I continued walking. The trees across the drain always looked dirty with all the dust that had settled on them. Today they looked beautiful. Of course they would look beautiful. I was out to look for beauty. I walked the same beautiful road. I looked up. Through the leaves of the trees I could see the sun. Now that was another wonderful thing I never expected to see here. I kept walking and tried looking at the sun through the leaves.
What came to my mind next was another weird thought out of nowhere. I decided I’d walk up to a fruit seller and ask him the rates of all the fruits on his stall. So I kept walking. I came across a very narrow street that I’d never seen before. It reminded me of the small town that my grandparents used to live in. It got me feeling really humble. I decided to walk in. I walked down the street. Urbanization had changed me so much. I remember being with my cousin once in one of those thin narrow streets, one of his friends showed up on a bike and I thought his friend was cool. I had in front of me a similar scene. There was a little girl, her older brother and a friend who showed up on a bike. The girl’s eyes had the same look of respect for the cousin’s cool friend as I used to. But to me the guy on the bike was someone I wouldn’t trust in the normal world outside the little narrow street.
Urbanization changes us so much. There were hardly a couple of big brand posters in that narrow street. Everybody was humble. The kids were playing; the buffalos were tied right next to the road. Nobody had a problem with that. Whereas outside the street, it would be shocking to see a child right next to a buffalo. The buffalo could hurt the child you see.
Another great thing I felt as I turned back to walk back up the street to come back to the main road was the people who came to the world outside the street to work. They were mostly blue collar workers in the industries around or the rickshaw pullers. For us, outside the street, they represented people who didn’t make it very big or somebody who because of the lack of opportunity couldn’t make something better out of their lives. But to the people inside the street they were fighters, going out into the big, bad, urbanized world to earn their bread. They would come back to the tiny little street every night and tell their families about their encounters in the world. Which their wives and children would tell their friends the next day. And everybody would know.
I walked out of the street. I smiled at every rickshaw puller who asked me if I needed him to drop me somewhere and politely said no. Otherwise I would have just walked by. He’s a fighter in his own little way; from his own little street somewhere in the city. And not just the rickshaw pullers and the workers I saw. I realized how everyone had a story which was very different from our opinion of them. Even the people in the big cars or the ones driving off for a picnic with their families.
And I was almost back in college by now. All that in just half an hour. It felt like an hour if not ages. And the guy I asked, was selling oranges for Rs. 5 per 250 grams and grapes for Rs. 10 per 250 grams.
