto to reach the St. Paul's Stag Table Tennis Academy, where I hoped they would let me practice on weekends. The rain pouring down over the vast stretch of the Hussain Sagar lake made an incredible view. Oblivious about the day till then, I gazed outside thinking about a million things, yet nothing in particular. " Ye St. Paul's school kahan hain bhaiya? ", the bearded old auto driver asked me. My reverie was broken. I had agreed to pay him a hundred and fifty bucks, and he did even know where the damned place was. Sighing heavily and wondering just how bad the rest of the day could have been, I informed him I wasn't a local and and that it was his duty to take me to my destination. 

The place was not hard to find. It was located in a well known area in Himayatnagar. As I paid him the fare, 

I suddenly realized my cell phone was missing. Fumbling with my belongings, for some reason, I grew hysterical. Always a schemer and trying keep things within my control is a side of me I have found out over the years. Probably I was just not to ready to let things spiral so much out of control on a single day. Seeing me in such a mess, Yusuf ( the name of the auto driver as I later found out ) tried calming me down. "Pareshan mat hona bhaiya...."Now when I think about it, I think he said it a million times. I asked him politely, summoning all my patience, if I could just sit in his vehicle for a while and search for my phone. He told me to take all the time I needed. Needless to mention, I found my cellphone at the bottom most pit of my kit bag. Relief swept over me. I sat down breathing heavily. I took out a packet of biscuits from my bag and asked Yusuf, if he wanted to had some. He was all for it, and we were sitting inside his vehicle chatting for almost twenty minutes while rain poured outside. He asked me about what I did, then he went on to talk about his time in Saudi Arabia, where he spent a few years when he was young. He told me how he was almost drowning once, and there was not a chance in the world that he would live again, except that Allah saved him. That nothing was truly our own, so naturally worrying is pointless. He duly passed on his experiences about life. And at the end of every sentence of his, he would say," Jo bhi ho jaye, pareshan mat hona bhaiya..". 

The rain subsided after a while and I had to leave. I bid him goodbye and asked him if he had a phone number. He did not. This guy's old school, of course. And off he went. After that I did what I did and during the hour long bus ride back home, I wondered how simple life would be if I could just follow his mantra. My grandma always says, you can find God wherever you want to find God. I think I am slowly beginning to understand what she means.