It is sunny, but the intensity is mild, softly dissipating warmth-what would have been possible at seven in the morning a couple of months ago. Today, it is eleven in the morning. I walk outside the campus, it is a long day, long journey.
I see an auto, I wave at him. He stops and agrees to take me to Dadri. His hands accelerate the steering once I sit in. He presses the grip firmly the moment there is a puddle or a deviation. In ten minutes, we reach Dadri. I hand over money to him, he loosens the grip and looks the interaction between our hands- although for a fraction of seconds. I look at his palm, it looks rough. The mounds at the base of the fingers have small other mounds of dry skin.
They are shaped in the shape of the gaps in the steering of the auto-rickshaw.
The bus to the Koshambi metro station will take time, there is a traffic jam. I have to wait here for sometime. I decide to take a walk in the market at the crossroads.
An old man is beating cotton on a pile. There are piles of cotton lying on the weighing scale, with old shapeless rags nearby for making quilts. The old man is constantly talking to the customers, picking up the cotton from the piles, negotiating. I look at him carefully. He doesn't look that old. In wonder why his henna colored hair has random spots of white, from far it looked as if his hair was white. I walk close to his shop.
His hair has lots of cotton and so does his hands and feet.
A small pan (betel leaves) shop, a man is sitting next to a wooden box, with lots of small boxes, filled with nuts, licorice, cloves, peppermint. His eyes are at the customers, ears at their voices, but his hands have a movement.
His index finger red, with constant coloring on the betel leaves.
A shop for apparel. There are some clothes hanging outside, he is folding some. One of the workers has a small gaudy golden colored saree. And the other one is folding.
The one holding a gaudy saree has some golden dust on his hands and the one folding them- his index finger is a little towards the middle.
A small restaurant, young boys are cleaning the place, some are chopping the vegetables. There are tomatoes, onions and green chillies lying on a container and the floor has onion skins.
The boy has some dark lines in his hands, very similar to the marks on the onions by the knife.
The apple seller shouts to me, I had requested him to tell me when the bus comes. I can make from his voice, it is at the same pitch as when he was shouting, apples fifty rupees per kilogram.
I board the bus, sitting next to the driver. His left foot looks arched in an unnatural way. He presses it to a small elevation to stop the bus.
There is still constant dust.
My hands remove the speck of dust from my eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment