Afternoon, road & the man - II

The monotony was broken by the hot wind tingling the corner of his eye. He awoke, as if from deep slumber, and looked at the other side of the road, where vapours from the ground below seemed to engulf the living roots of trees. A dragonfly buzzing over twigs drew his attention. Long after the dragonfly was there no more, he sat, smiling & listlessly making patterns in the disturbed air. It was then that those images came back to him...

A few days in a week, she used to pick him post school. Invariably clad in her crumpled off-white cotton saree with a green & gold border & balancing her golden spectacles she had kept for special outings, she used to wait outside his class with a longish umbrella with a tip pointed like a spear's.

He did not like walking back in the heat, even as she prodded him, only to "walk until the next water patch he could see at a distance on the road ahead" It would be that, or home, if that came earlier...invariably, the home came earlier... He had never failed to be awed at how water seemed to dry up so quickly and collect itself in another farther corner so quickly without so much as a damp patch...he could not help the comparison with lotus leaves. He tugged at his granny's knotted pallu, eyes overflowing with a mixed expression of awe & annoyance & she would still prod him on...it was there, she said, just a few steps ahead, could he not still see it?

The spirit of perseverance that human optimism imparts to us is seldom beaten even by truth dancing in front of our eyes. So, he walked on...with a renewed jest in his quest.

Life at that moment had a purpose, beyond the weariness that the school & the heat caused to his physical being...