Route 73

Image courtesy : fotologic on Flickr, check usage terms before using the image.

Going back to home I take Route 73! Journey is calm and casual and is serene as wind blows on your face from the open window constrained by bars and you continue to enjoy lame sunshine, better say the shade of it. People come and people go, leaving no trace of their existence on your memory...

The bus snails along the newly inaugrated metro lines in central and south Delhi. As I am looking at markets in Patel Nagar suddenly I catch glimpse of a couple in the bus. They are around for sometime but I hadn't noticed them in earlier, was rather engrossed by greens and inanimate but golden hills of the central ridge.

They communicate so flawlessly and are in perfect sync. Her gestures are vivid and clear only to him and he understands them like his own thoughts. She never fails to capture his moves and most subtle of his actions, she excellently marvels at deciphering his concealed communications. They speak with their eyes to share with each other the most wonderful and beautiful of their experiences...

Meanwhile the bus continues on the road towards its destination, more bodies enter and leave the scene and many are spellbound by the chemistry between the pair, probably they envy it, may be I am envying it!, or are too appreciative of the bond. The scene outside the window is blurred now, just a few fonts floating on haphazard billboards and structures and a blinding brightness as my eyes are transfixed on the duo. They are confident in their moves and are headstrong and clear about what they need.

They deboard the bus somewhere near Pusa Campus and now I can feel their absence, the silence they exhibited, the calm and contendness they made part of their personality. They made me realise my speech is useless as it fails at its purpose on many ocassions, it cannot get the thoughts across. They made me understand that I need to learn more and be better since I am not that good yet...

Those school going teenagers neither could speak nor could hear, come back to me when I fail in communications. That journey on Route 73 remains in my memory and that year too... To be true, I sometime wish I was one of them. Probably I would have been better then...

I was not willing to post for more than 1 month or so, but this memory intrigues me and I simply wanted to let it come out. I am obsessed with people, I simply love travelling, looking at people and understanding what they are concealing as messages in simple acts of theirs. Probably I miss my freedom! I miss those faces that occur to you during solo journeys, those eyes and gestures telling you something you will never learn from books and novels! It is not that books and novels don't teach you, it is simply that they don't work for me! For me people and place around me are books...