My Friend Devan Shauran

I have a friend who must be the sweetest, shyest person in the world. His name is brittle and soft like him (Devan Shauran), his age modestly intermediate (forty). He is rather short and skinny, has a thin moustache and even thinner hair on his head. Since his vision is not perfect, he wears glasses: they are small, round and frame-less.

In order not to be an inconvenience for anyone, he always walks sideways. Instead of saying 'Excuse me', he prefers to glide by one side. If the gap is so narrow that it will not allow him to pass, Devan a.k.a Daddu waits patiently until the obstruction -- be it animate or inanimate, rational or irrational -- moves by itself. Stray dogs and cats panic him, and in order to avoid them he constantly crosses from one side of the road to another.

He speaks with a very thin, subtle voice, so inaudible that it is hard to tell if he is speaking at all. If you ask him to speak up in a loud tone… he will hold his breath for half a minute before he continues on the same pace with bit more strain. He has never interrupted anybody. On the other hand, he can never manage more than two words without somebody interrupting him. This does not seem to irritate him; in fact, he actually appears happy to have been able to utter those two words.

Devan has been married for years. His wife is a thin, choleric, nervous woman who, as well as having an unbearably shrill voice, strong lungs, a finely drawn nose and a viperous tongue suffers from an uncontrollable temper and the personality of a lion tamer. Devan-- you have to wonder how -- has succeeded in producing a child named (by his mother) Aayush. He is tall, blond, intelligent, distrustful, sarcastic and has a fringe. It is not entirely true that he only obeys his mother. However, the two of them have always agreed that Devan has little to offer the world and therefore choose to ignore his scarce and rarely expressed opinions.

Devan is the oldest and the least important employee of a dismal company that exports cloth. It operates out of a very dark building with black-stained wooden floors situated in Zakariya street. The owner as I have seen and been told he has a ferocious moustache, is bald and has a thunderous voice. He is also violent and greedy. My friend Devan goes to work dressed half shirt well tugged in and wooden slippers, wearing a very old pant that shines from age. I don’t know how many cloths he got but to avoid any attention and remark he makes sure he always come back wash his cloths and get into it again before he goes to office next day. His salary is ludicrously low, but he still stays behind in the office every day and works for another three or four hours: the tasks his boss gives him are so huge that he has no chance of accomplishing them within normal hours. Now, just after his Boss cut his salary yet again, his wife has decided that Aayush must not do his secondary studies in a state school. She has chosen to put his name down for a very costly institution. In view of the extortionate outlay this involves, Devan has stopped buying his newspaper and (an even greater sacrifice) The Reader's Digest, his two favourite publications. The last article he managed to read in the Reader's Digest explained how husbands should repress their own overwhelming personality in order to make room for the actualisation of the rest of the family group.

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There is, however, one remarkable aspect to Devan: his behaviour as soon as he steps on a bus. Generally, this is what happens:
He requests a ticket and begins to look for his money, slowly. He holds up one hand to ensure that the driver keeps waiting, unsure of what to do. Devan does not hurry. In fact, I would say that the driver's impatience gives him a certain amount of pleasure. Then he pays with the largest possible number of small coins, which he delivers a few at the time, in varying amounts and at irregular intervals. For some reason, this disturbs the driver, who, apart from having to pay attention to other cars, the traffic lights, other passengers getting on or off, and having to drive the bus itself, is forced to perform complicated arithmetic. Devan aggravates the problem by including in his payment a US 10cent which he got long back from someone that he keeps for the purpose and which is invariably returned to him. This way, mistakes are usually made in the accounts and an argument ensues. Then, in a serene but firm manner, Devan begins to defend his rights, employing arguments so contradictory that it is impossible to understand what point he is actually trying to make. Finally, the driver, at the end of the last tether of his sanity and in an act of final resignation, chooses to throw out the coins -- perhaps as a means of repressing his wish to throw out Devan or, indeed, himself.

When winter comes, Devan always travels with the windows wide open. The first to suffer as a result of this is Devan himself: he has developed a chronic cough which aggravates his already aggravated asthma that often forces him to stay awake entire nights. During the summer, he closes his window and will not allow anyone to lower the shade that would protect him from the sun. More than once he has ended up with first-degree burns.

Because of his weak lungs, Devan never smoke and, in fact, he hates smoking. In spite of this, once inside the bus he will take out his age old never smoked long cigarette trying to irritate the already irritated driver to shut no smoking in the bus.

Devan is a tiny, sedentary, squalid person and has never been interested in sports. But come Saturday evening, he switches on his portable radio and turns the volume up full in order to follow the Ranjhi match commentary. Sundays he dedicates to listening to hindi news and tortures the rest of the passengers with the noisy broadcasts.

The back seat is for seven passengers. In spite of his very small size, Devan sits so as to allow room for only five or even four people on the seat. If six are already seated and Devan is standing up, he demands permission, in an indignant and reproachful tone, to sit down -- which he then does, managing to take up an excessive amount of space. To this end, he puts his hands in his pockets so that his elbows will remain firmly embedded in his neighbours' ribs.

Devan's resources are plentiful and diverse.
When he has to travel standing up, he always keeps his bag in a awkward position carefully adjusting his posture so that the lower edge of his bag keep hitting the face or the eyes of those sitting down.

If anyone is reading, they are easy prey for Devan. Watching him or her closely, Devan places his head near the light so as to throw a shadow on the victim's book. Every now and then he withdraws his head as if by chance. The reader will anxiously devour one or two words before Devan moves back into position.

My friend Devan knows the times when the bus will be fully packed. And for those occasions, he makes sure he doesn’t eat he keeps his lunch box half eaten and the rest he eats on the way dropping the curry making it as messy as he could.

If he manages to take the front seat, he never gives it up to anyone. But should he find himself in one of the last rows, the moment he sees a woman with a child in her arms or a weak, elderly person climb on board he immediately stands up and calls very loudly to the front passenger to offer them his seat. Later he usually makes some recriminatory remark against those that kept their seats. His eloquence is always effective, and some mortally ashamed passenger gets off at the next stop. Instantly, Devan takes his place.


My friend Devan gets off the bus in a very good mood. Timidly, he walks home, staying out of the way of anyone he meets. He is not allowed a key, so he has to ring the bell. If anyone is home, they rarely refuse to open the door to him. But if neither his wife nor his son is to be found, Devan sits on the doorstep until someone arrives.