The Lost Beads of Sweat

 

Most of the people missed his real name. His lower caste defined a major part of what he was as a human being. To make it more specific, they called him ‘Kala’ suitably drawn from his dark complexion. For a proper, formal introduction, his caste stood as the surname whenever a misunderstanding arose about which ‘Kala’ was referred in that particular instance as every village had many people named as such. Hence, he became ‘Kala Chamar’ under this situation and got instantly identified; and immediately pushed into the corridors of unworthy, unimportant symbols in a caste-based society. 

Poverty straightaway gives you a mission in life, the mission to survive. You don’t have to give it too much of thought. From the earliest age you know it that you have to work to survive. That’s how most of the daily wage labourers arrive on the scene. He was no exception. He would happily take any job that came along.

Kala was a very diligent worker. His dedication to the work was usually praised to a fair extent. In a farmers’ society one has to sweat a lot while working to prove that you have given your all to the cause. He had plenty of this certification because he sweated like a well-meaning, fat pig. Well, even the saying had to be reversed here and people said even the pigs sweated like Kala.

He was very strong in built but his hair went thinning. The people had an explanation. His balding pate is meant to facilitate a smooth glide for the sweating beads, they said. After almost three decades of sweating, he had very well achieved the primary targets of a poor man. He had married and had three or four kids despite all the clashes, brawls and arguments with his wife. He had fixed a few bricks to settle his separate family life beyond the domains of his siblings. He also drank in the evenings just like majority of the labourers do at the end of the day, otherwise the night won’t provide rest and the next day will miss the action.

A problem arose in his early forties. He started sweating less. The people got suspicious about his dedication to the job. After some time, the amount of sweating plummeted down drastically. He isn’t putting any effort in work these days, the people gave their verdict. So they would go for younger labourers who sweated more profusely. As a result, his job assignments nosedived.

The reason he had stopped sweating was very simple. It had nothing to do with his willingness to give his all to the task. His high spirits to retain his status as the ‘sweating king’ by giving it all had ruined his knees. Now people also understood and consoled him that all would be well if he took another vocation that would make him sweat a bit less or not at all.

I saw him sitting on the steps of the tiny street shop massaging his unfaithful knees. It was damn hot and all and sundry, even those who merely took the trouble of taking out a needle and putting it back, were sweating profusely. So everybody looked very busy. Kala, but, wasn’t sweating. He had lost the tempo.

It was an exception to see him free at this time of the day, so I asked him about the reason. He tapped his knees and pointed out the culprits who had derailed his sweating life. Try something lighter, I told him and pointed out the counter of the shop behind him.

‘You can open a little provision store in the street. It’s very easy,’ I said.

The shopkeeper glared at me as if insulted over calling his line of job easy. Moreover, he must have panicked that I was planting the seeds of business rivalry in the street. If there was another shop in the neighbourhood his business would be halved.  

In any case, the momentum of three decades of hard work was still too much for the boring, sitting job of keeping a shop. He adopted the line of a wandering vegetable hawker in the streets. He had his rickshaw carrier piled with vegetables and pulled with, to make everyone happy now, with some beads of sweat. The competition was tough. In every street he had a rival bellowing to sell his fresh, leafy greens. The migrant Bihari hawkers were better than him in this regard. They shouted in so many unique cries to draw people’s attention that even the most dull-minded housewife would be forced to crane out her neck and ask what the matter was and ended up buying something.

Kala had been a calm giant. Pitching for sales wasn’t his forte. He mumbled his list of items like an old, retired bull in dull notes that didn’t challenge anyone’s eardrums. So he would pass the streets almost unnoticed with his little bit of beads of sweat. On top of it, his rivals had so many sugar-coated words that it appeared they were fleecing the clients. In comparison, the people found Kala rude and hence refutable.

The sum and summary is that his cart usually returned to his yard with enough load that would surely go stale. So the family had to force feed themselves with cooked vegetables to avoid losses. Overfed with stale vegetables, the couple quarrelled more and the children turned noisier. Kala was literally on his knees but he won’t give up, after all he had been an illustrious sweater. His past still had some rays to inspire him to work more, I mean sweat more.

