Even commonplace journeys you perhaps turn out to be more unusual than you thought. Well, I am exhausted because of my extensive traveling and this post might be a little short.

I have been attending an Entrepreneurship camp at my institute since the last three days and hence have been coming home later than usual. And commuting in public transport always gives you something new, something unforetold and sometimes even something annoying.

Yesterday, it was almost dusk and I was tucked alongwith five passengers on their trips. A sparky young fellow asked me if I was studying engineering. Well, it turned out he is my junior and we started chatting. Most of our conversations were in English and I was oblivious to people around me. When suddenly the driver started throwing words at me in English. They were hurried, unkempt and lacked some grammatical form and it took me sometime to get used to his frequency. It turned out that he was an Undergraduate in Pharmacy from Bangalore but drove auto rickshaws because he didn’t get a job. Once he started talking, he wouldn’t stop. It was a bit tough for me to decipher his words that seemed to be random pickings from sentences lacking coherence, but I managed to make sense of his words. He just seemed to mock the passengers he takes because he felt most didn’t even think about the driver. His point of view clearly mentioned that people don’t really give a damn as ‘he’s just a driver’.

I didn’t know what to answer. Had never felt concretely like what his perception was of people,; so, I guess I was an exception.

But I listened to him and when my stop came, he just smiled and thanked me. Sitting at a shop, sipping mango juice, I thought Maybe all people have things unexpressed in forms intangible which need little nudges to spring them forth. I wonder how much baggage do people carry. If conscious of this fact, it could go a long way in reducing all our regrets and even repressed desires.

Today was the last day of the Entrepreneurship Camp and instead of returning home in the afternoon, I jumped onto a friend’s motorbike and headed for Landmark, an exhaustive bookstore in the city.

It was 5:00 PM in the evening and I hadn’t eaten lunch. Although I was carrying it in a lunchbox, I wondered where could I eat in peace. Surely the supermarket where I stood wasn’t the right place to open your box and start munching. Why is that awkward?

Nearby is a huge temple of Lord Krishna, built by the ISKCON trust and it has a huge lawn with teeming grass and fresh smell of wet earth. So, I just sat down amidst the crowd of families, friends and lovers, beneath a tree.

Well, I was having lunch alone. But was looking around for company. I was quietly chewing, when I noticed a squirrel darting back and forth at some distance. Two steps forward. One step backward. I had always wanted to touch one. Legend has it that when Lord Rama stroked the back of the squirrel who was helping build the bridge to the kingdom of Lanka, three stripes – his finger trails were traced and that’s why squirrels have stripes.

Anyways, it came closer, his nose moving wildly in anticipation. I threw some potato and onion mix that was prepared by the auntie who cooks for us but he just sniffed it with disapproval. Yet the moment bits of rice fell on the ground, he picked them up and started eating them wildly. Alert and extremely agile, the movement of the squirrel reminded me of some expert gymnast in action.

Well, he finished his food and ran off. I sat looking as the sun set and the landscape got wet in varied colours. The temple shone in unabashed glory and I walked by in stunned silence  slurping a softy.

Siddhartha