the way we were (part two)

This is part two. ( Here is part one)

So there we were at this restaurant at the outskirts of town, with an unwelcome guest in our midst. My friends and I were sitting there, trying to relax and enjoy an evening together. And this insensitive drunk named Karthik was sitting at our table, ignoring the friends he came with, and was actually dumping his cigarette ashes on our table! I was irritated.

From the conversation, Karthik didn't mention anything about professors or classmates that we would know. So since my friends and I were in the medical school together, I guessed that Karthik was a dentist. Doctors in India are of pretty high prestige, and people who don't get into medical school try to get into dentistry or pharmacy. In high school you would take a general career path towards either science or math. So if you tried math, you would become an engineer, there were plenty of positions in engineering colleges, and if you didn't get in, you could do a two-year degree and find work somehow. But medicine was different. First of all getting in was tough. Once you got in and struggled through the courses and passed, to get into a specialty was even tougher. People would spend years trying the entrance exams, hoping. If you didn't suceed in them, you would be faced with the prospect of being a general practitioner with the thousands of other doctors, who didn't get into a specialty. And to make matters worse, the intense competition in the metropolitan areas would force you to the rural areas, or even worse a village. I am getting away from my story. Sorry, but I have all these memories of India and it is really nice to remember things there.

So at this point, I asked Karthik if he was a doctor. I asked in great anticipation, something like, "Oh! So your a doctor?!?!" And he replied that he was a dentist. So I sunk down in my chair, looked towards the ground and quietly said, "oooohhh." Right away this upstart kid, quieted down, and I knew I had struck a nerve. Now I am always honest in this blog, I hope you will agree (at least by my style, you should be able to tell). So I am rarely cocky or arrogant (I have had too many struggles in life to get too high on myself--everytime I do I come crashing down for some reason or the other). But my main concern was to shut up this guy, even though now I know better.

So from that point on Karthik was leaving our table, muttering something in the local language to his friends and gesturing in our direction. Then he would return to our table. Then leave. He started spitting on the floor and became very agitated. He actually came at me and told my friends that he just wanted to talk to me. My friends who were pretty big, got in the way and kept him away. I must say Karthik would have really beaten me up pretty good--if he did get at me. People started complaining to the waiters, but they wouldn't do anything. Finally, still agitated we left (I am not sure who left first, Karthik and his friends or us).

We went home and laughed a bit, and came back to my apartment. on the third/fourth floor. It was late, really late and I had this whiffle ball and bat, and we played baseball in my apartment (the ball and bat were made of plastic). Then from downstairs, we heard a police whistle. We peeked out and saw a policeman waving. We thought we were making too much noise, so we turned out the lights and sat in the dark watching the policeman in the streetlight. Eventually the policeman came into the apartment complex, so he was obscured from our sight.

We heard the policeman talking to people on the ground floor and heard voices speaking. We couldn't hear what they were saying, though. Then we heard footsteps coming up the stairs to our door. There was a knock on the door. Not a bang, but a knock. We heard the familiar voice of the caretaker of the apartments, Basanna. He was an older man who was probably five foot tall and ninety pounds, he was thin from hard work and not enough food. Basanna knocked and yelled out my name,"...." (Whoops, I almost typed my name here!). Well lets say my name is..Joe, for the purpose of the story. "Joe, Sahib!" (Sahib is sir). We didn't answer. He kept knocking and kept saying, "Joe Sahib!" My friends, finally told me to go into the bedroom. I did and could hear everything from the room. They opened the door, and Basanna was talking in Hindi that someone was asking for Joe downstairs. Finally my friends told me that we had not done anything wrong, so lets go downstairs. I agreed (my language skills leave lots to be desired, so I had to trust them). As we all went down the stairway, I think there were four of us, one of my friends said, "If they ask who you are, just say you aren't Joe!" I thought ok, I will. I had no idea what was going on. All I knew was that there was a policeman, and he thought it was necessary to wake up people at 2 in the morning.

We got downstairs and I saw a tenant who lived downstairs. Before I could say a word, someone came up to me, and said, "Tell them you know me, tell them that I was coming to visit you." I was taken aback, as I looked at this person, I realized it was Karthik's friend who was with him at the restaurant. I was in shock, my mind couldn't think. What was he doing here and why was he asking me to acknowledge him?

Slowly things started becoming clear. Someone was damaging the cars in the parking area of the apartment. They damaged my friends car, and then they damaged someone else's car. Except that person was in the area and he caught the vandals. He knew who they were and called the police. The vandals only knew me (by name, hearing Karthik say my name over and over) and lied saying that they were not doing anything to the cars but came to visit me.

The police constable meanwhile had called the police station and the police jeep arrived. They detained the vandal (I never knew his name, though he knew mine) and the vandal kept saying he came to see "Joe." But we all denied that we even knew a "Joe" (once you lie, you are in that lie! Then the officer in charge started yelling out my name, hoping that "Joe" would come out and he could straighten things out. So here I am hearing my name being yelled out at 3 in the morning, with a police jeep and officers looking for me. Not good. So one of my friends said, tell them who you really are. The rest happened in a blur, once the head officer found out that I was the person that they were looking for and that I lied...he was furious. He had his nightstick, the Indian version, about three feet long and made of bamboo.

He started yelling and twirling the bamboo rod and raised it to hit me. I cringed and turned my back. I was so scared. So much for bravado and bravery, I guess that was who I really was. A liar and a coward. The officer was all noise and no action. He said that we should come and meet him in the morning. They took the vandal away, and left us standing there.

We went upstairs, after some people tried to blame me, saying all of this was my fault. Some of the people in the apartment who were awake, were peering out their windows at us. We just went back to my apartment and sat there.

The next day, we woke up and went to the police station. The Inspector acted as a mediator, let everyone go, told the vandals to repair the car. The inspector blamed us both, saying that fights don't start with just one party...it takes two to tango. We were so upset, thinking that it was Karthik's fault--he was the instigator. Yet now I see how wrong I was. If only I kept my mouth shut. Thank God that he wasn't the wrong person, or thank God he didn't know the right person--someone that would have found me and beaten me up (or worse). What was I thinking? I wasn't, there I was an American citizen, in another country with just a few people to back me up. God was watching over me, time and time again, he saves us from disaster. Other countries are just not as safe as the US. So many times people die...we are safer here in the US than anywhere else.

Oh yeah, in the morning before going to the police station, we went to the restaurant to get the waiters as witnesses. They would say the truth about how out-of-control Karthik was. They didn't. They valued their business more than the truth. They wanted to be as uninvolved as possible. They said nothing happened and that they didn't see anything.