Coincidences are not rare. Years ago, when I was a high school student, studying American freedom struggle as part of world history, there occurred a Boston Tea Party in our own village. I am not joking. In fact, it was more a feast rather than a tea party, in contrast to the Bostonian one in the early 18th century. The coincidence was that it was when our teacher started talking eloquently about the Boston Tea Party, a key event in American history, approximating the one in which Mahatma Gandhi defied the Salt Act introduced by the British during the Indian freedom movement, that the rural version of the ‘Boston Tea Party’ came about in the river, Vannathi Puzha, meandering through our village, hardly a kilometre from the school.
What took place Boston was a milestone in American history. What happened in our village had the potential of saving many a life.
As the teacher was talking of the Boston incident, her gestures, describing the tea chests being jettisoned at the Boston Harbour made all of us focus our attention on her. She knew how to hold the class spellbound. ‘And,’ she said, ‘the American freedom fighters picked up a large number of tea chests sent by the East India Company and threw them in the…’. The rest of the sentence died on her lips as a group of senior students passed down the verandah that skirted our class room, shouting in unison: “Boston Tea Party, Boston Tea Party…”
We soon discovered the reason behind this strange procession. A wooden bridge constructed over Vannathi Puzha had collapsed in the wee hours of the morning when a truck overloaded with tea, sugar, rice and other groceries drove over it clandestinely. Clandestinely because vehicles were not to ply on the bridge until it was inaugurated by the Public Works Minister of the State later that morning. He was to declare it open by cutting a ribbon. Thereafter, he was to sit comfortably in a fully loaded bus consisting of his entourage, and a who’s who of the village, including several politicians, making the vehicle heavier than the fully loaded truck, and cross the bridge. This, however, did not happen, thanks to the truck driver!
Shoddy construction had undermined the bridge which could not bear the weight of the truck. So, no sooner had it ventured on it, than the bridge gave way and the truck with all that it was carrying, fell into the river. Amazingly, the driver and his companion were only bruised.
Being skeptical about the sustainability of a wooden bridge, especially during rains which would precipitate its disintegration, the people had demanded a concrete bridge. Instead, they got a wooden one. Wooden bridges would have to undergo periodic, at times comprehensive, repairs. Vehicles would have to terminate on either side of the river, forcing people to wade through the water. All this had fallen on the deaf ears of the powers that be. The public works department pleaded a lack of funds for not heeding the villagers’ plea.
Now, instead of faulting the driver for crossing the bridge before it was formally opened, people applauded him. The collapse of the bridge was a blessing in disguise, they said. Else a bus, fully loaded with people, would have entered it with an unimaginable outcome.
That the contractor was in cahoots with bureaucrats and local politicians was evident from the cheap construction of the bridge, and people wanted action against the culpable. They felt the truck driver who had saved, unwittingly, many lives deserved to be rewarded. The icing on the cake, however, was saved for the beedi-cigarette-cool drinks vendor, who operated near our school. Hardly had he got wind of the bridge collapse that he moved his stall to the site to cater to the needs of the inevitable crowd of curious onlookers, making a tidy profit in the process. cvsuku46@gmail.com