A time comes for everyone, when responsibilities are either handed down gracefully or just thrown at you at random. In the first case, some amount of mentoring, preparation and guidance are given; but in the second case, one could get crushed under the sudden impact.
The current post is more of a second case scenario.
When I was about 12 years of age, we used to travel a lot from Trivandrum (Capital city of Kerala, India) to Kottakkal (a small town in Malappuram - near Calicut, Kerala, India). I am from Kottakkal and had some exposure to places in and around the town, where some of our close relatives lived. Travel used to be mostly in buses.
On one occasion during the summer holidays, all the other male members were otherwise occupied or shied away from the duty of leading a band of ladies and children to my grandfather's place, about 30 Kms distance from Kottakkal. The job of leading the group of three women of age group 40+, one teen aged girl and two small girls was given to me. The money that changed hands in this transaction was just enough for the bus fares. The number of buses running on that particular route was limited, hence timings had to be adapted to.
I led the team to the Kottakkal bus stand on foot, since there were no other means. The Kerala State bus that goes on to our destination came on the dot at 9:00 AM and the ride was good and all of us were comfortable seated since from those days the local populace preferred private owned buses. The reason for the bias to private buses was that they stopped wherever one wanted to get on or get off. Not so with the state buses which followed a strict set of designated bus stops and charged as per stage fares.
I was seated next to the conductor and inquired about the fares and took tickets to the closest village bus stop thinking that it would suffice. We reached that stop after a ride of about one hour. The conductor demanded that we get down. When I insisted that we want to get down at the next stop, for which the incremental fare by private buses was just 10 Paise per adult and 5 Paise for children below 12, the state bus conductor insisted that we need to cough out 40 Paise per adult and 20 Paise per child. I refused, and we all had to get down.
I was not very sure of the actual distance from Thrithala, the place where we got down, to Mezhathur, the actual bus stop where we should have got down. The sun was already burning down harshly and the road sides were barren. I was leading the small band of disheartened women and children towards the destination. There were a few ups, downs and bends on the way. Every time we used go around one bend, I was hopeful of seeing Mezhathur bus stop. After a few bends the older women were tired and the smaller children were refusing to walk. The youngest had to be carried by her mother after some time. I used to lead them saying that the destination is just around the next bend.
After about 45 minutes walk in the sun, we reached my grandfather's place. All the people whom we met there sympathised with the women and children I got some good natured scolding and advice on "Out of place thrift". None of them took away my credit of having brought the group there and did not make me feel ashamed of the episode.
The return trip went off as planned. We got a bus from Mezhathur to Kuttippuram, where we got another bus to Kottakkal.
The sense of elation for having completed the given task was a little dampened but still very sweet.
What I learned from this episode was that, when given a duty of leading a group of people, one should strive to complete it fully without causing any suffering to the team or group - as far as possible. I learned to lead people from the front. These lessons helped me while I served the Indian Navy.
As regards thrift, I still spend judiciously, but is more open minded.
