Zindagi ka Safar

Well, we all face this. Only not all of us would be wearing a necklace. But we all can safely attest that something is upside down in this life of ours…. Or is it that everything is and we should turn upside down too to see things straight… except for maybe that necklace that will irritate us reminding the orientation. 

Urban life is weird, in fact, I think Urban life is a myth. There is very little life left to you if you are staying in an urban setting. It’s a finely orchestrated dance, one that we perform everyday, relentlessly and like Phoebe would say “Lather, Rinse, Repeat.. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.” We do it so well, others who actually have a life, envy us. That’s our success I believe… Well because we cannot have any other u see. 

I am working from home, a lot, these days and maybe that’s why I get time to write something. I have my office sufficiently far off. I easily spend 4 hours in commute. 9 to 10 hours in office. 6 hours of sleep. Well that leaves me a precious 4-hour window to do the rest of the mundane things in life. Like be with my family, spend time with my kid, entertain, daily chores, maintain general hygiene, relax and refresh. Of course, this is permitting that the office doesn’t call and I have untwisted myself back into normal shape after the super-yoga kind of commute. One look at the numbers and I realise, I have the same free hours as the number of hours that I spend in travelling. That time must be utilised.

I decided to finish my socialising while on the way, to the extreme irritation of my fellow passengers. I also listen to their social interactions. In fact, we have become very close now. A set of people now daily meet in the AC bus that I travel in and discuss our problems. I sometimes feel we spend more time with each other than we will ever do with our spouses. We also add the Indian touch to it. No no, I don’t mean we gossip about it with other people, we all bring snacks for one another. We make a party out of that commute. 

Some of us must use multiple modes of transport to reach home. Like rails, buses (provided we get space to fit a few toes), autos (provided they have mercy on us and are kind enough to overcharge us and drop us where we want to go), walking. Once someone had gotten tasty pav-wada for all of us and one of the fellows had to leave. He took the snack and ran to the station, lest he miss his favourite seat on the 7:24 local. Turns out the local was crowded that day, because I think there was no political rally, or a BMC digging plan and traffic surprisingly arrived faster at the station, to everyone’s surprise. And all of them boarded the same train. Poor guy, couldn’t move his hand. The hand in which he had held the Wada-pav. After 15 minutes of everyone seeing it and getting intoxicated by that smell, losing control, one guy took a bite out of it from his extended hand, which my friend couldn’t move. He relished it. He told my friend, “It was very tasty, you should get one daily.” Everyone had a hearty laugh, I guess not because of the situation, but out of realisation that we cannot do anything about it.

Hilarious as this may sound. This is what has happened to all of us. Our tasty tit bits of life are eaten away by someone else. Someone who we barely know and really don’t want to meet ever again in our life. Is It ok to feel that I might enjoy the jhunka – bhakri in a remote village more than the wada pav here? Well I gotta go, my next mode of commute is waiting!!