NH 101

Has the One Hundred and First Amendment to the Constitution smoothed the passage of goods on our highways? Outlook’s correspondents clamber on to trucks across India to gauge.

- Salik Ahmad, Siddhartha Mishra, Ajay Sukumaran, Dola Mitra and Neel Shah

FOR the roads, the night is a fairly competent segregator. It tosses the ones with privilege into the cushy, civilisational confines of houses and leaves the ones bereft of it on the roads. The homeless, who have the common privilege of being the first victims of weather extremities, the rank and file policemen with handkerchiefs lacing their collars, the watchmen guarding gated societies, the drones manning toll booths, their uniforms as drab as their hours…. And, of course, drivers. Of cars and buses and those lumbering lorries, yawning and cruising, smoking and straining to beat the tedium. They are nishachar, nocturnal creatures, emerging after dark to move on the roads. Some also harbour hopes of being socially mobile. Many slog in a permanent dreamless night.

Bindeshwar Yadav (30), tearing into the unlit realm on a Haryana highway in his truck, belongs to the latter category. He remits roughly Rs 4,000, or what is left with him after a bare-bones lifestyle, to his wife and two kids who live in a village in Darbhanga, Bihar. With his time, he’s more measured: he only spends a month at home in a year. For the rest of the year, the driver’s cabin of the truck is his home.

The sticky air makes the greasy cabin ickier than usual. The blend of body odour, engine oil and the incense sticks flanking the miniature idols on the dashboard together make for a sensory cocktail that doesn’t ebb away easily. After hours of staring at it, the red and blue alternately blinking decorative lights almost seem part of the smell. The heat that permeates up from the groaning, belching engine below is like an unpleasant tenant who doesn’t leave. The driver ’s three pairs of well-worn clothes, a few utensils and rations are part of the mise-en-scene.