I quietlymoved out while Sumi kept on throwing questions at me. It was a plush area with Merc and Honda City covering up the parking place. I owned a relatively down-looked car in that area. I preferred a walk in the hot sun, it wasn’t something new, I was used to it. As I stepped out of premises, world seemed bizarre. Everyone had a purpose, the auto driver, fruit sellers…it was a small market just outside the housing society. I walked through the shops, and moved to a quieter place, the paan shop. I lighted up a cigarette, it was a no smoking zone but people hardly paid any heed to government rules. It was blown with the smoke. Where are you? We need to go for shopping? It was Sumi. She had been a good wife but a complaining types, may be because she expected me to earn some more, she expected me to break into reserve bank of India and steal few millions or may be she expected me to sell my morale and be just another common stupid man. This was the only problem with her…she was money minded, and money is happiness for we the Indians. I wasn’t earning less, but I wasn’t cashing in crores. Ignoring the message I walked without any purpose and headed towards the slum, the area that was considered to be a black spot on the housing society. Very soon I had to take out a piece of cloth and cover my nostrils; I didn’t dare to step forward. Dingy lanes, houses having no doors, a woman clad in single piece of cloth…the sight was distressing. I moved further. Little shops all around, filled with noise and everyone looked at me suspiciously. I was a foreigner in their Iceland! A small temple not bigger than my store room was probably the only place where thousands went for meditation. People were dark, unlike us, may be due to the pollution or genes, but they had a smile unlike us!
It was more of an exploration for me, although as a child I had seen poverty but never saw slum, it was intriguing. I was brought up in the fields if not born there and spent most of my childhood feeding the cattle or staying up with bapu in the fields for little help that I could afford. My eyes never saw toys, I never touched a bat, was alien to dumb charades. The only sport that whole village kids played was football, rather it was a mass of plastics rolled and tied into a single piece. I remember I had touched the ball twice, among some 50 odd kids chasing the ball as if it would run away if they don’t run behind it! And later when I left the village, I heard it was stolen. I could understand the pain of my friends, although they weren’t, and the void that the football created in their minds. But human beings are so cute idiots that they tend to fill the void sooner, or later be it a football or own blood. I lost my son; or rather he wasn’t interested to see the state of affairs of the world or to be more precise India. He left us when he was 2 days old, lived too long to create flashes of memory that haunted me at times.
No comments:
Post a Comment