Under Control

I'm proud to say that I hail from a place where I wake up in the morning at the sound of a street fight between an Auto driver and a Rickshaw-wallah. The street is one-way - that is, it has enough space for only one way and both of them are stubborn and not willing to make way for the other. The abusive argument usually comes to an end in the blink of an eye, when a trail of vehicles are lined up on either side, braying loud horns. The Rickshaw-wallah gives up, looking at the school-kids and office-goers with morning blues. He pulls the Rickshaw back, how he manages to do so with the bare minimum space available, I wonder, looking at the scene from my bedroom window on the first floor, overlooking the street. Almost always, he would hit his vehicle against some vehicle in the process, to vent out his frustration,which is the funniest part of it all. 

Some mornings, I would wake up to mooings and bleatings. The milk-man (who delivers milk) of our street does not have enough space to tether his cows and leaves them to destiny- to my mom - the Annapoorani (Goddess of Nourishment) of the street - she always has something for all-- even a cow. Our house had an array of cows, neatly seated in the front, blocking the only way in the street. I remember standing and waiting on several days with my sister after school, waiting for the cows to make way for us into the house. That was much less drastic than the huge traffic that built just outside my house, a string of abuses at the 'milk-man' and humble requests to my mom not to feed the cows. Again, the funniest part of it all - my granny screaming at the top of her voice at my mom, citing instances from her life history, of zero correlation with the situation at hand.

I'm proud to have a mom and dad who take up so many responsibilities at the same time, that they are rarely ahead of time in attending any scheduled event. We would be flooded with harried phone-calls from the organizers and spend the travel-time in blaming and making fun of each other for the delay. Numerous are the times when my mom, my sis and I would run to the bus-stop, to board the school-bus in the morning. The bus driver, cheeky to the core, seeing us from the corner of his eye, would pretend not to have noticed us and would just take away, leaving my mom cursing at him quietly. My sis and I would be on a high inside, trying hard to look sorrowfully at our mom. We would joyfully enjoy a Royal auto-ride to school, only after severe scoldings and warnings from mom that that would be the last ever auto-ride to school and that we would have to get ready earlier from the next day onwards. Giggles would follow, when the auto reached a safe distance away from my mom.

Power shut-downs or noisy loudspeakers on the street blaring devotional TMS songs or a bunch of gossipping relatives on a visit to home or the naughty cousin to baby-sit when his parents were out of town or the distracted phone-calls from frantic classmates --- an exam to prepare for amidst all the hullabaloo......

Dear Room-mates in Singapore, now you know why I never respect the Alarm clock. I yearn for the noise on the street to hit at me, right in the head. I am most tempted to walk to the middle of the AYE road and create a traffic diversion. I want to see more wild-life on the run. It's embarrassment to the core to walk into an appointment almost on time, only to find my superior waiting for me, for several minutes patiently. I don't want that bus driver to stop the bus at the stop for eternity, on seeing someone gesture to him to wait,a kilometre away, through the rear-view mirror. I want to miss this bus and curse myself for being late. I want trouble to tackle.

 'Control freaks!!' is how I scream when I'm totally bored and not able to take a bit more of the ordered and disciplined ways. I could feel my 'adrenaline gene' dying away - I fervently hope it's just on a hibernation and is going to be on the run again when I'm back home.