where is muthu now?

You remember Muthu, right? I'm sure that you have often been kept awake at night, wondering what may have happened to him. Well, I'll tell you, and then you can sleep peacefully.

Muthu was quite instrumental in helping me acclimate. He taught me a lot of things and made me mobile before we had a car. He was also instrumental in the purchasing of the car, and so I owe him my thanks. However, I was rather put out by a few things that happened during the car purchasing process.

He was repeatedly late in delivering things that he had promised, but I overlooked it. It is a thing that one must simply get used to in India. Things work on IST (Indian Standard Time), and a noon meeting very well may not get underway until 2:00. It was Chris who finally got irate when Muthu had the car, all of the paperwork for the car, and our money. And then he asked to borrow $1,000. Yes. One thousand dollars. Not rupees. However, this is also not an uncommon occurrence in Indian culture, though the amount was extreme. I just chalked these things up to doing business in Chennai.

But, unbeknownst to Chris, I was pushed into giving Muthu more money for the car than we had agreed upon. Muthu is very savvy and he knew damn well that he had me between a rock and a hard place. He knew that I really needed the car and he also knew that I was trying very hard to keep any and all annoyance away from Christopher while he was getting used to his new job and new surroundings. So he squeezed me for cash. I wasn't conned, but he knew and I knew that it was just easier for me to hand over money and have it over with. And, being newly transplanted into a new country, one is liable to make decisions that one would not necessarily make otherwise. So, after the car was in my possession, I stopped talking to Muthu.

And he called. And he called. And I ignored him and didn't answer the phone and consistently didn't return his calls. I stopped answering my cell phone because he would try to trick me by calling from many different numbers so that I couldn't tell that it was him. He went off to Germany and left me in peace for a while, but would start to call me every time he was back in town. I was astonished by how much this guy could not take a hint. Finally, when he showed up at our house unannounced, I told him to leave me alone and stop calling me.

Fast forward.

Through some machinations that are not of importance, I met a woman from the States who was planning a trip to South India to do a documentary on the aftermath of the tsunami. After many e-mails over two months, I had lunch with her when she and her crew arrived in India. Over the course of our meal, she began to relate a story from a previous trip to Chennai that she had undertaken two years ago for another documentary. She told me that she had seen a rickshaw driver that afternoon that she knew from that previous trip and that she was anxious to avoid him.

He had, apparently, taken her and a friend to a very seedy bar, touched her, tried to kiss her, and followed her around. He also harassed another woman who was then staying at the YWCA with her. The harassment was so frightening that they complained to the YWCA and had him banned from soliciting customers there. They also reported it to the police. The rickshaw driver told the officials that the women had asked him to take them to a brothel where they could have sex with other women and that he was morally outraged. That was his excuse for accosting them.

She said that the rickshaw driver spoke perfect English and had very wide shoulders. I shuddered. She said that he had a birthmark on his cheek. I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling.

“Is his name Muthu?”, I asked.

She was shocked and confirmed that his name was, in fact, Muthu. And I knew that it was him too, because I had often felt uncomfortable when I was alone with him and I knew exactly what she was talking about. I would never be alone in the house with him because my instincts were just so strong.

After I got home, I sent her the link to his picture on this website and she confirmed that it was, in fact, the same man.

Now I really don't talk to Muthu.