Village Stories-I

I am a villager.
That is the one truth about myself that caused me to fall in love with me. No one can understand how lovely it is to be born in a village( or a small town that is right on the cusp), except for a villager who has also seen city life. Everyone knows you( I still don’t know why that’s a good thing). Everything is way cheaper than the cities(since all you get IS the cheap stuff). And the people are a beautiful combination of simplicity, ignorance and perfect candidature  for a psycho-sociological study on weirdness.
Today’s study on the village covers a highly important part -THE (absent) INFRASTRUCTURE. We shall see how beautifully the village works in sync with its beautiful cement/gravel/mud tapestry.

 The concept of roads is quite synonymous with the concept of ,say, a parking space for cows. We don’t have dividers on roads. Who needs them?
We have cows.
 They stand in a line.
 For hours.
 And they were never even trained.
 I remember once the poor government chap tried to construct dividers . They got constructed. Hand to god, there were cows on the dividers.
 In a line.
 For hours.
They were not trained.

Also,  The roads are abound with nature . More fauna than flora, though .I doubt manure is good for gravel, but if it were, Amazon would be put to shame. And it isn’t just cows. There is donkey faeces and dog shit and goat turd and a lot of human urine. But you don’t really have to worry about it staying on the roads. One nice shower from heavens above and it is all nicely sedimented at the bottom of the potholes in the road.
 Life is simpler.

Before you start passing  judgements with your silly little bratty city heads ,let me tell you how cool we are.

My hamlet has a flyover. And are we proud of it!

Every Wednesday, when the people from the even smaller villages flock our town for the market, they come to see the flyover. They also carry along little plastic picnic baskets. The flyover brings us tourism. And it’s not like your silly run-of-the- mill flyovers. It is a very differently constructed one.
It is special.
It has more curves than a  Pregnant South Indian woman.There are parts where the flyover literally acts as a second railing to duplex balconies. It’s our answer to elevators and roller coasters.

Talking of roller coasters, there is also the railway junction.
It’s far from my home.
 I once went to the railway station(junction), realized I had left my ticket back home. I went back , picked up my ticket (after climbing three flights of stairs) and went back to the railway station(sorry, junction).
 It took me a total of six minutes.

I told you we lived far from the station.

Conditions.

Ever come across that person in your neighbourhood/college/bar/toilet who makes you wonder why they are so weird?
 Well, i am their God. And no, they don't know me.
 There are facets to me that Freud wanted to analyse. I sometimes feel like i was made for another universe.

 My mind makes connections in very weird ways.  Every time I hear Led Zeppelin(respect) or even if someone names them around me, I picture a lizard.  Everytime I hear of cranberries, I imagine, a rather optimistically carved ,Mills and Boon type shirtless carpenter. Ramzan reminds me of razia sultan. Sultan reminds me of udders. (yes, udders ). Circus reminds me of Cervix.

 I thought about it one fine day.

 I sat with a cup of tea that had a murky top layer by now, and thought.  And even though I knew where it came from, I refused to believe my mind can make such silly links. It’s the common letters and sounds that somehow connect them (and yes, udders are called ‘thhan’ in hindi). Whatever it is, it is random and somehow very predictable once I start thinking of it.
 It is a very dumb activity for a mind as brilliant to pursue.
Or maybe, it is not as brilliant a mind.
But then again, it may not be that silly an activity.
 Maybe I think a lot.

 Sometimes I think it may be a condition I have. I like believing myself to have conditions. I think that’s a condition. And somehow once you believe in the existence of a condition(it may be in your own self , your ex ,your boss, a random chick you heard of suffering from a condition) , you start to see signs of it.
 I had never noticed my hands until my dad told me I moved them around way too much during conversation. Somehow I suddenly don’t know what to do about them.
 What is the right way to keep your hands ? Hands on hips makes me look like I want to scold the little child who ate my lipstick. Folded behind the back makes me feel like I am a child who ate the lipstick. Just letting them hang there makes me feel like I am the wretched lipstick, useless after being eaten.
 I want to have a purpose. But then, really, does anyone have a purpose? For the majority who just want to be rich, money is the purpose.Or maybe, to put it on a capitalist spiritual level, success is the purpose. For them hippies, writing songs about peace is the purpose. For my mother, a government job is the purpose (It's our typical Indian village dream). Why don't i have any of these purposes?

Purpose reminds me of roses.

I told you Freud wanted me.

Freud reminds me of fish.