Crushed Roses...

In a city like Delhi, with its maze of roads, and flurry of plying vehicles; one is bound to get stuck in a traffic jam. Every time someone gets stuck in a red light, which invariably turns out in another jam, he or she as the case may be has cursed the way time passes, or rather gets stuck. Afterall, to think of a new viable excuse is no easy task! Delhi government tried to teach people to make better usage of jams, so on traffic lights they painted in big white letters "RELAX" over the Red Glass, and "GO" on the Green ones. But words are merely marks on paper- in this matter Glass-, and they dont do much to bring solace to the ever late, always rushing, 'we', the Indians.

These jams, cursed by all those stuck in it, are livelihood for hundreds of mouths. Faces which look forward to each red light implies another morsel at the end of the day. They are the street urchins, the ragged petite frames, eaten away by heat and hunger. Swollen eyes looking for a prospect. Someone, who they think, would be able to buy what they offer; pirated books, evening newspaper, some magazines, cheap chinese calculators, and yes flowers.

Two stalks of wild roses, with their leaves and thorns peeled off using a rusty blade, are packaged with small wilted white blossoms. At the end of the day as people head back to their homes, these mini bouquets are thrust into the slightly down windows, or a pair of teary pleading eyes would look from the windshield and in muted words ask you to buy them.

But this is not a socialistic story, neither is it a report on the way people earn their livelihood. It is what he saw from the broken window of the bus, he was sitting in. Today was a luckier day, he had got a window seat, and though the air that blew over his face was not cool, yet it was an analgesic for the humid monsoonal days, when the clouds always seemed to be on the verge of watering the plants, and then decided otherwise. His eyes were right now on that dirty little boy with rough brown hair. His appeared to be 7-ish, though it could have been the effect of the short dusty cream buttonless shirt that he wore, and stunted growth because of accumulated hunger.

The lights turned green, and the bouqet that the boy was trying to push through a half open window, fell down on the road. Before he could pick it up, the flowers got crushed between rubber and cracked asphalt. That would have meant so many things to a romantic, but to that brown hair boy it meant, one less morsel.

From his window, looking out at the receding image of that boy and his gang wait for the lights to turn red, his eyes started focussing on the mush that was on the road. He wondered what would the smell of the crushed roses would now be like, mixed with the smell of the road, and the dirt. Would it be fragrant? Would the roses retain their identity with the so many smells one encounters on an urban indian road; or would they lose themselves in the infinite fumes of the minuscule things. Something like a Vivaldi piece lost in the humdrum of an urban banal existence.

She used to avoid fragrances, and he was glad that she did. Of the many things he was crazy about, he had always loved the faint smell of her skin. Her lingering redolence that he could still feel about him, hours after she had gone. But once she had put on a dab of some perfume, a name that he didnt remember, because he never bothered to ask. It was just an added hint, a subtle tint that adds to the beauty of the moment, like a 9th note on a major chord. Amused by his tender inhalations, she had asked him what did she smell like; he still remembers having answered, "like wild roses moistened by raindew".

But that was a different time. Today it was a rickety overstuffed bus. A melee of a hundred different smells. Of sweat and deodorants- some that worked, and some that didnt. And among the other million trivial things, it was about the crushed roses that somewhere lost their aroma, in the rushing ironies of life. Like so many things...