The story Lane

There is a typical narrow 'Bangalore route' in which I travel every day on my way to office.  It’s probably one of Bangalore's most densely populated areas, which is having a bit more concrete to qualify as a slum and tad too much chaos to be called a residential area. But it never fails to grip my attention for the entire stretch. I have a habit of reading news paper during the long traffic filled travel to office but as we approach this area the stench and cars speed indicate to me that we have arrived at ‘that’ stretch and from then on I simply can’t look or think about anything else than what the road presents me.  

When we look at a posh area, the mansions overwhelm us, the roads are smooth so you are whisking past the structures, the gardens, the beautifully clad people and the glance isn’t enough to grip you to it. This isn’t so in this narrow painted lane of mine, it’s a reality show of a different sort. While chugging along these lanes, every reeking corner and the gleeful children there or a shopkeeper lost in thoughts, has a story waiting to be heard. This is a scene you wouldn’t like to have as a painting in your home but it’s a painting you can never ignore.

These areas aren’t those old parts of the city which have remained like antique collections inside your house. These are unsought and almost   forgotten domains which have become destinations for convenient settlements. Evidently there are very few formal permissions which are sought and desperation is the paradigm which is conspicuous in the way the buildings have been raised. The shopping area hasn’t been designed to create visual appeal nor for the pleasure of the customers. The haphazardly thrown displays lay just next to a slush filled road and the smell reeks of the over flowing sewage beside it. Despite of all these there is a flowing enthusiastic crowd with their curious eyes seeking those meager offerings of those shacks. Adding to this visual is the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd. Probably desperation has an inbuilt nature to seek out a heterogeneous population in the periphery of the society!

In midst of the slush, stench and desperate clustering there is sense of novelty. Every eye seems to hold a deeper story, every animal on the road seems to convey something new and every shop seems to have a deeper connection to somewhere else than its neighborhood. There are small manufacturers busy with their tools, making something small which will be a part of something big which they will never own and sometimes not even see! These are the busiest people who stand in contrast to the lazy shopkeepers who are busy yawning in front of their bargaining customers. No one wins the bargain as each is waiting for some thing better to come by.  

There are two bucks in front of a butcher shop who are busy competing for dominance. They compete in oblivion even as the freshly cut meat of their friend who was hanging around with them is now hanging in front of the shop. There is a young boy loading up his bicycle with more than what he can handle, then he mounts his sister on the pillion seat and then decides to maneuver his bike in the traffic. One moment he is up in pride and the second moment he’s flat on the road. All seems like a mirror to our own lives.

Suddenly the road is split by even narrower bylanes and it enthralls more, as stories seem to emerge from nowhere. It’s a never ending story lane …..