The black clouds didn’t let the earth see its beloved Sun specially after it rained all the night. The city is littered and muddy, there are puddles everywhere thanks to the worn out roads where stones and the tars have come out of their places and the roads look like a toothless old man. It feels pity to walk on these road but businesses cannot be stopped for roads. In the evening the beam of light that entered into the go-down like passage of our department, I felt really nice. The roads must have felt better as well as with the Sun peeping through the curtains of heavy clouds it must have given the roads a hope to get dried. But then its nature, why would nature listen to the woes of dirty roads and miseries of people who forgot umbrellas at home, the black clouds were back again. Today we witnessed Sun for not more than fifteen minutes. When it rains occasionally and when it’s the first rain of the season, it’s a different feeling, the smell of the soil, the leaves that dance taking a shower everything part of the rapturous nature. When it rains longer, when the mood is already somber and one has to walk in the littered city now clad in mud the chances of feeling happy is very little specially when one is not pleased with the day, with oneself. The drizzle had already started and drops of water on my glasses made things look blur. In the road everyone hurried to home, few with umbrellas and few without umbrella. In the sleek cars the richs and the important watched we poor souls as we jumped and tip-toed avoiding the puddle which were bigger pools at places.
I was already missing a warm cup of tea as I hurried home under an umbrella whose wires have come out and desperately looking for some repair. I remember their poor condition only when I have to use them and I am using the same umbrella broken at places, may be I won’t replace it until it sags. Either the whole lot of workers had returned home lot earlier than me or I was late I had no problem finding the public tempo. Two elderly people sat facing each other and were talking their things which didn’t interest me. May be after being in a safer place I was busy observing the people trapped in rain, the walking umbrellas as the carriers were hidden under these umbrellas, kids clad in their rain coat. I saw one of the old men laughing. He had lost his front teeth, the gap made him look pretty specially in the grey hair which remained only in their sides. My thoughts were caught in ‘will I live till my teeth fall’. I got interested in their activities, they were talking about a book whose name I don’t remember. They talked how they pass time, about their children, none of them talked about their wives may be they were widower. It must be very difficult to live lonely at that age. As I was pondering about these things, the old man who sat by my side told the other that one of their friends died a month ago. The expression on the face of another old man changed without transition. It was filled more with fear and hopelessness rather than with pity. He must have thought they are all standing in the same queue just waiting to be picked up by death. I wonder if they still had dreams or if dreams had become meaningless at their age. I wondered I would they look back into their lives, what would they think seeing the babies they had carried on their arms now carrying their own babies. Once we know the end there is just meaninglessness around. I don’t know if the old man was thinking people will talking about his death just as similar as they were talking about the death of their friend. Their generation was just dying out, to let others to fill their place. In the long run no one means anything to the world. How do they think when they see young people living the days they once lived. Their frail heart must have been the graveyard of so many wishes, so many ambitions. What would they plan for the next day? In my childhood specially when I was bed-ridden after I broke my leg and when nobody used to be around, I used to think what if I lost my parents and the thoughts would be just expanded and I would cry. How would they feel when they know now the countdown has begun. One often ask a retiring employee how was his/her experience in the job, I wonder what would they reply if one asked them about the experience of their life. What would they think when they hold their grandchildren in their arms? What would they think when they see an old lady in the woman they married, the woman they lived with. Would it trouble them that they might see their beloved partner bading them goodbye for ever. I had become serious, the old men must have talked about so many things when I come out with my questions. The aura of the old man had changed and it had clear tints of indifference when I departed. I am walking the same road, somebody might undergo through similar thoughts when they will see me then.