Hugely overfed with leftover stale vegetables that found a place in the family’s stomach instead of the dustbin—because the latter would have been a catastrophe—he could afford to take a week’s break and think of a strategy that would outfox his rivals. He thought and thought and thought. Now this indeed brought him a lot of sweating because thinking was totally new to him and unknown territory. He found it the toughest job. He even thought of taking ‘thinking’ as an occupation because it left him with big beads of sweating and made him the Kala of yore. But then another gem of a thought convinced him that this ‘thinking’ job will leave his stomach empty. So he had to abandon the idea. And he thought more and got more sweat.

A passing farmer got very happy looking at the shiny beads and said, ‘You seem to have regained the old habit of working really hard, do you need a job now?’ 

His hitherto unharnessed mind gave a rich crop. Kala had the gem of an idea that would bring tears of agony to the eyes of his rivals. Even in the happiest spirits, he was not in a position to share it with his wife and children because that may aggravate the situation a bit. It had to be swiftly carried out, promptly like a coup.

Next morning, he got up early, bathed and went to the town vegetable market to purchase an assortment of items. Coming back home, he crept around like a stealthy tiny mouse to the best product in the house, which competed with the cheap television set in defining their lives. It was the sky blue refrigerator, the purveyor of coolness in the scorching sands of their lives.

He started putting out the meagre items contained in it. His wife stood with her fists on her prominent love handles by the side of copious belly fat and looked ready to use them if the need arose. The fridge was empty and she was just ready to pounce upon him for this mad act. Kala, relieved from the emptying job, walked up to his wife and offered the rarest of sweet endearment he could manage with his gruffy notes. In any case, she retorted with her shrillest notes and punched away his gentle shove and hit hard at his nape.

As the scheme stood open, there was literally mayhem in the house. The children cried and his wife shouted abuses and hollered out her ill destiny for getting married to him. But Kala was not to be dissuaded. After all, he had given it so much of thought, even to the extent of getting profusely sweaty again. She could feel it that he was so determined that if she tried to stop him, he would first break something in her body and then walk over her limp physicality to try loading the refrigerator all by himself. And that would imperil the shape of the dear object. So she called a few neighbours to help her husband.

The refrigerator was loaded onto the rickshaw cart. Kala expertly fixed it with ropes so that it wouldn’t fall but could be opened at will. Then he crammed it to the guts with his vegetables and set out to beat the rivals.

‘People need cool, fresh vegetables. Now they cannot ignore my stuff,’ he proudly declared.

People surely noticed it. People certainly like fresh vegetables but given a chance they would prefer a fresh spectacle even more. The refrigerator grabbed more attention than the fresh vegetables inside. The spectators shouted, clapped, whistled, hooted, booed and put out many varied exclamations born of a new exhibition. The sale was almost the same as earlier but he surely stole the limelight. 

He was moving with great effort because now the load was manifold. His body was getting the very same sweat beads of old times. It was putting a great strain on his knees. The ice in the freezer was thawing. There were beads of cold inside the container and beads of heat on his body. I saw him pulling his heavy load on the road outside the village. He looked like an old bull lurching to some destination. Since he was sweating so profusely, it meant he was giving his best to the trade. And many were the people who remarked, ‘Kala indeed is very hardworking!’ 

The Pleasure and Pain of being Human

 

The researchers on insects say that an ant has a tiny memory span of mere six seconds. After this brief interval, it reclaims its natural impulse of seeking food. It forgets that you had put a finger across its path and in reaction it had to stop, sensing danger on the track. This memory born of your interference in its errand lasts just for six seconds, after that it has a new start.

In comparison, the Homo sapiens possess a memory span of not just this lifetime but massive pools of memories from our previous births in the form of proclivities and tendencies doing their incessant rounds in the subconscious and unconscious chambers of the brain. It instinctively keeps on taking us into the past, thus depriving us of the present time’s bliss that the so called lesser species seem to enjoy. One may wonder, is such forgetfulness, the kind enjoyed by an ant and other species, the real bliss.

Well, of course they have more fulfilling lives. They have the existential limits; we have the possibilities beyond the world of mind-born miseries. They face physical threats to their survival. We have the great faculty of still feeling insecure despite all the securities around. We but can’t compare life at various hierarchies of evolution. An ant’s karma is bound around six seconds of memories. Ours is a bit more. There is just quantitative difference. But there is hardly any difference qualitatively.

