TrashCan

Heading back home on the bustling public bus, whose sudden shocks you can feel when a speedbreaker or a pothole on the road is encountered every time, whose exterior is marked with the scars of the heavy battle it has fought (to be driven) throughout its existence, I saw a butterfly abruptly being swept inside by the gust of wind through one of the many open windows of the bus. From the vague looks of it, it seemed like the “Common Tiger”, who mistakenly entered the “Common bus” (Not so much of a Tiger after all, eh!). ...

“चाय is an emotion”, my brother always says, blissfully sipping tea from his cup, eyes closed while smelling the richness of its aroma, completely immersed in the tranquillity it offers after a day’s worth of work. I agree very much! What is all the commotion and troubles in one’s life worth, if not being able to have chaai with a loved one or a stranger you met on the street at the end of the day? ...

While I was having my evening cup of tea, my mother reminisced about her late father. How he always used to carry his jute bag whenever he went to his shop and while coming back as well, how it became an integral part of his identity in our image of him, how it contained the essentials and the pouch, which again treasured the keys to his shop, which ultimately was the cornerstone of his heart. It begged me to ponder my observations of all the times I have noticed the bag being used by the different, beautiful people around me, who have inherently been part of the surroundings that have shaped me without my acknowledgement. ...

More often than not, I come across the word being used in all the worst ways possible, in a derogatory manner intended for the other, to make them realise their impudence. Since my childhood, I too have been a victim of using it as a weapon to justify my shortcomings and make the one in front of me realise how naive they are in their understanding of reality, immune to the naivety of myself, for blaming the other for something they inherently didn’t ask for and didn’t have the ‘privilege’ of controlling. Nobody has the ‘privilege’ of controlling the environment in which they are born. ...