I walk alone... I walk alone

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known

Don’t know where it goes

But it’s home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I’m the only one and I walk alone

These were the lines from Green day (one of my favourite number  ) that were ringing in my mind when I decided to take a stroll on a lazy Sunday evening… errr… no… noon… I don’t know to categorize (it was 3 pm  ) Yes, I felt the entire city was busy in the afternoon nap after a heavy Sunday meal  The noise and the honking was pretty less  I somehow wanted to go for a walk (may be cos of the unusually pleasant weather  ) alone that noon (evening)… There were many scenes that caught my attention and made me to capture it in my blog…

Caution: This is gonna be a long post… I tried my best to reduce it but this was the max, I could do 

Here goes my walk to remember

I left my house and as soon as I stepped out of my street, my ‘walk alone’ concept was challenged by a black dog… It started following me, wagging its tail, its eyes pleading to make it part of my walking chronicles… As you all know my dog-phobia… I tried my best to follow my friends’ and parents’ suggestions (Ignore a dog… Don’t give your attention… Only when you keep noticing it, it will follow )… Trust me, inspite of my heart beat which beat with a huge decibel (am sure it would have been heard out  ), I tried walking without turning back but I knew it was close behind my legs  I kept walking till the end of the street and finally when I made up my mind to turn back, I found that my black friend had got distracted with the food packet, a few paces behind… I smiled to myself, thanked the owner of the food packet and his immense road sense for throwing it near the dust bin (not in the dustbin ) and quickly turned to continue my walk alone…

There was a pretty deserted bus stand and a ‘cobbler’ couple were sitting… They were very old… Definitely 80′s something… They took a break from the work (I observed a needle with a thread near a half torn shoe… so decided the ‘work in progress’ board was applicable here ) and having one of the best moments of their life… The old man opened a small tray, that had a scoop of strawberry ice cream… He took two plastic spoons from a jute bag near him and placed it in the tray… Both were all smiles and started enjoying the ice cream… The vehicles, the shoes near them, the dust… nothing mattered to them… They enjoyed every little moment and the teethless mouth was beaming, time and again, making it more cuter…. seeing that scene, my lips curved a smile involuntarily 

I moved on cautiously , not to disturb their moment of togetherness… There were many shops on to my right… A tea shop was one among them… I found 4 people reading tamil newspapers as they show in movies, 90′s song in the background , the tea-master busy with his well practiced tea-stunts and a boy waiting with tea-glasses… While I was giggling seeing this, a white indica was blaring at me… I moved to my left giving it more way… but still he continued to honk urging me to turn and give him a cold stare… I hopped on to the broken platform, making up my mind not to  get irritated… I continued my stroll, with hopping and jumping through the broken tiles in the platform… Actually, I had fun doing it 

The silence was suddenly overshadowed by the hustle and bustle… I took a turn and entered into that road… Market road…The colorful painted dolls, people with bags, loud bargains gave me a clear signal… Dussehra has begun  So many different colors, the paintings in each of the doll exhibited the intricate art work…A guy was giving a final touch to a ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ doll… The paint was glistening under the mild sunlight (it was a cloudy)… His concentration and passion exhibited was immense… Our ‘Mahatma’ soon joined his companions ‘happy man’, ‘a set of cricketers’ and ‘charlie chaplin’.

This street was crowded and I apologized thrice for dashing the ladies who were busy bargaining and who didn’t even bother to give way to me… I squeezed my way past them… There was a reunion that happened on the other side of the road… A few relatives who had come shopping waved and got near eachother… There were two kids who were the most affected ones by this reunion… Already the two of them were irritated about getting them to shop in their play time… One of the women from the gang pinched the elder kid’s cheek and am sure would have given the usual comments “How big you have become… Do you remember me?” The kid didn’t respond while his parents were continuously giving clues about the ‘new’ aunty… The kid continued to display the language of our Prime minister… muteness  Like the Indian Janata, after repeated attempts, the elders moved on to other topics… Am sure the kid now would have made up his mind to practice the art of muteness as it was useful in times of need  The next attack was on the younger kid… Girls are always a bit more expressive than boys , so was this kid unlike her brother… She smiled… It was the gravest mistake… She had a cadburys diary milk unwrapped in her hand, when she was about to take the first bite, this over affectionate ‘relative’ lifted her in the arms so fiercely that  the kid missed her control over her precious chocolate.. It fell right on the ground… Tears swelled up in her eyes… The crowd had a tough time to minify her tears… While the entire attention was on this girl child, the elder one slowly moved away from the crowd, opened his dairy milk carefully and started relishing it… Muteness zindabad 

