Wearing a hoodie in the summer, carrying a bunny bag on my shoulders, driving my mom's scooty with a label adherent to it having an advocate symbol (my mom's a lawyer) ,I was on my way to the movie scheduled to start in another 5 minutes looking as fierce and hasty as a bollywood hero going to rescue the heroine from the villian. And then I could see a crowded strip of gaadis (cars and bike) struggling their way out of the jam (the only jam we don't like) . With my very Indian attempt to clear the road I started blowing the horn seeming to do some service by acquainting the already acquainted crowd that I'm stuck here in this crowd which is not itself damned but damning me too.
And then as always a few people came in way of the other few and faced some condemning in some wonderful chaste words of abuse which were related to not just the person but also to his distant of distant relatives.
And then I started wondering why a road alongside my house which my dad is so prowd to own ( always calling himself rich comparing with his peers who have appartments alongside very narrow roads and forgetting the fact that they all are more wealthy having loads of ancestral property) is so crowded and that too on a day of no festivity .
I could see two giant cars parked on the road making a very broad road that my dad is proud of into a narrow strip . Seeing two big cars (which are probably from the mercedes family) on the road as a typical middle class wala I started feeling all the hatred that we have on petrolwala and chickenshopwala who are increasing prices like they are in a race with eachother (though none of them are actually responsible for the price hike) on those two cars. Probably improper parking was not the only reason for hatred, it was partly a typical hatred by the have-nots on haves. With infuriating chest and throat I wanted to shout 'who the hell dhanik has parked his hitler deshwala flamboyant car on my road and trying to turn me into a female Robin Hood or outlaw'.
But suddenly something stopped me, the fact that this car was parked right infront of the party office of a prominent Andhra political party. All the infuriation went down noticing the office, and realised that all the crowd was calm on the part of the two cars for the same reason.
Slowly my chance or wayout from the crowd has come and left the place with "Mein aam admi hoo , mein kya karega iss log ko" feels.
Then at the three road junction which was just 200m from this place I found a traffic policeman with a mask holding a traffic directional baton which isn't working and creating much more commotion than the arrogant public. We never know by waving his not working baton he's trying to tell us to move or that he'll beat if we move. So then being that not so daring but dutiful citizen I went to the traffic policeman who is a man with some big whiskers (little frightening) and told him that 200m from the point two cars were parked irrationally in the middle of the road. He gave me and my scooty a very unpredictable look for a good two minutes, and finally uttered words with a sense of normalcy and said "accha madam, I'll look into matter, you please leave". I wonder why he called me madam.
Then I went to the movie with meeriness derived from two things. One, the feeling that I have done deshseva by merely telling the policeman and second I have managed to miss the Rahul Dravid Add, hurray!
And later when I recited all these things to my mother and she told me two enlightening things
1. When she started from home to office, a good one hour after I left she also found the two mercedes cars parked on the road .
3. The policeman must have called me madam because of the advocate symbol on the scooty
Realisations
1. So my deshseva feel vanished and understood that the policeman may not have sent anyone to that point and even if he had ,they must have backed off after knowing that the cars belonged to a political party leader.
2. Designation stickers make alot of impact , so if you are a doctor, police, mediapersonell ,advocate or sarkari, better ostentate it on your vehicles.
Ps- I was wearing the hoodie because these days it's too cool inside the movie theatre's.
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