For many of us rainy days conjure up mushy memories of coffee, hot food, conversation, curling up on bed and watching the rain and perhaps dancing/walking in the rain for the slightly adventurous.
The bubble breaks there.
For the daily commuters in India, rainy days are unpleasant, mostly unwanted, dreadful days - that start with silent pleas to the rain gods to stop inflicting more rain and end with grievances like endless traffic jams, dirty puddles, road rages and other shortcomings (such as your vehicle struggling to keep up with the floods on the roads)
And today happens to be one such day.
"I shouldn't have worn my Nike shoes today", I tell A, suddenly aware a little later, that it is such a first world problem. Ashamed, I stay mum for some time. Not too long before I break the silence with one of my other trivial grievances (such is human nature)
"Why does it have to rain only when we head out?", I mutter under my breath.
Meanwhile A is trying hard to dodge traffic and find tiny gaps in between a fleet of cars, bikes, cycles, cattle, beggars and hawkers at traffic lights etc. Yes, India is diversified like that - even on roads. At one instance, the traffic poured in a single file. Frustrated, we inched along, only later to realize the larger part of the road was hoarded by free moving herd of buffaloes.
Looking at A navigate tactfully, I think to myself, "He is doing such a good job. I probably ought to shut up and quit whining."
Like some sort of a circus trainer, he gives me forewarnings - "Lift your legs high" - as we enter a big flood on the road. A has also mastered the art of reading and predicting the cloud movement. He yells (over the traffic noise) to me, "I think that part of the town is probably already getting heavy rains."
I sigh. By this time I am not too pleased that we have wasted so much time on the road. "This is such a mess", I think aloud. And as if to slight my unheard objections, a heavy downpour comes down on us, forcing us to make a pitstop at a local bookstore.
For close to an hour we stand under the tiny shade of a five floor building and look at the rains that show no signs of giving up. This wasn't going to be a pitstop after all.
A suddenly notices sparks from atop the building. "Look at that", he whimpers to me.
"It looks like Diwali patakas (firecrackers) ready to burst but not quite there", I chuckle.
"Doesn't look good", A says seriously. "Maybe we should move."
We look at it, necks craned, for about 15 mins and then we forget about it. Returning to focus on "the rains" again. Such is the pace of life in India. One grievance giving in to another and then another. Welcome to the Indian grievance lifecycle.
"Hey why don't we just head inside the bookstore?", I look at A briefly and then race through the rain to get to the first floor.
A understands but does not share my passion for books. He often reasons about it this way - "I have no time or inclination to read those fat books. And anyway you tell me the gist and trivia behind them. So I am ok."
I make a steady walk through the book aisles, looking up staff picks, latest bestsellers (I let out a tiny cringe at stacks of Fifty Shades series) and then reach my favorite section on Indian fiction. I run through some trivia for A and by this time he has already taken a peek at "the rains" about half a dozen times.
We goof around a bit and somehow the bookstore fails to draw me. We step onto some weight scale to check our weights and unconvinced with the results, we promptly dismiss the scale as "out of order".
We look around, we look at the rain, we look at the people taking shelter under the bookstore roof, we look at this guy struggling on his cycle with a plastic bag on his head as his only protection from rain, we look a mini van broken down in the middle of the road and couple of people lending a hand to push it to the corner of the road, we notice men gawking at me, we check on our bike to see no one's taking a free pass at it (sitting or doing stupid stuff on it), we debate if we should just hail a cab, why we should have gotten those better raincoats along...
And yet the rains continue.
Somehow in midst of all this, a poignant thing happened. For a minute I stopped and stared at the local bus that stopped to let some passengers out.
I saw women with small plastic bags trying to get into the bus, fit in the small space inside. It brought back a flood of memories from my teenage days. How I had wished I would never have to take the local buses, struggle to find space, deal with men making a pass at me, carry a load of books in my school bag on tiny shoulders and hope to convince someone seated to hold it for me. I had hated those days then and wanted with all my heart for days like the ones I am living now. Where I owned my own means of transportation and wouldn't have to suffer at the whims of others.
I was embarrassed for a moment with the subtlety of what encompassed me in that one minute.
I looked at A and for some reason we started humming (and discussing) ridiculous songs like "I am a Barbie girl" and conversing in only Hyderabadi slang.
And in that moment, for the first time in the entire evening, we forgot to check on "the rains".
No comments:
Post a Comment