The Homesick Driver

“It’s 7:30 already,” said the driver, looking around at the still blue sky; the brilliant lights around the city mirrored on the shiny asphalt. “You really can’t understand how fast time flies away in Mumbai. It’s still almost daytime here, and it’s just half an hour to 8:00 PM.”

As he was reciting this, the eyes grew somewhat wistful, and he looked into the mirror for a brief moment. He saw something very familiar in the face that was staring back at him. He smiled sadly, and the face in the mirror complied as well.

“Back in the village, at this point of  time, the whole village would be drowned in a beautiful velvety darkness; a jet black silk blanket that gently lulls the whole village to sleep. You can’t find that in a place like this. It’s hard to get a wink of peaceful sleep anyway in this place.”

The eyes shifted away from the mirror, drifting into the memory lane, and finally settling upon a happy past. “I was better off driving the tractor on the fields, than driving an auto-rickshaw in this insane city!” The eyes were back on the mirror, and the homesick face looked back at him.

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t that different!” he said with a laugh, and the mirror burst out laughing as well. Still laughing, I paid the fare and stepped out of the auto-rickshaw, and the mirror went blank as the face followed me out.

Comments

  1. buckingfastardJuly 10, 2010 at 1:10 AM

    haha!! i thot it happened for real before i read the labels!! :P yea!! it aint much different for sure!!

    ReplyDelete

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