Riding to work

On that Ramzan day, on one old scooter, grandpa, son, grandson. Three generations, all in sparkling white, with white caps.

In the bus in front of me, a little boy puts his nose and hands against the back window and makes faces, smiles and waves as you wave at him happily.

Couple on bike, the wife opens her umbrella as it starts raining. In the wind, the umbrella flies backwards and is now a water-collecting apparatus. The husband turns around and laughs.

The big white cow chewing the cud by the road-side, wet in the rain, all its little fur stuck together all puchky-wuchky, looking so cute. You smile at it as you pass. It looks at you suspiciously with that one-side-eye [cows have eyes on the sides of their heads] wondering what's happening.

At the small Siva temple, father prostrating on the ground in front of the gods. The little son looks at him, and he too does the same, and turns to peep at father to check whether he's got it right.


In the old English cemetery, people placing startling yellow chrysanthemums on tombstones, the gray stones darkened by the sudden drizzle.

Man walking in the rain with plastic bag on his head. A bus passes with people hanging at the door. One of them waves at him and shouts something. The young chap looks up, waves back, shouts something, laughing, happy, his wet brown face so full of life.

In the traffic jam, in the car next to you, a very tiny baby on grandmother’s lap, all wrapped up. Definitely they are just returning from the hospital with the newborn, it has that pink puzzled look. You decide you are old enough to bless it, this young person who will walk the earth long after you are gone.You wish him wide open eyes. Wide open eyes to see that the world is so full of beauty and possibilities of happiness every single day, in spite of all its sorrow, darkness, its unutterable loneliness.


Three schoolboys walking with arms around each other's shoulders, talking and laughing loudly, early in the morning going to school. They are blocking the narrow road to your office. But you don't sound the horn, you stop and wait for a chance to overtake them, so what if you are a few seconds late, you shall not be guilty of separating such closeness.

P.S: Old post. I have to re-learn to be this person again.