Silent zigzags of a village night

 

The village has spread on both sides of the road as it grew in population. The district road got upgraded to become a national highway without adding to its width because of the houses on both sides. So there were a lot of crushed bones of humans and dogs, and sometimes even crows. It was almost bumper to bumper traffic comprising a broad range of vehicles from massive trawlers to two-wheelers and bicycles. The road looked busy till deep into the folds of night. Speed bumps were set up to check their rampant prowl. Then the bypass circuiting the village got operationalized. It was a kind of savior. The woes of the peasant woman crossing the road with dung heaps on their heads lessened a bit. The dogs too stood a better chance of survival while loitering around the road. The traffic lessened as most of it took the bypass to avoid the bottleneck congestion.

But the villagers who resided by the side of the road felt some discomfort. They had become so used to the noise that now when the nights turned still and silent, they got a feeling as if ghostly entities were on the prowl. What has happened to make sannnatta so weird and spooky, many thought. We are now habituated to the noise so much that silence scares us. I hope the villagers find peace with silence. I’m reasonably away from the road so the silent nights are still better. And now when they are getting used to the silence, any noise hits their ears more effectively. The road-bumps don’t have white strips to make them visible from a safe distance. So now and then some trawlers jump over the speed-bumps with full speed. And a loud thump goes booming across the silence of the night. The people in the roadside houses jump with the vibrations, taking it as an earthquake. As a result, the new sarpanch has been requested to remove the bumps. He is very keen to launch public work initiatives and the request has been accepted. The people have calculated that it’s better to have a few more dead dogs, with a human fatality in between, rather than being jolted out of their sleep thinking the world was being shaken out to the limits of annihilation. To be more sure of being there on solid ground, they have removed the speed-bumps.