On my way back home

My office timings are between 8 to 5 and I take about 45 minutes to drive down to my work place. Since I have long work hours and commute time, I always try to find ways to reduce my commute time as much as possible. For this purpose, I also take a route that goes from behind my house through villages to the highway that finally connects me to the IT park where my office is.

It had been just another regular day for me that day. I had left office at 5 pm and I was driving fast on the highway. I had driven for about 30 minutes when I spotted the village that I was about to enter. That day, something caught my eye. The rays of the setting sun reflected off the bright green colour painted house that marked the start of the village. It looked beautiful. I looked a little more closely. An old woman wearing a faded yellow saree was squatting on the verandah cutting spinach leaves. Perhaps she was getting them ready for the dinner. An old man wearing a faded white kurta and dhoti was squatting besides her, cleaning up the leaves. Life seemed slow and relaxed for the two of them as they cleaned and cut the leaves chatting and smiling to each other.

As I drove further, I looked around a little more. On my left, I saw a neatly painted sky blue coloured house with a red colour thatched roof that was fenced by blocks of long flat monolithic stones placed vertically. I could see through the space between the stones. The area in front of the house was actually a cowshed and well-fed brown and white spotted cows rested there. All the houses in the village had a thatched roof to them.

I saw to my right. Children about the age of 4 or 5 were jumping around a bike parked in front of the small clean house. The children wore locally available cotton dresses. Their dresses though old  looked clean and their hair was oiled and combed. One girl in that group though was a little curiously dressed. She wore a old synthetic well cut white frock with black polka dots on it. A velvety bright red ribbon ran through the middle of the dress. The dress in its better days must have been a good party wear and I wondered how it had landed up in this small village. Was it a hand over to this little girl from one of her city cousins? I would never know.

A relatively bigger house made of grey coloured stone bricks stood on my left a little further down. A small shop that served as a provision store cum tea-shop came next. A lady seemed to run the store. A few people from the village stood there chatting with each other. On the right side was a temple.

As I drove further down enjoying the village sights, I heard a small honk. I looked up to see a car coming from the other side. The road that I was travelling was narrow and if two cars needed to pass each other on this road, it needed a little bit of adjusting to do. The sight of the car also meant that I had reached the end of the village and I would soon reach the busy main road that led me to my home.

The car and me, squeezed through the small lane. As I pressed my accelerator to hurry back home, I couldn't help thinking how beautifully life had slowed down the past ten minutes.