Look at her passion for life, the unswerving focus, her ability to lift weight. Each moment in its short life is full of unwavering karma. Nature expects the same from us. What are we? We are simply bigger ants with a bit more memory. It’s never about bliss as such. In my humble opinion, the most important thing is what we create out of that which has been given to us by the accidents of birth, this body, our family, our circumstances.

Beyond compulsions, if we evolve to a level of living by choice, this according to me serves a big role in deciding whether we live a joyful or miserable life. This consciousness attached to this human body of present has already crawled as ants. I, you and all of us have already enjoyed the ant bliss in previous births, don’t worry dear readers. This cosmos has a tendency for moving to complexity. So our individual consciousness is also moving from the simplest body forms to a complex human body. And the journey continues. Journey well you all!

Please don’t get dismayed at my calling our birth an accident, merely a chance event in the cosmos. Beyond the loopy tales of inflated egos, all of us are mere puny mortals in the scheme of mother existence. We are mere drops for her overall existence, like the drops in the sea effectuate the universality through their individuality.

Nobody has a claim over the tag of ‘more evolved’ or ‘less evolved’ soul. We are mere work in progress. Now, coming to your ‘dismay’ about our birth as mere accident. There is a lot of difference between ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’. Yes, our individual consciousness has had a specific journey, across various body forms in different births, whose momentum has carried us to the present coordinates of mind, body, soul and circumstances. With that kind of cause and effect linearity, we cannot say our birth is a mere accident. But ironically we hardly remember anything of our past births, so given this human frailty, in laymen terms, birth appears accidental because we don’t know the causes of past karmas as such. We just know the effect, this birth and its circumstances. That’s why our birth appears accidental. It appears so, but it’s not. When I say that we have to be a creator beyond the incidental balls hurled at us, I just emphasize the human faculty of conscious decision and choice making to be a better version of ourselves.

One may say that our choices have brought us almost to the brink of destruction. So the question may arise: Is our pursuit of happiness the cause of the massacre of mother  earth itself? I would like to say that happiness is never a part of what we have done so far that qualifies as ‘destructive’ in nature. Have you ever seen a happy and joyful person going out to kill fellow human beings? A happy and joyful soul will be driven by ‘needs’ not ‘greed’.

You may say that most of the people in their blind pursuits, whose ill effects are written large over mother earth, are under the impression that they are doing something that they like and love. So it’s basically their pursuit of happiness that is the primary cause of present-time chaos. No my dear readers, it’s the pursuit of misery that has brought us to the threshold of mass unhappiness. This is the fatal addiction, like an alcoholic creates physical and psychological doom under the impression that what he does is driven by his liking, and hence happiness, for alcohol. But would you term it as a happy choice just because someone likes alcohol. This is not choice. This is compulsion and helplessness. One can make happy choices only with a capable mind and body. It’s the helpless, compulsive pursuit that breeds disaster, not choice-driven attempts.

With choice-driven persona, one becomes a creator, a responsible citizen who knows the ill effects of his/her likes and dislikes. Whatever we like, do or intend to do is never strictly in the bracket of likes and dislikes. Most of the things that we do compulsively are mere escape routes from the agonizing bitter truth driven by guilt, fear, anger, hate and jealousy. There is a difference between what your soul craves you to do and what we end up doing under the primal compulsive instincts of anger, hate, jealousy, etc.

My idea of happiness is only about following the inner voice of one’s soul, not the outer compulsion-driven pursuits most of us end up getting trapped into. The real happiness and joy is proportional to how much we create on the manifest plane following the singsong voice of one’s inner self.

Have you ever seen fragrant jasmine blooms flowering from a prickly acacia? All these prickly fruits of pollution, wars and diseases are the fruits of what we have sown. Their seed isn’t pursuit of happiness. Their seed is pursuit of misery. The great mirage of our existence that presents misery as pleasure! We are unfortunately following mirages in deserts.

