Sriram and myself
embarked on a trip, he leaving behind his books and me , my baggage of tirades
and sons to fend for themselves. We chose a cozy corner in the departure lounge,
but all the same it had a grand stand view of the passengers headed towards
various different destinations. We had an hour to kill and soon Sriram was on
his BB while I let my eyes to rove 360 degrees .
A flash of fluorescent
yellow whizzed past and then it came back with the same rapid pace. The words “pachi”
was emblazoned on a bright yellow T- shirt and I nudged my hubby with my elbow
, he took his eyes off his hand held for a second , rolled his pupils and roared with laughter
, I followed, with the same intensity and at the same time took a reassuring
look at my bosom to see that it was firmly in place as ‘pachi’ meant breast in
our mother tongue slang lingo. He did a few more rapid rounds to show his
allegiance to the footballer Daner Pachi from Bolivia ,which I later understood
from my football frenzy sons!
Sriram went
back to his gadget and I to my ogling . In the front row ,was a woman shrieking
into her cell phone in high octaves , her entire travel plan lay open , only
her body bereft of the shiny yellow metal saved her from a prospective kidnapper! She had successfully
outperformed the “kolaveri di “ song
that was being played on TV – anyway both were not music to my ears!
I moved on
and this time my eyes settled on a grey haired man with shoulder length hair , making me go
green with envy , wondering what oil and shampoo he was using, wearing a
spotless white “veshti” . He had a cloth bag which Iam sure carried precious
articles of penance, his eyes were transfixed on a book on spirituality and he
looked lost out to the materialistic world, and the repeated announcements over
the microphone regarding the arrival of his liner went down in vain. I wanted,
on an impulse to go and prod him to get on to his bus and travel to his place
of ‘enlightenment’ but better sense prevailed – a person not attached to the
threads of life deserved to miss his bus too.
I
shifted my butt to get a more comfortable view of this guy , who had opened his
laptop and the bright luminescent screen was reminding him of the itinerary ,
well he needed a Lenovo to tell him his ticketing details! A moment later his
fingers were tapping on the rows and columns of the excel sheet, while his
bride hunting mother ,sitting next , was fixing his life’s ‘figure’ . She was
bragging to a relative probably, at the
other end of the line ,about her son’s six figure salary, his awkward but tight
work schedules ,his impending visit to the Silicon valley on a project
assignment and so on. Disgusted with the swaggering conversation , my line of
vision changed directions and was now resting on two teenage girls who were
running their hands through the hair for the nth time , adjusting their add ons
on their faces and giggling away to glory as they went about doing the chores,
did I do these things while in college- no , never , I would have been chatting
on cars, sports, spaceships and galaxies caring a damn about my appearances, a
different genre and breed among the homo
sapiens!
Tired of their
monotonous gestures , I was delighted to turn my attention to a foreigner who
had a huge back pack which could easily fit me in , if only I could slip into
it and travel like a vagabond! Elsewhere a little girl was continuously crying
for water even as her mom looked on helplessly at the empty water bottle.
A “double
barrel “ shaped couple huffed and puffed as they made their way , in time to
catch their luxury sleeper , fortune , no doubt favours the fat too! A guy in
shorts moved up and down with his auricles firmly plugged by ear plugs which
had more pores than cloth and I pondered how it would help him from the cool
winter breeze!
The undisturbed sixty minutes of gawking
ended leaving me merry and light as my mind was now an R K Laxman canvas of
caricatures which fortunately did not have to be put on paper. I whistled as I
boarded the Volvo …..Au revoir and Hasta
Manana till we meet again , don’t know where….
Jai Ho India ,
you are my favourite!!!
