Sunday 5 May 2013

A walk on the roads of Bangalore at 7 pm

A traffic signal as I step out of my apartment
Traffic doesn't really stop for lights
Garbage piled on the road
Some of it on fire
Smelly
Ugly 
Many dogs and one cat
A short dog chases a cat
The cat is quicker 
A park
Kids playing
Street urchins pass by on a cycle
No older than 8 years
Teasing me
Calling me aunty and whistling
Small wonder that India’s men are growing up to be a bunch of rapists
They are conditioned to act so from the time they are infants
Walking on a pavement
Covered with stone slabs
Some shifting dangerously
Fuelling my 7 year fear of falling through one of them
Absent street lights
Fuelling my fear even more
The flashlight on my phone comes to the rescue
A rancid stink – probably a dead rat in the gutter
A man walks past
Spitting paan on the wall
I move to the road
Traffic whizzes past
An accident waiting to happen either way
The army compound
With freshly laid barbed wire
Takes away from the old stone walled charm
Housing colonies begin
With dogs on compound walls
Remnants of the Sindhi Colony that was
Old buildings
Some broken down
To give way to some ugly new apartment
Construction sites
With cement laden water flowing on the road
My shoes stick to them
Bloody idiots
Another dead rat on the road
Dissection of a rat in Biology class in school
Where we were taught that fleas feasting on dead rats cause plague
The crowd outside the corner chaat shop
Reminds me of a time when we had to give out the house as a public restroom
My destination arrives
House no 1
The place that has been my second home for the last 7 years
Eerie leaves from the empty compound in the next plot
Throwing shadows on the window
Psyching us out at one time
Making us believe that it was a creepy man curling his sinister fingers outside
A reminder of shady men who came in and moved underwear from the utility area to scare us
My friend opens the door
Ear bandaged from a recent surgery
House no 1
A reminder of good times for the past 7 years

This was the prep for Assignment No 2 on Venture Labs. I had to take a walk and make a note of the various things that I saw, felt and heard on the way. This will be used to make a Mind Map which I need to submit. 

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