You may wonder that little animals and insects follow a code of conduct in keeping ecological balance, while we rampantly flout all norms. Is that all it means to be a human being? Is it only about winning over nature and destroy it in the effort? Don’t worry sirs and madams, this creation isn’t human centric. Ecological balances at the level of the so-called less evolved species may appear a nice code game. In our cases, if you find Homo sapiens outstretching the natural balance, forces beyond earth will counterbalance our misdemeanours. This termite mole-hill that we call human civilization may pop out far earlier than we think, like it has happened many times earlier. So till then let’s have a life of joy and purpose. Enjoy your journey!

The Funny Game among Errant Kids

 

Let’s talk about Afghanistan from the geostrategic point of view. Please don’t feel bad if the life of an Afghani citizen is seen almost inconsequential in this talk about ‘the great game’. Isn’t it all about the strong gobbling up the weak across all species in the naked, raw game of survival? The cosmic juggernaut is nothing but an expansionist onslaught that uses weak as the fodder for the strong to take the march of expansion towards more elemental sophistication. In the same vein, geostrategic manoeuvring is primarily about the interests of the superior powers. The interests of the hosting yard teeming with its poor masses, where the game is played, are inconsequential just like your feet hardly care for the world of the ants as you march on the higher scale of your ambitions, far higher than the tiny world of ants.

Whoever goes to Afghanistan doesn’t go there as an enemy of Afghanistan. He goes there as someone else’s enemy. The rugged, barren land is a huge arena for the bad guys to play out their muscle-flexing and brain-tweaking games. It’s like in a bullfight the grass gets trampled. And trampled have been the millions of Afghanis since the past many decades. The Britishers went there as the enemies of the Russians. The Americans went there as the enemies of the Russians. Presently, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are there as the enemies of America. Pakistan has more reasons to meddle there. They are there as the enemies of India as well.

The Afghan tragedy is that nobody has gone there as a friend of Afghanistan. It is always some outsider’s enemy. And enemy’s enemy makes a very shaky friendship. China and Russia will realize it during the coming decades. For the Russians it will be a repeat lesson if they cross over the line again. And a superpower-intoxicated China has to learn this Afghan lesson inevitably if it really wants to claim the superpower status.

The Afghanis have more or less accepted poverty as their most prized asset to sustain their fierce pride, clan loyalty, spirit of independence and a culture of killing and dying. Dying and killing isn’t too much a shock in Afghanistan. It’s very easily digested. Craze is craze. Someone fights for superpower status, the Afghanis fight to keep their ideology and medieval principles. It’s their opium like there are other forms of opium world over to drive people, states, institutions and societies crazy. Just true to the main Homo sapiens trait of opium addiction, the Afghanis love taking long draughts at their version of opium.

It’s good that the Americans have packed their bags. Instead of having their army in the enemy’s backyard, it’s more practical to have a lethal naval unit that can move to any part of the world with effective deterrence. On top of it, take a quantum jump in space warfare. Be several years ahead of the nearest rival. Be in a position to harm the enemy’s space assets. It’s just like sitting on the high ridges from where you can easily target those struggling up the slopes. If you have to play your silly game at any cost, at least play it well. The formula is: Be up there in the skies, higher than the others and trample down your enemy if they dare to stare at you in the skies.

Meanwhile, the ‘graveyard of empires’ is surely going to be the graveyard of the next superpower also. Taliban know that the new friends aren’t supporting them as such. The Chinese are merely opposing the Americans. In this, the Chinese are repeating the American mistakes of nurturing a genie that is sure to go against the master at any cost. Well, nothing immoral about it, it’s simply the genie’s opium. Over all, it’s a smoke-clouded, crazy game among opium eaters of different varieties.

In future, fundamentalist Islam is a bigger threat to China than America. America doesn’t operate reformation camps for the Muslims. There an ordinary Muslim goes about his/her routine without too much pressure on their faith. The insurgent groups in Central Asia and Taliban are well aware of what is happening to Uighur Muslims. It’s a temporary accommodation on their part to take China as an ally.

One, but, must not forget that fundamentalist Islam’s first priority is keeping their faith intact, however objectionable the outer world finds it. Therefore, China will surely realize it later. The badlands of bloodthirsty jihadis aren’t that much of a threat to America as they are to China. The superpower status definitely costs you the sleep of many nights. Americans, let the situation keep worsening in China’s backyard and its flares will surely reach the red bastion. In fact, by being there America was doing a bigger favour to the Chinese than to itself.

