Anyone who has been through the daily commute in Bangalore by semi-public transport, will know what I mean when I say "it feels endless, no hope that you will ever get home". The exhaustion of simply waiting in a traffic snarl rises up like bile in your throat, but you simply swallow it down and wait, resigned to the rut.
There are those industrious few, who would get printouts of techy stuff like Java, Swing, Servelet and what not and use the wait to read up. There are the sensible who would either listen to music with ear plugs or would read a book. There were even the blessed few who would doze off the entire duration!!
Well, me was neither industrious nor sensible nor blessed. All I could do was gawk outta the window at other vehicles or observe people inside my own.
It was in one such gawking time, that a very tiny incident happened. The protagonists were two ladies in their thirties, good friends of each other, chatting with each other engrossed in whatever topic it was at that moment. All of a sudden, there is a gust of wind and a sheet of paper flew in through the window, and landed smack on the face of one of the ladies. She calmly pulled the paper off her face, gave her friend a tiny smile, threw it outta the window and the two resumed the conversation.
This was sufficient for me to get into a tailspin of thoughts and what ifs.
Have you seen teenage girls? Put any two of them together in any situation, and within no time they would find something to giggle about. If the same sheet of paper had landed on a teenager, it would be sufficient fodder for giggles for a long long long time. Where does the innocent happiness go to feed the demands of day-to-day life? Can't we retain the child like laughter while still being responsible to our duties? What should we do or rather what should we not do, to retain the basic simple intrinsic happiness in each of us? Any thoughts?
