The day of surveillance

It was a very cloudy day, the mountains were barely visible, and the sky was in hesitation to pour or not. But the weather was very pleasant and chilly, making me feel as if I was in Darjeeling. Of course I have never been to Darjeeling, but no harms done. I know Darjeeling could not be as beautiful as our Ettimadai mountain now a days. I boarded the bus to Coimbatore; as usual the radio was on full swing though it was not very audible with the honking of the bus, and the swish of the wind. The bus was a bit crowded, my eyes searched for a seat but looks like the ladies section is all full and the women folk are all tired and sleeping, I stood at the mercy of a pole and was a bit sad as I didn’t get a good outside view.

But I enjoyed observing the facets of people inside the bus and was amazed to see a lady with her incisors in level with her palate, finding it difficult to close her mouth. I quickly came back to my senses when a lady stamped my foot and a stream of pain flashed through my body. It did hurt but when she spread her smile indicating a sorry it felt good and my pain went astray. I had to be victims of three such foot stamps during the course of my journey to Coimbatore but all their smiles healed my pain. Inspecting the sights outside I found that the roads were completely dominated by black and white goats; some were eating posters, some were digging their face inside a coconut shell hastily feeding on their fore limbs. Finally, I got to sit but the comfort lasted only two minutes as I reached our destination.

Like always the streets were busy and we had to hurdle our way out of the mob. It started to drizzle but no one bothered to take their umbrellas all were enjoying the little shower. As it started to pour the dry roads created small polka dots pattern, except where the bus was standing at a halt which was clear but soon filled the empty space as the bus moved. Yellow was a color that caught my eye wherever I turned my head autos, lorries, water tanks, traffic signals, bus, flux boards, posters, even women had a tinge of yellow on their face with the use of ‘manjal’; herbal turmeric powder, also their ‘thali’; wedding thread was yellow in color. Just like Jaipur is called the ‘Pink City’ I felt Tamil Nadu should be called the ‘Yellow City’.

 For the first time I saw live palmistry on the roadside, three green parrots compartmented in a cage and one of it coming out hesitantly and taking a card from the list of spread out cards. The palm reader seems to be a wise guy covered in saffron dhoti having long unclean tangled gray beard and hair  with ‘bhasmakuri’ and ‘kumkum’ on his forehead, his customer was waiting in anxiety to know about his future. I was walking behind a lady and suddenly she turned and came by my side, I noticed she had red lips and teeth with chewing beetle leaves. I felt happy to see the sight of her spitting in the drainage and not on the road, at least one person contributed to keeping the city clean. Having seen a pleasing sight a smile appeared on my face and I continued walking, all through my day I saw lots of green and yellow bananas in pushcarts owned by vendors, it was quite a view of bright green and bright yellow which made me even hungrier.

While walking I caught a little theft that happened in front of me. A sweet shop in the city; not a very busy one, the employee snatched a ‘rasagula’ from the huge bowl of ‘rasagulas’ and quickly stuffed it into his mouth without anyone seeing. After the act, his eyes scanned around looking for possible suspects and noticed me viewing the whole scene. He turned away his face and didn’t even glance at me again, may be because he felt guilty of the whole situation. Engrossed in thoughts relating to what I witnessed, a swift cold wind blew without warning that ignited my senses and made me feel elated. There were many street vendors selling fruits, vegetables, accessories, snacks, ’bhajis’ but what caught my eye was an old lady who was selling garlands made from jasmine. She is old and draped in a filthy messy sari; her hair is untied and I figured out from the hunch developed on her back that she had been in this position selling garlands for a very long time.

With the drops of water getting heavier and heavier; diverse colors of umbrella sprouted up as protection from the rain. Ladies gnawing ‘panparag’, a guy puffing a cigarette to beat the cold, a girl wearing a handkerchief on her head like a ‘bandana’ ‘to shield her from rain, a traffic police talking to the nearby shop keeper sheltering himself from the down pour, a mad guy, whose dress was covered in filth and soil walking in the rain, talking to himself showing out gestures and actions with his hand to gain attention from others for what reason, no one knows?, a traffic signal which is not operational, I passed by a Muslim church, where many people were inside praying and others taking their ablutions to pray.

I noticed a woman, who was coming towards me, she looked normal but something in her eyes didn’t feel quite right, as I lowered my eyes I observed that her left hand was dangling along as she moved; lifeless, which made me realize how thankful I have to be to God for letting me into this world well-designed. With that gifted thought in mind I walked to the railway station to catch the train back to college.

Thankyou God for being so kind to me