The February Yarns

I live in a small scenic town nestled in the foothills of the majestic Shivalik range. It tends to be peaceful most of the time, except when some heavy vehicle breaks down in the middle of the old highway, suddenly turning it into a booming town with honking traffic meandering sluggishly through the curvy road.

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It was one such day in September this year, when I left home for college at 8:45 am, but the eight-minute drive to the college got extended to full forty minutes. It was boring and tiring to snail along the congested road, but that was the only choice I had. On my way, while crossing the small bridge, I realized that all these years, I’d felt it was a useless thing, until this monsoon, I witnessed it being intimidated by the heavily silted, yet roaring waters rushing underneath it. Two small huts stood fearlessly just some meters away, on the river bed. I’d never noticed them in the last 15 years, and wondered when they had come up. A woman was cooking rotis on a mud stove placed in the open. Two teenage girls were taking turns to swing with the long rope hanging from the tree, until the one in a dirty blue suit pushed the other one so hard that her feet brushed over the river water for a while. She must have screamed but the car insulated me from all those unwanted sounds and smells. It took some minutes to cross the bridge, only to brake again owing to the chaos caused by the passengers unboarding a local bus, which had reached its unofficially official halt. While some people were boarding, a woman at the end of the queue was cajoling her little daughter, perhaps two-years old, to walk on her own, to which the girl started thumping her mother’s breasts with both her hands, then suddenly stopped, and put her arms around her neck. The woman was on a phone-call, and as soon as the traffic started nudging, she disconnected the call, stood the girl on the ground, picked up her bag and dragging the girl by her hand, ran towards the bus, which, under the pressure of incessant honking of the impatient commuters, had made a move.  I don’t know how important her journey was, but she seemed to risk her very life to catch that bus. The traffic, lazily inching forward, was now actually taking a toll on my patience as well, making me contemplate taking the day off and just return home. But then, there was no way whatsoever to go back home. There was no chance to take a U-turn stuck amidst the chaotic, claustrophobic traffic jam. Even the music had ceased to give anymore happiness, and I took to looking around again. There were some small, dusty Daily Need Shops on the highway which catered to the adjoining residential area, which again I realized had never before caught my attention. I spotted two happy toddlers looking keenly at each other’s stuff, and then popping it into their pockets, and then suddenly something must have gone gravely wrong, as they started pushing each other, and both of them fell into the mud. The boy, who seemed to be a little older, got up first, and ran into the adjoining lane, and the girl, howling with her mouth wide open, followed. Throughout the day, my mind kept going back to the girl on the swing, trying to figure out her age and the amount of pleasure she had derived from the swinging. Then, to the little girl with two tight plaits, trying to figure out about the place she and her mother were traveling to. And then, to the toddlers, wondering if they had reconciled after the violent tussle. These traffic stories got imprinted on my mind, and though they were not some of the happy ones, still, they give me pleasure when reminisced, just like a perfect piece of art does, even when it is tragic. These sights did not only stand for what they were, but stood like a reminder of how inattentive I’ve been to what already existed… and they made me promise myself to be more in the present rather than being preoccupied with the past or the future.