The 7 o’clock glow of an orange summer evening. After twenty four cycles, I’m beginning to not notice them. The hot loo has not yet made its entry; not really. There is a hint of a fresh breeze and a slight coolness of air that draws you out, and pokes your cheeks till they relax into a smile.
A caterpillar train of children line up within the car park, one behind the other. They are not organised by height, it’s evident that schools are on holiday. They have wheels on their feet, protective gear on their heads and knees: most of the girls have long pigtails beginning where the helmets end. Roller-skating became a non-television reality for me in the auditorium in school. The church-like aura of the big hall temporarily gave way to a spectacular event: juniors, classmates and seniors giving a roller-skating display in the square between the stage and us. I got my own pair of wheels at eight: my brother and I shared one each, and the refrigerator at home bears the marks of our (my) attempts on it. The car-park is as yet empty of cars, and at the coach’s signal, the train rolls, the helmeted heads negotiate the gentle slope that leads towards the park. One boy pauses and calls out to the coach that he’s going to stop and help his sister down. Five minutes later a little girl’s wheels speed out from under her as she stands and she lands on her bottom, looking up with an unapologetic open-mouthed smile. Oops.
The back-gate is open, and Kedar is lining his cart with today’s stock of fruits and vegetables. The cart looks different, smaller, and sorrier; his competitor now has the large, well-stocked cart that used to be his. It has been almost half a year since all vendors were removed from the service lanes by the main road. Hidden at the back, he’s lost a large chunk of his clientele and is in heavy debt. Fortunes turn, cruelly. Honestly, even if there were to be traffic jams on the service lanes because of vendors (there weren’t) would it have cost the stalled cars thirty six thousand rupees in debt?
J,
ReplyDeleteThis post reminds me of a story by RK Narayan- a street vendor of malgudi is forced by the municipality to shift to a smaller, less frequented corner of the same neighbour and within days, his lucrative business of selling idlis and dosas to working class people every evening shrinks as people no longer entered the darker alley to have his food. Within weeks, he is fined heavily for selling stale food and within a month, he had to wrap up his business...i cannot recall the story title but to read of the similar plight of the ubiqutous small time hawker in two narratives written in two different socio-cultural eras, is so disturbing.