What about Pakistan? They haven’t learnt any lessons from their fire-mongering against India, which ultimately destroyed them to the extent of making them a vassal state of China. Wait, China is a very tough taskmaster. The Red Father will extract the costs at a nice rate of interest. The Chinese are not like Americans that they will pour billions of dollars in the name of fighting terrorism while you keep sheltering Osama Bin Laden. They know how to take more at the cost of giving less. Very strict businessman, I tell you. A democratic creditor will at the most pull your ears and shout at you for bunking your payments. However, an autocratic creditor will spit on your face and put its index finger in your arse for the littlest error. So take care! Already there are proofs of this in our neighbourhood.

What about the modern, educated, cultured voice of sanity in Afghanistan? They have no option. They have to leave and set up their world at some other place. The simple message for them is: ‘Please leave at any cost, however possible!’

Pakistan you be careful of the TTP. They will continue pulling your beard. And China you, don’t count off ETIM like you have done so far. Taliban is a great encouraging example for them. They have an idol now in the form of a triumphant radical Islamic group taking over an entire country. India, keep supplying the Northern Alliance with material help because as a regional power aspirant you too are helpless. So to keep your interests, you supply guns to the Northern Alliance. America, you please keep a low profile for some time and focus on your technologies. There is no need to get into a street brawl with the red bully who wants to dissipate you. You just mind your own business for some time and don’t get instigated by the puns and pranks about your so called ‘defeat’ in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, victory and defeat mean almost the same. Their own defeat is no defeat. And the outsider’s victory is no victory. Why the hell people go there to fight? It looks like a circus ring now. Abandon it. Of course, help those who want to come out, give them visas and facilitate their rehabilitation. But allow the lovers of medieval practices to lead their lives as they deem fit. After all, it’s their opium like you have your own.  

The fight for world supremacy has better avenues. This barren land is very boring. Go and write success stories on the sea and in upper atmosphere. Have countless submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers. There is more mobility. Now please disturb the aquatic world. There has been enough terrestrial mischief. And run to the high ridges, I mean go higher into the skies and throw pebbles from there at your enemy’s pot. Well, in any case, the space wars will acquire legitimacy very soon. So why bother about these poor Afghans. Leave them at peace in their caves, elder councils, medieval beliefs and chuckling smiles at both dying and killing.

The Grubby Game

 How to make yourself appear more presentable, if you cannot absolutely bring out any change to your own self? Well, our cognition and interpretation of reality is relative and comparative in nature. Use it. Make yourself stand by the side of a still messier persona and emerge as smarter guy—apparently though—without any change in substance. You will be at least symbolically better.

Well, Taliban are far smarter than the last time they were bundled out two decades ago. To make it better for them, they are learning politics pretty fast apart from firing guns. So they may be up for a better innings this time. Given their past, they are almost unacceptable to the world outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. They cannot change their skin altogether. So what was the option? They allowed IS-K, a far bloodier version of terrorism, to stand by them and thus appear more acceptable and less savage. A very smart game!

Please don’t commit the mistake of categorizing terrorism in good or bad terms. These are plants from the same nursery. Taliban, IS-K, TTP, LeT, JeM and many others are simply different plants in the nursery managed by Pakistani generals and the ISI. These are mere chess pieces, move up one, take back the other, sacrifice this one, abandon that one as per the varying situations. The more pieces you have, the better it is. That’s why the Pakis keep many outfits under their patronage. You cannot just rely on one.

In the face of the gruesome bomb attacks at the Kabul airport by the IS-K, when there was a stampede to leave the country as the Taliban took over, the West would naturally find Taliban a bit more digestible because maybe they are apparently less bloodthirsty.

The West should not be too bothered about who rules Afghanistan. They should forget about it for some time. If at all you can do something, facilitate the safe exit of those Afghanis who want to leave the land in turmoil. Then leave the field clean for the nursery of fundamentalism to thrive unchecked in the backyard of China. Terrorists have no friends. China may think that its clout in Pakistan will be sufficient to keep its Uyghur plans intact. They will realise the folly of this assumption in the coming times.

