A day with a difference....

A cozy night long sleep with cute dreams around followed by a lazy yawn , hide n seek of dark n light, a fresh sunrise, a damp of fresh air, chippering birds, standing up in the balcony with a cup of steaming hot tea, the idea of starting a fresh day can not be better than this.

Alas…no Monday morning starts like this ever…

Added to it if a monday starts with a nasty head ache (due to struggled sleep whole night due to power cut), cough and moreover the pressure to be in office on time then suicide seems to be a much better idea than continuing with the rest of the day.

Such was a day today. In hurry, missed the morning tea too…L

My office serves tea without milk, and today i felt they have stopped sugar supply also…thanks to cost cutting (even if my organization is on headlines for its balance (profit) sheet and the add for the very organization says “expect more from us”).But i had to swallow the tea in two big gulps because my bad throat needed some warmth and I had to take a pill for my headache. A dull me, thanked my boss as I did not have much work today in office. After replying to few mails, making some official calls and doing some daily activities I was left with only a lazy lean day forward. The lazy weather outside supplemented it.

Kolkata’s weather is unique. In summers it leaves u with a chipchipa feeling for 3 long months independent of the sun being harsh or not. And the winter comes with dryness throughout and makes u loose the original colour of your skin…even if u try the costliest fairness cream available in market (I bet on it).

I took a break from my work station and looked through the window. The foot path adjacent to my office building was full of street vendors. Fruits, boiled egg, jhal moori , masala moori, pakoras were handy. Saw people struggling to cross the extremely busy road. The traffic police man was on his toes to balance the vehicles. I come by this route and see all these everyday. But I think there is a difference between ‘seeing’ and ‘watching’. Watching demands concentration and with this theory I was watching all these for the first time. :-)

It was almost lunch time. The mooriwala was surrounded with people and busy in supplying the moori filled paper packets to his customers. One standard moori pack costs 3 to 5 rupees and this was the lunch for most. There may be few who were eating it because they like its taste. But many of them were having it to appease the mid-day hunger and balance the money purse simultaneously. I don’t know how far these moori packs were able to fill their stomach but the 8-10 rupees (cost of a standard lunch plate) DOES make a difference to their purse.

A paan shop was there in a corner. I remembered one day when I took shelter near the paan shop to avoid a sudden pouring while waiting for my vehicle, the lines written on the wall of the paan shop attracted my attention. One line in my mother tongue. Nayak paan dokaan (i.e-Nayak paan shop, nayak being the surname of the shop owner). I at once got excited and asked the paanwala whether he belongs to my state. His reply was affirmative. Then of course, the best possible thing happened and we started talking.

With course of conversation I came to know that he does not own any separate house in the city. He sleeps inside the paan shop only. And the strangest part was the paan shop was just 2/2 window like structure which can not even adjust a sitting person inside along with the other stuffs. (those who have been to Kolkata must have seen such uniquely designed small wall shops in may parts of the city).

I imagined him there in a rainy night, I imagined him there in a stormy night and in a summer and a winter night too. I imagined him not being able to stretch his spine properly all night long. It was scary. The reason, he could not afford a single room in the city as he had a family to run back home.

Next to the paan shop there was a man sitting on the footpath with a display of weird things in front of him. He was new in this ambiance, or may have been left unnoticed by me earlier. I gave a close look to the things just to surprise my senses. It was bunch of all disposed things of a normal household. Used safety pins, cracked mirrors, rubbers, plastic show-pieces, cotton bags with holes and what not? All old, disposed and not at all in a condition to re-use. I could not understand the purpose of its display and ran down to have a conversation with the man. (yes…I did it).

First he got scared, then became submissive and then aggressively started talking. My almost perfect Bengali (only with some pardonable cho, chi, cha type mistakes) eased my initiative of establishing the bond with the man. When asked he said all these are for sale…and my instant, reflex reaction was “WHO THE HELL WILL BUY ALL THESE”? He smiled and said, the people who sleep on footpath, who cook on the footpath, who send their children to beg for a one rupee coin to traffic joints, whose only concern for life is to get a proper meal at the end of the day can obviously not afford the first hand things, or even the second hand ones. They take it and for them only I run my business and feed my family. I was about to tell something when a lady interrupted.

She chose one shilpa bindi packet in which only three, dust filled sticker bindis were left and one red ribbon with stints of ink spots. These cost her 3 rupees and after much bargaining she got it in 2 rupees. The lady left so did I. Nothing much was left for further conversation….

On the way back I looked at my jacket with a Reebok tag on it which had cost 4000 rupees and the hand purse containing all my cash/ creit/ debit cards cost 1200 rupees.


I still don’t know why I felt bad…….why I felt guilty…..why I bought a big pack of fruit cake for the little girl begging me for a penny……….!!

But I knew this much that I wanted to sleep tonight, with some peace inside!!