Like everyday I was in my taxi today on my way to work ....and just near my office I got stuck at a traffic signal... in front of me was a large water truck - you know one of those trucks where you have pipes at the end that you can draw water out of... ofcourse I didnt bother much about the truck or about the happenings around me and was just only bothered about how soon I can reach the office....
and then out of nowwhere a group of kids scrambled around the water truck.....i didnt understand at first what the fascination was... .. and then I realised that they had started opening the pipes and taking out the water in their pots and pans... and one of them ingeniously started speaking to the truck driver keeping him engaged.. one by one the kids filled up their pots and pans and by the time the light turned green all of them had a pot full of water.... and in the meantime all of the onlookers did nothing but watch the spectacle... some taxi drivers even moved their taxies back to give room for more kids... and nobody (inlcuding me) seemed to find it necessary to tell the truck drivers that your water is being stolen... something so right in something so obviously wrong... Was it my urban guilt? at seeing so many kids growing up with no water??
Thats the thing about Indian roads... there is always some sort of life on the roads.... its only now that we have the tinted glasses on big cars where the drivers in their coat and suit behave as if they are doing a favour by even looking at the road..... and no matter what there is always room for one more on the Indian road... room for one more car, one more bullock cart, one more vegetable van, one more dog, one more cow, one more cat, one more rat.. one more of anything.... we just have enough space for everybody and we all just squeeze by....
And we even have elephants walking on the road... now in India I would not bat an eye lid if I saw an elephant right outside my car window... for me, he (or she) is like another traveller on their way to work...... but I realised how much we take seeing our elephants on the road for granted when I went to South Africa... I remember getting so excited seeing an elephant in the Kruger National Park .... I immediately whipped out my camera and started clicking away in all angles.... the elephant crossing the road, the elephant having his lunch, the elephant looking at us menancingly..... and when I see the same elephant crossing the road in Mumbai my camera stays right inside my bag.. no excitment, no flashes, nothing....in any other country, an elephant on the road would have created chaos and lead to the elephant being almost blinded by the incessant clicking of cameras ....
Thats life I guess!!! Well at least the journey is interesting on Indian roads....
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