While the world is going places

Walking home on a still-sunny evening. The light which gives you a kick each time you step out into it. You cross the road to walk along the park and there - a huge rainbow above the building where you work. You have of course been inside all this while, earning your living, and not noticed.

* * * * * * * * *

Walking by the park. Three huge brown prize-breed furry dogs being taken for walk by owner. Two stray park dogs running up to them and stopping, fazed by their total disdain and lack of reaction. What can you do in the face of such self-possession?

* * * * * * * * *

They have bent part of the fence to let a sloping sidewalk tree lean into the park. So nice.

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A young couple on a bench, arguing, angry. They're perhaps not even married, and are just discovering that men and women are from different planets.

* * * * * * * * *

At the traffic signals where you usually wait ages, and watch people and try to imagine what kind of homes and happiness/loneliness they are returning to........... you slow down and still try to do the same.

* * * * * * * * *

"Pretending, walk beside me
for some time in the streaming crowd,
stranger: while the world is going places."

Taposh Chakroborty

* * * * * * * * *

At the planetarium, the garden has been freshly hoed, and has beautiful hoe lines in the rich dark mud, like a Zen garden. You stop to look at the fallen frangipani, fragrant even in death.

* * * * * * * * *

On the beautiful golf course, now that the games are over, fat mynahs waddle around, stopping to peck on something or other in the grass. The squirrel baby clambers over wire fence, falling off funnily all the time. Squirrels. Some part of your soul lies in them. Or why do you connect to them so much?


* * * * * * * * *

Three village people ahead. Two men in white dhotis and Gandhi caps, and a young girl with the big plastic bag which usually contains certificates. One of them is showing the father and the girl (who perhaps has come for an interview or a college admission) the former President's home. The father, hands ties behind his back, trying not to look too awed. They are possibly walking down to the bus stand, to save on exhorbitant auto charges.

You remember first coming to the Big City city one cold August evening, 20 years ago. The exact feel of the air. You who cannot remember that you just collected the change, a few seconds ago.
You wonder about the shy girl walking beside her father, slightly scared. What will be her life after he leaves, if she does stay here. Oh what will it be.

* * * * * * * * *

Political party workers, tying small party flags on strings from tree to tree. Casuarina trees they are, though no beach within 500 kms radius. One of the guys has just realized that the flag string is too short to reach the next tree. He stands with the string end in his hand and laughs, looking at his friend.

You remember prayer flags back somewhere in Ladakh, when you asked the driver to stop because you want to take a picture. Bare huge mountains all around. Utter stillness. One small gompa and a colored prayer flag string, faded by the harsh elements, in the middle of nowhere.
You look through the viewfinder, and you realize how very little you can capture with a camera.


* * * * * * * * *

Along the way you have driven down 15 years, you discover an art gallery and a new restaurant you have never noticed. Familiarity breeds blindness.


* * * * * * * * *

The last few kilometres are the toughest. The ones where you have to look down and will your asthmatic lungs to not give up, not yet, not on the road.

* * * * * * * * *


They are so beautiful, the houses you walk past in the residential areas, lit, awaiting the breadwinners. Old photos on the wall, the comforting smell of cooking, of anticipation.

* * * * * * * * *

The road in front of your house. The lane where the neighbour got your favorite orange flower tree cut down, one fine day, just like that. When you come home, and stop there, too shocked to cry. For a while. The huge empty space. The tree with the bird nests. With the babies.

But then you are just passing through this world.

Walking by.