This post was born on a traffic signal.
It was a family wedding and as I, along with my family, left our expensive new home, sat in the expensive new car, all of us clad in expensive new clothes, I fought the urge to throw away my heels and run barefoot back home, tears streaming down my cheeks.
Next moment I saw myself staring out the window at something, anything that could momentarily cheer me up. But even the billboards and hoardings and signboards refused to oblige and we continued the seemingly endless journey in morbid silence. Such had been the scene at home for God-knows-whatth time and was likely to continue for God-knows-how-long.
Then came the traffic signal… and a smile crept to my lips.
We were at the very crossing where stood our ex-home, as the traffic light showed red. Everything here was still the same and yet so different.
My eyes remained open as I played the scene when I first learnt to drive a scooter and had a wounded knee and a broken scooter. The scar remains.
I played the scene when in summers we’d dip mangoes in buckets of water to cool them off and in our dirtiest best clothes, ate those crouched on the bathroom floor.
Now we are served neatly diced pieces of mangoes, to be eaten with forks.
I saw the drawing room where the 4 of us sat laughing and chatting over the precious serving of butterscotch ice-cream.
The thing remains untouched for days now.
I also saw my mother getting our sweaters and woolens some sun before putting them in a huge silver trunk, along with naphthalene balls wrapped in thin cloth tied together with thread.
And as she did all this, I saw us kids fighting to slip our thin hands from the gaps and sliding the latch as we rushed to her after school, dressed in carelessly worn ties and hair.
The exam time.
How on the day of our last exam having been allowed to watch tv till 9 seemed like the best thing about the exams getting over.
All this played right in front of my eyes as I saw that the traffic light, like in those days, still turned green for only 22 seconds.
