Before you read this, read:
I sat and looked around.
On the platform facing me were a bunch of girls. Their ages clinked glasses
with numbers between 14 and 19. And their conversation mirrored all their
clinking in a rather loud clickety-clack of their tongues. I didn’t pay
attention to what they rambled on about for the noise they made gave no scope
for any sort of seriousness to seep into their chatter.
Out beyond the doors—or a
wall that made way for two sets of feet to traipse in and out of the food joint—traffic
and people behaved like siblings of each other. Some honked, some yelled, and
practically all of them bumped into each other at speeds slow enough to keep
the dents to egos and machines away. The sidewalks and the road tried to
disappear in fear of the onslaught of humanity that washed over them, but their
services were needed and so, they were forced to stay and watch the spectacle.
I looked down at my order and decided it’s time to eat. The clatter of machines imprisoned in cars and rickshaws joined that of the shoppers caught between buying for the sake of it and buying because they actually need it. The couple at the counter allowed their hands to stop making love to each other and bent their backs a bit to yank their orders off the hands of the server. They were now looking for a place to sit.
I was wondering whether
to finish my meal there itself or walk to where I wanted to go to when I looked
up and saw the man of that couple—the very man who was the reason why a gym somewhere in the
city was making money—sizing me up. I knew a question was in order and right
enough, it spat itself out of his mouth.
“Would you mind moving?”
he asked, “We’d like to sit here.”
Now it was my turn to
size him up—him and the concrete platform I was sitting on. It—the platform
that is—was long enough to accommodate three. But well, I happened to be
sitting at the edge he and his ladylove seemed to have their heart set
upon. He did not seem the guy who would
launch a punch into my jaw had I not to move nor did the lady seem the one who
would throw a hissy fit. In fact, the man was as polite as a butler, but there
was something about that politeness that he smeared all over his request. It,
somehow, smelt of a certainty that this man would not take no for an answer.
I was irritated at being
asked to move. After all, I parked myself there first. But I was alone, I was
hungry, and I sure as hell did not want to spend 10 minutes arguing about whose
behind has the right to sit where. So, I put one of my mean looks: I narrowed
my eyes into black slits, pursed my lips as if they were about to let loose a
bag of expletives, shook my head as if I had just lost a lawsuit for no fault
of mine, and walked over to a table next to the concrete platform.
To be continued...
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