A rainy day ritual


Rain drops settled on the large glass window next to her workstation. She peeped up to find that it had become dark. Grey clouds looming over a cobalt sky. She hadn't realised that it was late.

Her tired eyes could see the glitter on the crammed street below. Cars stuck one next to the other as the two wheelers played maze in whatever little of the space was left in between. The traffic was patient tonight, not much honking. They knew the ritual. She leaned over the computer to see how lone she was- everyone usually disappeared at the first sight of the grey skies. She didn't blame them, that was only the sensible thing to do.

The three of them were the last ones to leave from their floor. They always left together. As they started dragging themselves towards the car, she waited at the entrance shade. She would run straight into her seat once the car was unlocked, avoiding as many of those icy raindrops on the way as possible. 

Once settled, they took a turn and calmly waited at the curb side of the street deciding whether to go left or right..

"I told you we should have taken the right!" she cried, in the middle of all the honking. Sandwiched between angry cars from 3 sides in a narrow lane, she tried to calm her claustrophobia down. The dirty yellow of the street lights fell on a surprisingly non-puddled road, as she tried looking at the silver linings, 'Thank god for the A.C though!', she sighed. All that smoke had not been good for her asthma. The others called their spouses to inform them about the obvious.

The night couldn't possibly get any darker, and all the murkiness around channeled her inner drama to its sarcastic best. 'Han sure! the right could have been a longer and faster way home', she remarked. "But the left? the left, is the portal to a live slow-motion cinema that we didn't buy any tickets for!", she chatted. "And by slow, I mean the speed at which plot lines would progress in a - Kasauti Kyunki Kahani show- slow!". The other two nodded back in a very matter-of-factly way.



Short on choices to entertain themselves, they resorted to observing the array of kids lined up at the adjacent high school's gate. It was a function of some sorts, they concluded, seeing the kids all dressed up. Conjectures on every passerby's life continued as they fiddled with their phones, strands of hair and tassels hanging on the rear-view. They laughed in unison seeing the few clever kids break line and jump the wall through the school plantations. It was all good fun..

After 40 long minutes at that arduous 200 metre stretch, they were all set for the final hurdle of the Takeshi's castle when someone mentioned - 'quit' and 'company' together. Ah yes, office talk. The food on which they thrived on. Well, at least she did, all guilt-free. It was this never ending set of permutations and combinations, where each new person would add their own collection of gossip and personal opinion, multiplying the material they all could judge and laugh on! Mathematical analogies apart, it was this equation (: that made the time feel shorter, as the car roared to make the final lapse of her journey home.

'Take this right!', she screeched. God, she couldn't drive but she could never help herself from giving directions etcetera either. But then it was also this 9-3/4ths of all the crosses that ordinary people ordinarily ignored, in her defence. It was anyway time for their recurring pet joke, where she would start thanking for the free ride and make a case for her amusing company as a remuneration in return. And they would simply reply back- 'Ma'm bas rating de dena!'.

Sprinting to make a giant leap over the seemingly gigantic puddle at the front, she hobbled as fast as she could, obeying the protocol to avoid those icy raindrops. 'Happy Weekend, guys!' she squealed as she ran towards the lift, stooped under the weight of her bag. Recognising the smell of a customary fried snack, she made a mental note of all of her favourite TV shows to binge. She pressed the buttons multiple times, as she excitedly waited with a wide smile for the night to unfold...after all, she knew that she had more than earned it..!



Wishing love and luck,
XOXO

-T







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First hand accounts of Patriarchy

Image
I was a tiny girl who loved to play hide and seek. One day I decided to hide behind my parent's bed to scare my Ma when she would come inside. Ma and Dadi came into the room and I heard Ma saying to Dadi, "Lekin mujhe mera beta hi zyada pasand h" ( I like my son more). I jumped up frightening myself instead. "Kyaa?" I asked in astonishment. Don't get me wrong, I am the apple of my Mum's eye. She told me later that she had to say it for my grandma. You should know why. I didn't know what that statement really meant back then. But over the years I couldn't help but see the deep held roots of patriarchy suffocating the society. Growing up, the favourite plot line for most of the TV shows was pretty much like so - girl is forced into a marriage, girl hates the guy, eventually girl learns to fall in love with the guy and be a good wife to him. Permutate the age and background, for the girl and boy and this formula would end up fitting into most of the...
Read more

Between two worlds

Image
I have always been into art. But could never identify myself as an artist. Because those were the ones who could sketch a perfect portrait. Or colour a real life scenery to the finest of detail. I on the other hand, mostly just had an eye for art, that had no rules. Which was abstract and flowing. More bohemian than modern. More form than function. And to me somehow, Art has never been liberating. But rather burdening. Making me feel like a liar, an outcast. Someone who has been hiding their true colours when in a pool of engineers. And at the same time I was someone who distanced herself from the artists. As they always appeared un-relatable and different. This is what I call being stuck between two worlds. Never fully here, never fully there. Floating somewhere in the void. You could call me a jack of all traits and master of none. And I have had big time commitment issues throughout my life. I would always want some thing really bad. Like a book or a gadget. And would feel that it c...
Read more

Delusional reality

Image
I have had a hard time dealing with reality, tending to always find solace in the comforting world of fiction. In enchanting tales of magic and in vivid stories of places unknown. Growing up, there was no other book that satiated my hunger for adventure and exploration like "Secret Island" did. The story of four kids discovering a secluded island in a beautiful lake, protected from the real world, caught my imagination every time I read it. In the later years, this was replaced by the mystic lores of the boy who lived. My favourite escape from the daily doldrums of doing homework and other petty issues of that time. Dark and dingy alleys, leaky cauldrons, murky quills and candlelit hallways made clean and shiny seem totally obsolete.  Rowling's universe of chocolate frogs, moving pictures and every flavour beans became so profoundly convincing that it was inevitable for it to not pour some of its magic into my earthly endeavours. Little does my mother know, that I used to...
Read more