I don’t know why I am in an auto rickshaw. I don’t know where the rickshaw is headed to. I don’t remember taking it. I don’t remember instructing it. So, I don’t know where I might be going. I don’t know why there’s an unknown small boy seated on my left. I am not surprised by anything; by bad road, the journey, even by the strange boy. I don’t seem to look forward to reaching where ever rickshaw was headed to.
Road isn’t good at
all. It seems under construction; road and everything else around. We are moving in a
narrow part of the road on left. Pavement is full of large broken pieces of a huge wall or of something else. But they are all concrete. Who dropped them there?
How did they arrive here? Middle of the road, other side of the road, every place seemingly piled up the in same way. Have those boulder like things come from some place being
renovated or it will be used as filling under the new road or… I did not find
myself interested. I refused to think about it.
After moving for an
unspecified, un-noticed amount of time and without any interaction with the quiet child, the vehicle
started slowing down. Then slowly it started drifting towards the left of the road. It was
about to touch the pavement, and that was not comfy. I took charge by extending my arm
to turn the handle of rickshaw to stay on course. I thought driver may not be
feeling to well. No, I did not think that. I did not think anything. But in a
few seconds it stopped. Engine also died soon. ‘Thank god’! Hmm… who said that! Perhaps I did.
Without a word the
driver leaned mildly, then heavily towards his left. I tapped the boy, who got
off and then I too. Driver had no expression on his face, no pain, no why or…
just a large bundle of blankness. I looked around. May be for a doctor
initially, then for anything moving; like a police-van, a construction worker or someone who also wasn’t supposed to be there, here I mean; like me and maybe like the boy.
Well the only thought I
got was, that ‘the driver who wasn’t supposed to be here, is not here anymore.’
