A little journey

 On our relentless march on the path of progress, we have turned ‘time’ more and more scarce. We are running against time, or maybe away from it. We have speedier vehicles, better roads, iron-hard will to arrive ‘within time’ but still we are losing the grip and time is always speeding away, forcing us to continue increasing our quest for more speed. Everything is in a whirlwind, spinning like a mad top, cosmic top with whirring galaxies, sucking black holes, exploding stars. Things have changed so much as to reverse the reality: waterwork’s vestiges on the Himalayan peaks and sandiest deserts where once there were luscious most forests. And we with our social prominence and feigned calm trying to outfox time that has outfoxed everything to the stretches of infinity.

As I go slowly clinging to the edge of the road on my scooter, the bigger vehicles go making war-like din and angry clamor. Some even shriek with a hungry terrier’s vengeance. People seem to be running almost madly. Sadly very few have the real clue as to why and where they are running to. It’s more of a habit to run, I suppose. There is not much to look around the road, at least in this part of India. There are sinews of self-destruction scattered around in the intensive lop-sided cropping pattern in the fields with wagon-loads of poison in the form of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weedicides. The vestiges of the erratic interlocutors hell bent upon writing a one-dimensional, human-centric legacy.

In any case, you hardly have the time to look at something that may assure you that not all is lost. You have to be spot-on in staring at the road to survive and not get squashed like we squash worms and ants as we hurriedly walk. Your chances of reaching the destination and a centipede crossing the road are almost same. But then there are brief moments that steal in because they fall within the range of your concentration. The gypsy caravan is an exotic chaos by the side of the road. A young gypsy woman untangles the little front leg of a baby goat from the tethering rope and puts some chopped fodder in the small metal basin in front of the tiny guy. A truck carries a pile of junk and sitting on the junk heap are junked humans, the laborers. Faces and clothes smeared with dirt and grease. Destiny-hounded men carrying just trifle measure of flesh around their ribs, while the capaciously potbellied behemoths of luck and prosperity go almost squashing them underfoot. You feel so lucky even on your little scooter amidst car-swarms of latest models competing to get bigger and costlier. Many a shoeless foot bleeding on the stony path, while at least you have your slippers and common ground to walk upon. If you ever feel like a victim and think that the hostile searchlight of fate always picks you out to test you, please remember that there are people who are in the burning kiln right from beginning to end without any respite.