Take my breath away

I am just being stupid, like most of the times. I will continue to be stupid for as long as being stupid is categorized into an act of crime.

Well, before writing the actual intent, I was thinking about writing how the reader has to perceive me to understand how stupid I can get. Then I’ll have to write whole lot of things, which I’ve mentioned at different times in different articles n stories. So anyone is who’s known me with my earlier post will understand my stupidity and those reading it for the first time can either choose to read the earlier posts or believe their imagination. I suggest the latter, for it offers more masala. . . .

Coming back to the topic, “Take my breath away”, it sounds all very romantic, it does . . . But I am not. I deprive article an opportunity to be romantic. I am like always unable to grip things in an order, which can give a clear picture. Blame it on my poor command over the language I’ve chosen to interpret. . . In fact this is the best I can do in any language, so here is how I put together the loose ends in a not so romantic tale. . . .

With the li’l interpretation skills that I am blessed with, I shall try to build suspense in the story, once it starts. At any point in time when I fail to hang on to the suspense, I shall blow it all up. . . Nevertheless I shall try. I am pushing myself into the deep waters, though with strings attached, Just in case I sink to the bottom.

One day later, I understand there is a difficulty for me to get back into the groove, Time has passed and so has thoughts. . . What started as a thought yesterday, while I was looking out of the window at the coffee shop has now gone on to become a Memory. The story now is no longer an interpretation of the thought, its a recollection of the memories of yesterday. As nothing was scripted yesterday and all I relied on were the visuals of the scenes as they happened in front of my eyes, I have to now essay them as a canvas, painted in the colours of my imagination.

Even if I were to write what was happening in front of me yesterday, I would largely rely on my imagination to carve out a story. I am looking beyond what was evidently visible. In order to get myself back into believing this and to make my mind understand that lapse of time has not affected what was being penned yesterday, I had to think of all that You read. . . . Could’ve gone on to write a lot more but I guess this should suffice.

He stood there, on the sidewalks of the busy street in jaynagar 4^th block. I watched his movements and all things around him from 14’ above the ground beneath me. I was sitting on the first floor, right on the edge of the window to grab a better view of things as they happened and cooking up my own fictional story based on visual realities.

Now while I continue to write, in spite of being in no mood to imagine, I start with things I saw. The road was buzzing with vehicles, each one competing with the other, may be to reach the destination. I could sense from the sound of the horn that each one made to the other, which was their way of saying “Get off my way”. None of them seemed to be enjoying the journey or was it the people inside???

The coffee shop that I am sitting right now is exactly opposite to jaynagar water tank. When I turn my head to the right and look diagonally, I see a huge propped cantilever pipe at the same level myself. It’s an outlet pipe to refill the tanks to supply to the undersupplied areas around Jaynagar. Once the refilling is done and the truck is moved, you can see water trickling down the pipe, which should suffice the water requirement for a family of four for a day. Most of the times you see the water going waste, straight into the drainage but at times you can find the vendors collecting water for their routine chores. Passersby freshen up in the trickling water to beat the heat of on a sunny day. Though I am not sure on how many sunny days, water continues to trickle down. I wonder what they all would do, when the water stops leaking???

You also have the BDA complex adjoining to the water tank. You can see hundreds of people busy buying things. You get all things a typical middle class family in India needs for their existence. You must just take a stroll by these shops to learn the tricks of Bargain and Trade. One who bargains gets the satisfaction of having saved a little money and yet the vendor makes his cut in spite of bargaining. I guess it’ll be party time for the vendor when a customer fails to bargain.

Then you have the street vendors running behind you, if you were to be walking those streets, trying to impress you to buy their products. Some will be successful and some fail. Failure never stops them as, they continue to try and impress the passerby.

Oops, almost forgot to mention, The Police personnel who are out there to add more misery to the already miserable lives of the street vendors. Miserable not for the way they live, but for the way they are made to live. Either of them are always are always on the lookout for the other. Most of the vendors with shops have an understanding with the cops which gives them the privilege to flood half the side walk. They pay them on a daily basis – irrespective of the prospect of business. The vendors without the shops are the ones who are most affected. They have to lookout for the officer on duty and run with their make shift shop, at the first sight of him. I am not saying cops are bad people, they have their own miseries. Have you ever wondered where a cop would, take a leak or have his meal in the noon???  That’s what I am talking about. What we pay the cops is for the misery that they go through for us.

