And i remembered the confusion.

Everyday on my way back home we are stuck in a jam. It’s a 10 kms stretch for which buses just move a metre a second. The bus scrapes a meter ahead, halts, keeps chugging, and starts all over again after five minutes. So there are at least 5 such junctures at which it happens for at least 15 minutes.

The conductors for these buses are generally very young fellows, but yesterday in my bus the young fellow seemed a little too young. Maybe he was like me, at 16 also I could have easily passed off as 10. So somewhere in the middle of another of those screech, push, grunt, move acts by all buses in synchrony. The conductor, lets call him Raghu spots a friend co-worker in the bus next to him. They are hanging out of the window chatting gaily as if sitting in their home and yapping. Its not just his stature, it’s the childlike happiness and excitement which exudes from him which makes him seem like a kid to me.

In few minutes Raghu’s friend has hopped in our bus. No he didn’t jump in through the window, he got down form his bus and easily walked into ours, restating the fact the traffic was virtually still.

So the point is, once they were together they seemed so much more alive than any one around me. They smiled smiles which showed through not just the upturning of the corner of their lips (The passing a colleague in corridor smile). Their smile was a being alive smile, it was caught in the moment smile. How long has it been since I got caught in the moment. Their chatter, their body language, their obvious delight in being with each other reminded me of how things used to be way way back.

Sometimes I think it’s the middle class morale and manners which bog us or tone us down, which make us fit into boxes, which were never meant for human inhabitation. Maybe its an offshoot though but I kind of arrived at it when I saw “Born Into Brothels”, it’s a documentary about the prostitutes in Calcutta and their kids. But it’s fascinating, it reminded me how it used be a kid, how it used to feel to be happy and feel unbound, how i used to scamper off out of the house at the odd times of the day. How it felt to never contemplate the consequences before jumping into the action.

It got lost as we moved in years, as we started seeking permanence which would forever elude us, seeking appreciation from people around us, from the society around us, without even realizing we were doing it.

That is why I did not get it when the activists (the NGO guys who had organized the screening of the film) started screaming about keeping our sympathy for the kids to ourselves. Because I had no sympathy I had a confusion facing me, their lives were supposed to be screwed up, I was dreading that the pathetic state of survival would sadden me. I was supposed to be hoping for a happy ending, but that is in movies, there is no happy ending in reality, in reality there is no ending, there is no central character. Isn’t the ending always in context of a story?

Back to the point, i had no symapthy for them when the confusion started clearing out. I realised i was stumped,i had always imagined such lives to be horrific and gloomy. But they were happy kids, they knew how to live. They were so keen on being happy, or maybe they were just as happy as we were as kids. But i was caught unaware i was not prepared for anything but sadness, sadness, destitution and more gloom.

As i was saying they knew how to live. Not by getting into so called “respectable” professions, but by living the life the way they see it, not by a million expectations around them. By being true to themselves, by being basic.

Another pictures that is related to this collage of happy kids is of construction workers in front of my sis's house. There is this construction that was going in front of my sister’s apartments when I was staying with her. The construction workers would stay there, at night playing loud music. Fighting wildly sometimes, very ugly abusive fights. I would hate them for it, despise them, wish they would clear out the premises. But then there were those days when they would sitting out in the sun, women oiling little kids’ hair. Doing anything at all on their day off. I would sit in the balcony and stare at them, envying them for those minutes which so unknowingly and placidly and blissfully slipped by them.

I am sure everyone has their share of worry. Yes I am sure but somehow I feel for the so called less privileged not living up to the society’s cosmetic propriety sake demands the worries are not invited or kept at bay. Their problems just slam them down, deal with it then and their and be with it. Their futures not planned, kids not educated, day to day existence becomes day to day. This state is definitely something they want to jump out of, but we should not consider them lesser, no looking down required, as they are hell smarter than us, and more aware of what they feel, unlike us who would not be sure what to say how we feel but speak at for hours at which books we like.

It is just that we would never want to be in their shoes though they would want to be in ours (mostly ...... i guess), as the outwards appearances that we maintain are worht fighting for. And the outward appearance that they present is not really presented, it is typecasted, it is biased perspective of a common upper class eye