SFV plays a mute witness to a host of activities. Hopefully, she enjoys some as puts up with others.
Come morning, and she watches the disorderly haste or confusion of children not to miss their school bus. Some can be seen engaged in last minute preparations for possible questions, while in the lift. The parents are fully supportive. They hold their heavy-duty backpacks, run in advance to the lift that is working, hold the lift that is otherwise loaded with morning-walk crowd, and request them to wait for a second (read: a few minutes) as their child rushes in holding half bread in hand and struggling to gobble the other half.
Then you have rehabilitative group – those with walking stick (the writer included) or walker doing their prescribed number of steps or rounds; others in wheel-chair accompanied by their caretakers. For the caretakers this is their most awaited morning meet.
A little later assembles the ‘babies day out’ group with young attendant-ladies gently navigating the prams to a secluded place where they could give the babies juices, or cajole them to eat what they have packed for them from home.
From 11.30 to 12.30 it is time for the Vitamin-D club (exposing to sun rays) – ladies on one side and gents on another. That particular day I counted ten ladies – some squeezing themselves in the two iron benches that they re-arranged to suit them, others content sitting on the cement park-boundary. Their occasional outburst of laughter indicated that they were having a blast.
The menfolk – around seven of them – busied themselves discussing, inter alia, diabetes, blood pressure, their present acceptable levels, the best medicine for these (the ones they were taking, that is); the happenings around; slowly meandering into politics – the suggestion of diverting of excess Ganges water into other states, and the assertion of an ex Chief Minister, now on bail, Ganga maiyaa ka ek boond pani bhi hum Bihar se bahar jane nahi denge… That trigers one member to hum, Tohre taal mile nadi ki jal mein, nadi miley sagar mein, sagar miley konisi jal mein, koi jaane na… At this point Sivan (all names changed) makes a grand entry into the group raising his hands high and singing Hemant Kumar’s, Muj ko tum jo mile yeh jaha mil gaye, turning the meet into a singing session. Not to be outdone, Grover ji welcomes him, “Aap jaisa koi zindagi mein aaye…I joined the melee with the number, Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum tum mile…
A few more impromptu initial lines and the group choose to take a walk, continuing the singing session (unmindful of other walkers watching them) – a la a delayed start of an early morning Margazhi masa Bhajan in villages in South.
“That is a nice way to pass the time,” commented one, as he walked past. The lady who participated in Antakshari in our one-day trip a couple of years ago, asked us, “Can the ladies also join?” We hesitated, because she beat us hollow that time. I saw yet another passer-by whisper something into the ears of his friend. Could it be, “if only they sang it in a moving train, they might have collected five or ten rupees.”
The session went on for a round or two, and it was time to depart. Achha to hum chalte hain, hummed one. Phir kab milo ge, asked the other. Jab tum kaho ge, answered the first.
Yet another said, “Chalte, chalte, yaad rakhna, kabhi alvida na kahna. The third said, Oh jaane wale ho sake to lot ke aana, as each one of us branched off to our respective towers.
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