The concept of Islamic jihad is above and beyond either alliance or falling out with outside powers like America and China. China is temporarily part of the scheme just because America is out of it. Its temporariness they will surely taste with much bitterness in mouth with the passage of time despite tea sharing with Taliban leaders.

Did you ever see a case where there was a fire in a house and its immediate neighbour did not feel the heat? The Chinese will also feel the heat. About the Pakis we need not say anything because to them feeling the heat is a normal part of life by now. They are used to it.

The Talibs have as much a right to rule as the Americans, Russians or Britishers if they can capture Kabul like they have now. Let it be the way it is. Why force a change? When the land is ready for it, the change will come from within. Give resources to the Panjshir valley group to retain their freedom so that this can be used in future. Don’t allow Ahmad Massud’s land to fall in the hands of Taliban. The West still needs a bit of foothold in the backyard of China. This little space should be sufficient. Use it for geostrategic purposes, focus on ETIM. If you have the guts and resources to nurture it, do it. Recognize Taliban and give them the protocol-driven respect that a ruling group deserves. It will make them more responsible and bring less mayhem in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Why douse fire if the water you throw works as fuel and aggravates even the embers.

At the moment, we can try for a better Taliban. It’s prudent to abandon the ‘no Taliban’ strategy. Their political office in Qatar has given them some training and experience about how to handle things diplomatically instead of talking through guns all the time. Slowly they will loosen the Pakis grip on their wrist because a grip by an outsider is the least they want. Till now they have been focused on ousting America, after some time and cool Afghani deliberation they will prefer to have their hands free of the Pakistani grip also. They just cannot help it. They have to shake off any foreign grip. Pakistan has been handy for the Talibs so far in capturing Kabul. But if they stabilize their power for a considerable time in Kabul, Pakistan will be less handy.

So guys, aim for a better Taliban and the worse of other terror outfits in the new superpower's backyard.

A Few Moments in a Bus

 

Ten years is more than sufficient time to unleash massive changes in a metropolis like Delhi. But certain features are so deep-rooted that one can feel their shadows even while the things seem to have changed drastically. This sketch about Delhi is exactly a decade old but I’m sure you will still feel these lingering shadows when you visit the national capital.

Here is an early December morning. Salutes Delhi! To make it sound normal you are two-eyed. But there are different visions, different dreams, different destinations. Too much for a pair of eyes, for sure.

One of your pan-shots captures the swanky glitz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or the left-eye, I do not know. But yes, the other eye’s camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic farce and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis.

It’s Muharram today. Many offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still you are left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. Eighth wonder almost! So at least you can see a few square feet of space around you. Great solace indeed. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations drenched with hot, musty sweat.

See, when the vehicle-maker offers these buses (allegedly along with the kickbacks per piece and which is more important to our rampaging politicians), the real cost of the machine is just meant to carry this type of load, the festival load, once-in-a-time load when not many people travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage, a 14-year-old man-kid jumbles into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line. Boy he is a real man, carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slants it, his small hands manoeuvre it smartly and the camel is safely in the room. The pole is the dancing axis of many types of cheapest toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhoods mushrooming in the slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. Some lampoons like yours truly even laugh at the free show.

Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever-spooling movie. He rushes to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the buswala about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur gets the DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man-o-man! How much this kid earns to afford the pass? Anyways, that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact is inescapable: the well-meant boy is well prepared for the day. The way he has tied the muffler, the manner in which his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way trousers tightly fit his thin legs and the way the shoes purchased from the road-side hawker stand decently cleaned, all these portend a good, successful business plan.

One problem with the new DTC bus is that its doors open too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially welcoming you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an adivasi family raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the dark old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. Only God knows how many of them are in the group! It is a defiant pariah unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the handrails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its itching fingers busts the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully.

Many unclean, bright-eyed kids clad almost in rags carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the gypsy spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomit in disgust. They feel their dignity has been severely violated. A slim lady carries a toddler on her shoulder, an infant on her hip and most probably one more life inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a grimy long skirt.

It just becomes a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where are they going? The entire national capital region is their destination. No particular destination means destinations everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colours. And the moment it does, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene.

Well, we missed a parting shot. As they get down and try to scrape through the jostling crowd, they block the path of a brand new Mercedes for a long moment. Delhi, salutes! You bear witness to the two paradoxical movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!