At that time I got a call to my mobile…. The display read “Aish calling”… I wondered ‘how can I call to my own mobile’… Stills of Madhavan’s 13B passed through my mind… I attended the call expecting something unusual… “Where are you? Come home soon… Your aunt and uncle are coming home”  My mom’s voice… Ufff ! I had stored the landline number as Aish… I decided to rename it to ‘Home’ to avoid any nervous breakdown in the future and made my walk back to my home 

PS: A picture is worth a 1000 words… Since I didn’t click a pic, I used 1000 words to recapture the picture 

Beat the Traffic Blues

Traffic and India have been inseparable… With India rapidly marching towards its “Developed nation” vision, so is its traffic  A decade back, traffic jams are a rare phenomenon , now if we don’t get struck in a jam… its a rare phenomenon  In fact, it has become a part of many people’s prayer… to reach without getting struck (Don’t give me that look now… Bit of exaggeration is required for interesting posts  )

Thanks to the angry drivers (Indian version of Angry Birds soon  ) and impatient passengers who keep raising their blood pressure levels as well as that of others around during such jams… Result : Arteriosclerosis with narrowing of the coronary arteries, the culminating event being a thrombosis (clot). The main change is death (necrosis) of myocardial tissue that leads to Acute Myocardinal Infarction ( Don’t call up a doctor for explanation… In other words its Heart attack   )These medical terms are more complicated to understand I suppose 

Anyways, so instead of getting tensed during traffic, we can deal with it in a better way. In such traffic pile up, there will be many different people around and of course, funny incidents are bound to happen that can entertain you for a while.

Once, when the traffic started moving, everybody was impatient and wanted to wriggle out first… So when it was a turn of an auto to move… A typical Indian (I call him typical as he crossed during a wrong signal) walked majestically across the road, causing the wrath of this auto driver… The auto driver turned towards the man and started scolding “Can’t you see and walk… I really wonder how people see somewhere and walk somewhere especially in traffic” The auto man was so engrossed in turning towards the man and scolding that he forgot his hand was driving the auto simultaneously….TTTHHUD… We heard a sound in 2 minutes… The auto driver had hit the lamp-post…   The auto driver pulled his auto back… embarrassed 

In another incident, an Audi car just appeared from an invisible street and took off to the main road right royally blocking all the vehicles… Now struck in between, he (I assumed him to be an NRI or something) didn’t know how to proceed… Horns were blaring, our angry drivers started pointing their hands at the poor guy… The guy was helpless, his face was paling with every second… I thought any moment he might shout … “Muuummmmmmyyyyyyy”  and start crying  Finally, a traffic police arrived, the guy got down and rushed to the police inspector like a lost child running to his mom and desperately explained his situation…. Finally, somehow the traffic was cleared… The reactions given by that Audi car owner was hilarious:D

I have this alienophobia…  When my bus stops in traffic and when some other bus stands at a very close proximity… I’ll feel everybody in that bus is giving weird looks as if am an alien  I’ll never dare to look up at the bus… Once, I tried giving such looks to passengers inside the next bus ( as I was bored to always be in the receiving end ), but I got a more intense set of looks… so I had to give up and look down 

Another thing I do is, there will be some heated argument going on between the drivers, I’ll mute their volume (plug in headphones and raise the volume of the songs) and observe their reactions with the BGM… Trust me, it will be very very funny 

Another nice passtime will be to observe people standing in the traffic… Each will have their own mannerisms and well, we’ll be entertained  If you look around… you can make out such usual people… One businessman or some official sitting in an AC car and continuously looking at his watch every 2 minutes, a girl in car fanning herself with magazines and grumbling, a guy in bike continuously correcting his hairstyle looking at the bike mirror, a middle aged couple arguing with full energy, Angry drivers blaring horns and using “pleasant” language to scold, IT professionals (including me)  peeping out of the buses every now and then to calculate the intensity of jam….of course with headphones in their ears, then… two friends in bike seriously discussing about the cricket/soccer match…. so on!

Next time, when you are struck in traffic, observe these little things, follow my tips and stay cool! And yeah… If you are a blogger, you can also think about your next post (like how I did now  )