The Sound of Silence

Which part of the day do you consider the most delighful? For me , it's the daybreak. Here, you can’t expect a rooster for a wake-up call as there is no space for a pen in this part of thickly populated world , but, I am fortunate enough to have a room that lets plenty of sunlight in and hence I wake up when the first golden rays of the sun seeps in through the window-pane. And an unhurried ease with time for a walk is the next best thing that can happen for a day.

The desolate road remains scattered with tabebuia flowers until the day begins for the menial municipal workers. The tabletop calendar would have lost another leaf for the people living in the nearby shanties. Yellow light of the incandescent lamps escapes the chinks of their rickety doors, smoke effuses the chimney and all possible creeks. This is the time of the day when you will give at least a passing thought to the life that pulsates inside a seemingly uninhabitable place, the people whose lives equate that of a bumblebee’s.

The weak mellow sounds can be heard of the world devoid of human heartbeats. The rustling leaves sing to the tune of passing breeze which indiscriminately embraces everything that comes its way. The old spotted leaves are kissed off to unknown lands. The white tubular flowers , the name of which is unknown to me, covers the walkway of the neighboring park, which is my final destination for these early morning walks. They remind me of the childhood days when my father would collect and bring a bunch of these flowers for us ,which way we were acquainted with it, the name of which even he didn't know. But, he knew how to make a whistling sound out of the otherwise silent collection of cells. Thus we gave it the name ‘The whistler’ . Now when I live away from the security offered by a family, the remainder of those memories is what I live on.

When the yellow rays start stinging my tanned epidermis, I head back with my lungs full of fresh air. By then, the shanties would have stopped showing the signs of life as they join the buzz of the now jostling city.

Living Near a Fault Line; How is it to be a bachelorette on the wrong side of 20’s

One of the prime features of Indian Culture is that it comes with an age vs responsibility chart, where for women at 25 , it shows mothering atleast one child , and the more, the better, so that by the time you are phased out you could bring atleast two truck-loads of similar looking people onto the planet to account for each square foot of the remaining little of ownerless earth. But what happens to the unfortunate few - in most of the cases because of their indecisiveness - who fail to comply by this.
        You cannot escape from receiving rapid-fire questions from even the least concerned of people. And don't you feel forsaken, you’ll be always thought of by being a subject of mention in their idlest of talks.
Your girl friends don't bother about you anymore because you have turned down a few of their it’s-better-to-marry-him-than-die-a-spinster kind of guys. Family men keep you at an arm’s length as you are supposedly frantically desperate to hook on to a person of the opposite sex that you are a potential hazard to their disconsolate minds and family lives. Come on, guys! the skewed sex ratio of the sub-continent still quantitatively favours the fairer sex. The restless testosterones consider you a fruit laden mango tree growing in a marshy land, and on failed attempts, cuss you with ‘you will die in there too!’. The eligible bachelors consider you as a product that has far outgrown the expiry date.
        Even the most rational of you start wearing zodiac rings in rainbow colours as it is prescribed to be a one-stop-solution for all your miseries. Parents curse planets for your qualms. And your life starts becoming a chain of pilgrimages, at the youngest of ages, to any place with a reputedly high track record for changing the marital status of girls.
        The heart and soul of the problem in most cases lie in you not being a believer of love-at-first-sight , but go the traditional way ,still, get the biggest say in deciding who you want to be seen yourself with, in the picture frame over the TV stand. Now as the whole world tunes on to you, you too sit back on the couch and watch this soap, interesting as it is, waiting to see when it will come to an end; for universal peace!