EPISODE 3
The coffee shop sat one floor above the road. Birbal and the Monkey had the window table. Below, Madhapur traffic had stopped in both directions.
A motorcyclist aimed for a gap between two cars.
Birbal: He will not fit.
Monkey: He thinks he will.
He came out the far side with his handlebar dragging a long scratch down the door of one. Its driver was out of his seat before the bike had stopped.
Driver: Have you no common sense? Where was the space?
Birbal: He has none.
Monkey: How can you tell?
Birbal: One can tell. It takes a moment.
Monkey: From a floor up? Across two lanes? How wide was the gap?
Birbal: Too narrow.
Monkey: How narrow?
Birbal looked down at the road as though it might supply a figure. It did not.
Birbal: One does not need a tape measure to know a scratch is coming.
Monkey: No. Do you ever not have it?
Birbal: Common sense? I cannot recall an occasion.
Monkey: The rider was sure. The driver was sure. Which one had common sense?
Birbal: The one whose judgment matched the width of the vehicle. Sense is the ground everyone is expected to stand on.
Monkey: Then why is everyone falling through?
Birbal: The faculty is common. Its application is not.
Monkey: Then why call it common?
Birbal: Common describes what ought to be the case.
Monkey: Ought to be, and isn’t.
Birbal: It is uncommonly ignored.
Monkey: By everyone but you?
Birbal: Most men are sure and wrong. When I am certain, I am correct. It is a matter of training.
Monkey: Four hundred years of it.
Birbal: Not once has it failed me.
A horn sounded below, one long, committed blast into traffic that had not moved.
Birbal: There. No common sense at all. A man leaning on his horn at a wall, as though sound could push metal.
Monkey: It is not a wall.
Birbal: It is a figure of speech.
Monkey: It is a man in a car. The horn is how you ask him to move.
Birbal: He cannot move. The whole street is stopped.
Monkey: And when the signal changes?
Birbal: Then he moves without being asked.
Monkey: And if he does not?
Birbal: Then the one behind waits. Waiting has no limit. That is what makes it waiting.
Monkey: And you? Stuck in that?
Birbal: I once sat six hours in Akbar’s durbar while a man defended a tax on salt. I did not honk.
Monkey: There was no horn in the durbar.
Birbal: The principle is the same.
———
They went down some time later and got into their own car. At the Jubilee Hills Checkpost signal, a long line of cars stood ahead of them, brake lights red all the way down.
The signal turned green. The line did not move. The junction beyond it was packed solid. Birbal sat still.
It turned red. It turned green again. Nothing moved.
Birbal pressed the horn and held it. The cabin filled with one long blare.
———