Mumbai is a city of magnified spectrum.If the elements of this city (which
are the parameters scanned under the spectrum) were vectorized then Mumbai would result to a null.
Shaina,a fourteen year girl lives here,somewhere in the city.Who knows where.Despite the fever she will go to work today,because she is hungry.So she puts up her pain behind and moves towards her office. She is standing at the traffic signal waiting for lights to go red so that she can start her work.Her office is the the traffic signal.She is a beggar by profession,and lives near to her office,right under the bridge.
So in sickness she starts her routine,approaches a woman hidden under her sunglasses,stuck between the leather belt and music from the music player of her shiny long new car.Shamelessly Shaina demands money.She looks through the pane with pain,with her lips demanding money and eyes demanding a ride.This is the part she enjoys the most,looking through the glass of various such cars she realizes how life is at the other end,how life is inside a car, how calm things are at the other side,how rich is the fragrance inside (which she can smell with her eyes).She realizes how vectors on the other side of axis behave.
HONK-HONK,light is green,the car is gone carrying her reflection on the shiny door,carrying the image of a vector stuck at the axis which is a mark of separation.Her reflection tries hard to go inside the car,but fails when car stops at the other stop where another Shaina or sunita or vinita or kavita is looking through the axis.
She is hungry,tired and sick,but keeps moving from car to car,auto to auto,and it starts raining,the rain of Mumbai celebrates her hunger with a little drizzle at start and then thunders later.Within an hour whole Mumbai was drenched in rain,and so was she.She was wet from top to bottom,her wet clothes were nothing less then a window to her age,though some men opted for biology instead of mathematics in their head.
Her fever has gone high now,and the shiver is picking its pace,plus the window made winds able.
At last Shaina comes back to her place,where she lives or where she sleeps,the place used by many for a walk,the place used by many for a smoke,the place which is less than a place to many but more than a home for her,the place is under the bridge.To her misery and disappointment she finds her blanket cum mattress wet with water which leaked out of infamous Mumbai drains.Now she is hungry,tired,cold,and with a high fever with no place to sit,no place to sleep,no place to rest.Her hunger is changing to anger,the weak vector is directionless,and it can collapse any moment.There was a sound of thunder,dark clouds getting together and laughing, nature knows it own ways of expressing sarcasm.Then there was a captivating sound from a mosque where a muezzin prayed for wellness of everyone.Between the thunder sound and muezzin's prayers there was a small unheard sound, a sound of a crack, a sound of hunger which came from inside Shaina's stomach. The void was yawning.
She manages to sit on an elevated stone and looks up at the tall building nearby where she can see a lady enjoying a cup of tea and the rains at her balcony,probably she is having a wada pao too,or a bread pakoda,or samosa or even if she is having a muffin,she was having a wada pao or bread-pakoda or samosa.Who knows what was she eating,or even if she was eating anything or not,but in someone's head she surely was eating a wada-pao or a bread pakoda or a samosa.
Shaina utilizes all the energy she is left with to stand up and walk,walk towards the building where the lady is standing at her balcony with wada-pao shaped muffin.She reaches the building and stands right beneath the balcony hoping for the wada -pao to fall down from that lady's hands,hoping for lower floors beneath the balcony to vanish,hoping for her hand to increase in length,hoping against hope,against hope hoping!
There were stairs,there were lifts,lifts were expensive or thought she,stairs were not or thought she.She opted for stairs because she had no money.
The bell rings,the lady with wada-pao opens the door,Shaina stares at her hands,there was no wada-pao,lady asks something,shiana answered nothing,lady again asked something Shaina shiveringly expressed something which the lady could not understand.Lady asks her a last time what she wanted..."kya chaeye?"(what do you want?)... "mala bhook lagle ahe"....."mala bhook lagli ahe" (i am hungry)...lady shuts the door close..Shaina had lost it all,she had almost given up the fight but for last time she again rings the bell.
Door opens,same lady comes out again,again without the "wada-pao",again asking her the same thing,again speaking in the same tone...everything was same except one,Shaina said something else this time "kaahi kaam milnar kay" (Will I get some work?)......"kya" (what?)......."kaahi kaam milnar kay"........this time the lady found it difficult to close the door,something stopped her from ignoring the girl, something made her smile back,she asked her to wait...Shaina waited,with a blank face, with thunders and azaan making perfect music which further decorated her wait with desperation.The lady gets back with a plate of daal-chawal and offers it to Shaina,for whom the only visible thing around was that plate,she forgot everything around her,she stopped feeling everything that she was feeling before,she just felt a snake biting her stomach from inside
.
The moment was very painful for the lady,the moment was best for the girl,the moment made one feel sorry,the moment made one feel happy,the moment made one see the world beyond food and pleasure,the moment made one see pleasure in food,the moment was witness to two opposite feelings,two opposite worlds,two opposite vectors,one lived over the bridge one lived beneath it,one enjoyed the rains with the food,one enjoyed the food with despite the rains.
