WAY FARE

                          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!!!