More Sayings, Old and New, by Jaanu Nagar
[I]
The daily journey to Ghevra has now become a pleasant one for me, but as I approach the turn that leads into Ghevra I can see, children in their school uniforms, restlessly crossing the road, back and forth, back and forth. Trying to get back to their homes, they call out to any richshaw driving past, "Bhaiyya, please take us along!" After four passengers have filled a single rickshaw, they climb in, standing in the space that is leftover between them. When the rickshaws don't slow down to take them in, they run along them and hang from the edges, uninvited. Sometimes they get together in small groups and plead with the drivers of trucks that carry mud, but which are empty, and travel homewards in them, joking with one another. Some travel without permission, clinging to the ladders and handles on the water tanks on their way to Ghevra, sometimes getting a beating from the drivers for it. One day I saw a water tank on its way to Ghevra. A boy hung on to it, even though at the back of the vehicle was painted the line: Don't hang from me, or I'll throw you off!
The daily journey to Ghevra has now become a pleasant one for me, but as I approach the turn that leads into Ghevra I can see, children in their school uniforms, restlessly crossing the road, back and forth, back and forth. Trying to get back to their homes, they call out to any richshaw driving past, "Bhaiyya, please take us along!" After four passengers have filled a single rickshaw, they climb in, standing in the space that is leftover between them. When the rickshaws don't slow down to take them in, they run along them and hang from the edges, uninvited. Sometimes they get together in small groups and plead with the drivers of trucks that carry mud, but which are empty, and travel homewards in them, joking with one another. Some travel without permission, clinging to the ladders and handles on the water tanks on their way to Ghevra, sometimes getting a beating from the drivers for it. One day I saw a water tank on its way to Ghevra. A boy hung on to it, even though at the back of the vehicle was painted the line: Don't hang from me, or I'll throw you off!
[II]
All kinds of new objects flow in and out of Ghevra all the time, and this flow will continue in the time to come. When everything is "new" in any place, then what in that place can be called new? But there is something which will perhaps become old as time passes, and that is what I have chosen to tell you about.
"Vikram" is a vehicle in which fourteen people can sit at a time. It is open from all sides. There is a long seat along its back, two seats along both sides and one seat right behind the driver's seat as well. So, people can sit in it looking at the road ahead, or sit so that the road recedes from their view, or sit with the road sliding past them. The driver of the Vikram has made this rule about traveling by his vehicle: Every passenger is charged Rs. 4 per ride. Children who go to school pay Rs. 2, but they travel in it on the condition that they can get on only after all the other passengers have found a place to sit, and then sit or remain standing in the remaining, empty place.
When one travels by the Vikram, the air rushes past, drying ones sweat, making ones heart feel light. What also makes ones heart light is the small TV set that the driver of the Vikram has installed inside his vehicle, so that by the time his passengers finish watching the scenes of two songs from the movies, they are already at the main square, from where they disperse into their own lanes in the Ghevra colony.
23 August 2007
All kinds of new objects flow in and out of Ghevra all the time, and this flow will continue in the time to come. When everything is "new" in any place, then what in that place can be called new? But there is something which will perhaps become old as time passes, and that is what I have chosen to tell you about.
"Vikram" is a vehicle in which fourteen people can sit at a time. It is open from all sides. There is a long seat along its back, two seats along both sides and one seat right behind the driver's seat as well. So, people can sit in it looking at the road ahead, or sit so that the road recedes from their view, or sit with the road sliding past them. The driver of the Vikram has made this rule about traveling by his vehicle: Every passenger is charged Rs. 4 per ride. Children who go to school pay Rs. 2, but they travel in it on the condition that they can get on only after all the other passengers have found a place to sit, and then sit or remain standing in the remaining, empty place.
When one travels by the Vikram, the air rushes past, drying ones sweat, making ones heart feel light. What also makes ones heart light is the small TV set that the driver of the Vikram has installed inside his vehicle, so that by the time his passengers finish watching the scenes of two songs from the movies, they are already at the main square, from where they disperse into their own lanes in the Ghevra colony.
23 August 2007
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