Pritam's Blog
Her Desire To Be Free
The cacophony of traffic and street vendors woke me up at 10 on this Sunday morning. I had slept at 5:20 and it irritated the shit out of me. It seemed like time in this part of Bangalore had stopped somewhere in the 70s or 80s. Someone was playing Kishore Kumar’s song on the speakers adding to my irritation; not that I don’t like Kishore Kumar…
Anyway, I went to the balcony with my cigarette and from there, I saw this young burqa-clad girl on the balcony diagonally opposite to mine. She was bargaining with a fruit-seller down on the street from the second floor of the building.
She was holding a rope, a basket tied at the other end of it, which was hanging in front of the fruit-seller. That’s the way some people buy stuffs here. They bargain with the street vendors from their balcony. Then a basket along with the money is dropped down where the vendors put the vegetables, fruits, or whatever.
I got more pissed off not only because of the noise she was making but also because she was in a burqa. I mean you are in your goddamn balcony on the second floor to buy something that wouldn’t take 2 mins and yet you had to cover your face and everything.
Anyway, just when she was about to lift the basket a boy came from nowhere and dropped something in the basket.
The girl, she got a bit embarrassed, looked around to see if anybody had noticed, and then quickly lifted the basket.
Then she smiled. It was a flower that the guy had passed on to her in the basket. She looked at the boy and smiled…
And I thought, probably there was a secret desire in that smile… the desire to be free…
It made me feel a bit better.
I came in and went to bed again…