I think I’ve touched upon most of the things and scenes one would get to see, if they were to be seated in my seat and looking out through the large window opening to the setting sun. Although there are one more set of people, whom you see on these sidewalks and they are called beggars.  Now I have come to believe that there are two kinds of beggars, the professional and the helpless. The professionals are the lazy bones, who are normal people just like me and you, making a living out of begging. They are just lazy but they ‘work’ as beggars. You see the money is unbilled and tax free. It’s hard to differentiate the two. The lazy bones are too professional, but the eye can spot the real ones from the other. The helplessness is evidently written all over the body and their eyes fail to lie. . . . Try this the next time you come across a beggar on the signal – look into their eyes. The helpless ones win you over and they make you feel helpless. He’s the real helpless one out there begging, I hate to use the word ‘beggar’. The helpless sounds better and so are we . . . .

The protagonist, the one who is standing on the sidewalk is one amongst the many, whom I’ve mentioned.

It’s been three days since I started writing this and I’ve not yet come to the point. I was just enjoying the journey unlike the vehicles or the people inside them, who seemed to be in a hurry.

He’s a hefty man, looking for people who’d be interested in some of the things he has. He’s one among the many street vendors. . . He sold happy things. Yes, that right. They are happy things. All things he sells are associated with happiness. That makes the things to be happy things, for when one holds them in their hands; it puts a smile on your face.

Today as I sit at the same place, where I started this story yesterday, I can see a family is bargaining with him. Yes, of course there are kids with them. Another family with kids stand by to see if anything is worth to buy. Whatever they pay him, will be worth the happiness that’s associated with things. But maybe they have different understanding of worthiness and Happiness. . . .

Not all families that stop by buy happiness that the man was selling. All things he’s put on display are very rich and vivid. That’s very necessary to pull the kids close to your stall and the Parents shall follow, leaving behind their window shopping – gazing at things that they cannot afford to buy, while the kid slips close to the toys on display with the man on the sidewalk. The kid begins to play with the toys on display, until the tall, dark, big man scares the kid with his imposing look . . . but looks can be deceptive, yet he sells happiness. By the way he’s a toy seller. . .

Not all things he’s selling are finished factory made products. There’s one thing which he completes standing on the sidewalk, looking at the people as they walk past him. What he does with this one thing is what entices the kids to go close to his display. It is one among the many things that he’s put up for sale but this is the cheapest of them all . . . .

Few of them are already on display. They are colourful, bright, delicate and light. They are hanging with their heads tied to long elastic bands. The elastic bands too are colourful. This time they are red. They move from left to right, to and from to the gushing breeze every time a vehicle hustles past the portable shop. As the vehicles rush past the shop off the road, the kids in the vehicles put their hands out and before they can tell their parents that they want one, they would’ve gone past the shop and reached a point of no return. . . . The road is a one way.

The cheapest happy things remains hung with their heads tied to the elastic band as they sway to the light breeze and as it sways close to the people walking past, it seems to tell in their ears, - “Take my breath away”. . . . The breath of the tall, dark and hefty man, standing on the sidewalk of the busy street buzzing with vehicles – all in a hurry to reach the destination. The same breath of air that he breaths just like me and you. The smoke from the vehicles, smoke from the cigarettes that a few people blow out killing cigarettes instantly before they kill themselves and the tall dark big man and me and you . . . .

As he breathes the air that I told you earlier, he runs his hand through a small plastic packet and picks up a colourful tiny sad thing. Well, you take that thing and give it anybody, it wouldn’t make them happy and so I chose to call it “a sad thing”. It needs something, that which the man will fill into it to make it a happy thing.

In his hands, the tiny sad thing is pressed and pulled at the same time, as he breathes the polluted air and puts the head of the sad thing in his mouth and blows the same air he’s been breathing into the tiny sad thing. As he breathes out the air, the tiny sad thing grows out to reach the break point, that’s when he stops blowing out the polluted air into the sad thing, by now the sad thing has grown out to be “a big thing of joy”. . .

It is this act of blowing the tiny sad thing into a big, delicate thing of joy, that brings the kids close to the display.  . . Each tiny sad thing as it grows into a thing of joy before its hung with its head tied to the red elastic band or bursting of over joy, it brings a smile on the face of the kid. . . .

Well its no longer a surprise that I was talking about the how the toy vendor is blowing out balloons, that he tied their heads to an elastic band as if to safeguard his breath of air, the very same air that converted the tiny sad thing into a big thing of joy. Finally as he hung each of those things of joy on display along with the other toys- the happy things, the balloons said the same thing that the man[master] wanted to tell the people walking past them, as they swayed in the breeze, all things said in the same vain – “Take my breath way” . . .

Yesterday while I started writing this, the man had competition from another man and today as I am about to complete, he’s standing alone with his little things of joy [happy things] as the balloons speak his words. . . . 

will add the pics sometime later. . . . :)