As the dust settled back on the road, some of it favored the flower tops on the roadside, some on the men walking along the roadside. some of it got caught up with the wind above and regurgitated into the ponds filled with green algae on the surface so thick and rustic that the sheet of green simply undulated along with the waves underneath it, but never broke, not even sunlight could slip through the thickness, one wondered.
We travelled on and on, in the red APSRTC bus through the dusty roads along the lakeside with children pelting paper rockets made of the daily newspaper at the bus. A school boy was following the trail of a bicycle wheel with a stick in hand hitting it right on the top every time it slowed down, a woman was walking heavily with mincing steps and the men in dhotis walked past her nonchalantly not pausing to admire the beauty of her balancing the weight of water pot on her head.
the bus slowed down and the man with a rug on his shoulders was whistling his way down the road that we came and the sheep followed him slowly pausing over a bush here and a bush there. A man who was bathing under the water pump that supplied water to the crop made heavy noises of displeasure and the poor sheep went the other way.
Then the bus gained speed as the man beside me took to sleep and was falling over me. I could not help to notice that he was aware of his resting his head on my shoulder. I could not let him bother me, so I looked the other way. the green fields marked the fecundity of the soil in the surroundings. paddy, wheat, rice, jowar, sunflower, groundnuts, all kinds; food and cash crops were grown together alternatively. then I wondered if it was a design or if it just so happened that the neighbors alternated between growing crops of different varieties at different times. either ways, a brilliant pattern emerged out; creating a picturesque landscape of green with subtle changes in the size and variety of the crops that spread out into the horizons.
I must have fallen asleep, for when i woke up, our bus was in the bus stand. i got down from the bus just as a man spat on the concrete floor below. a woman was regurgitating out of the bus window, something yellow, something lumpy, something very unpleasant. then a dog came wagging its tail, at first reticent, but soon as he realized there was food for offering, he galloped at once, stuck his long pinkish tongue out and savored the meal as the woman from above gasped in horror. what was nonsensical for the woman, turned out to be a bounty for the dogs as they fought feverishly between themselves. the mad screaming distracted the patientfull oncentration of a kid nearby who was attending to his nature call. he got up shocked and stood there for what looked like an eternity before the mother of the child , who was apparently selling flowers on the roadside noticed and came yelling towards him. but the dogs wont budge, this required skills of an expert. so, the man who was crouching behind a two wheeler repairing a puncture in the rear wheel took his long stick and waved at the dogs.
As soon as the men and women who had witnessed the episode were about to retire, the repairman noticed that in the moment of haste, he picked up the stick of an old man who was precariously hanging on to his dearlife with the aid of that stick, now he was on the floor face down in the mud in paralysis. the boy who had retired once again to his nature call observed this new twist to the tale with a keen eye. soon, men gathered around the old man, and women gathered around the men that gathered around the old men. the crowd lifted him up and put him in a rickshaw. few men took the initiative of looking out for the driver, while others gathered around the old man who was presently recovering. the first group of men returned one by one with no hope of finding another rickshaw nearby, which is when the old man woke up and said he was ready to run his rickshaw.
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