The Scooty Pep+ sped on, making note of the piling traffic ahead. A slow drizzle started, wetting his spectacles as he took a short-cut into a narrow, tar road situated in a slum area. He slowed down a bit.
Thatched huts, all fighting to get a little more of the road to encroach upon. Extremely small doors that you would have bend double to get through. Loudspeakers every 50 meters or so, blaring Shlokas. Ladies and girls standing outside a Syntex tank to receive their Kodam of water for the day. The quintessential politician's poster, with a politician walking, clutching the hem of his veshti, politician smiling, politician talking on his cell phone. Below were smaller pictures of the constituency representatives, hooligans, gangsters with outrageous side-burns. The posters of Prabhakaran the LTTE chief, were there about a year ago. They had been removed now. The drizzle slowly stopped.
And the children! Their innocence still preserved, the road their second home. Teenagers with audacious low cut cheap jeans playing marbles, five year olds with plastic toy cars, dark skinned girls playing that hopping game, all on the road. Others ran off into roads that snaked in and out of the area, cars screeching to a halt behind them.
The scooty slowed down to a crawl. The hands that rode it were alert, lest some child came running across unexpectedly. It stopped. There was a row of small stones kept on the road, a cheap barricade. He looked ahead.
Up ahead stood a stage, propped with thick wooden sticks, six feet high, on the road. On it were miniature bulbs, the ones used in decorative lighting, connected with wires, which twisted and twirled to light up a huge Parvathi Devi. Further ahead was the temple, packed with devotees attending the Pooja. He smiled. He should have paid more attention to the loudspeakers.
He considered squeezing through whatever bit of road was left. Beside him, old men on plastic chairs gave a knowing smile. He turned around. Slum dogs, he muttered. The scooty traced back and sped into another world, a world it was more comfortable with.
The slummers carried on, oblivious to him and the world surrounding them.
Thatched huts, all fighting to get a little more of the road to encroach upon. Extremely small doors that you would have bend double to get through. Loudspeakers every 50 meters or so, blaring Shlokas. Ladies and girls standing outside a Syntex tank to receive their Kodam of water for the day. The quintessential politician's poster, with a politician walking, clutching the hem of his veshti, politician smiling, politician talking on his cell phone. Below were smaller pictures of the constituency representatives, hooligans, gangsters with outrageous side-burns. The posters of Prabhakaran the LTTE chief, were there about a year ago. They had been removed now. The drizzle slowly stopped.
And the children! Their innocence still preserved, the road their second home. Teenagers with audacious low cut cheap jeans playing marbles, five year olds with plastic toy cars, dark skinned girls playing that hopping game, all on the road. Others ran off into roads that snaked in and out of the area, cars screeching to a halt behind them.
The scooty slowed down to a crawl. The hands that rode it were alert, lest some child came running across unexpectedly. It stopped. There was a row of small stones kept on the road, a cheap barricade. He looked ahead.
Up ahead stood a stage, propped with thick wooden sticks, six feet high, on the road. On it were miniature bulbs, the ones used in decorative lighting, connected with wires, which twisted and twirled to light up a huge Parvathi Devi. Further ahead was the temple, packed with devotees attending the Pooja. He smiled. He should have paid more attention to the loudspeakers.
He considered squeezing through whatever bit of road was left. Beside him, old men on plastic chairs gave a knowing smile. He turned around. Slum dogs, he muttered. The scooty traced back and sped into another world, a world it was more comfortable with.
The slummers carried on, oblivious to him and the world surrounding them.
Is there more to it?
ReplyDeleteNah... Why asking?
ReplyDeleteNever mind that....How do you get newer things to write?
ReplyDelete