The day that is Visakhapatnam 20 June 2016
20 June 2016
The day that is
The vehicle rush on the road from
the Akkayyapalem Shirdi temple toward the Dondaparti junction is as much the uncare
it daily is. Autos rush past the two-wheelers – bicycles ringing the space they
find amidst the city services and other three-wheelers, no different from everyday.
In all, it is the same inainities of the rough music it makes every morning at
the hour, say, 11 o’clock as it is. One comes to one’s place of work finding none,
or few at the office, the others to their own leisurely yet scrupulous
attendance in their own time. The sweep is at work, the receptionist at place,
the one to the early hour in place. Not knowing what to do one strays into the
hub of this kind. To what, to spend one’s time to what it could be worth the while.
Here one doesn’t know how one had
happened in but to the acquiescence of the one at the helm. He didn’t seem to
mind, and one is at desk, working away what is on the mind. Six of the five
cubicles are occupied in the calm of the work the hub-bugs seem absorbed in.
And what about one. Come to tell what day it is outside in the world. A mild
rain is to a soaking damp of the roads – the pushcarts – the walkers-by – and the
people bustling to and fro. All before it is said and done, the wet and the soaked
shirts are to the spine what a hub comfort is in its snug. Outside, it could be
as much a tedium as the sun it was the other, say, sultry soaking the shirt to
the body as much as this day’s rain could soak it cold or damp. Whatever, it
could all the same be it an ugly June weather.
By noon, perhaps, this climate could
abate, and the day, as good as any other day. The newspapers, for their part, splash
their headlines – these days, they closing up vertical as it seems – as if they
don’t want readers to go through the full length of the content, the conventional
ones keeping tepid telling to no zest, and, probably, repeating what they had
all already been at in the name of new developments to all that had been past
in the name of reminders or follow-ups. The remainders are crime and grime that
readers have but to read for the news they buy. One isn’t surely off the mark.
One has seen it each time one had looked up a new-crier, otherwise, they are
features spreading the same old faces in a better wash to the photographs.
The vegetables and the vendors,
the daily shops and the fashionables, they sit to their indoors to the few
coming to them talking niceties, putting their goods across in as gentle a manner,
thanking their stars for a rarity the customer picks up or taking the sale in
the stride of their everyday business. They could never have done better nor could
they have done worse. For them, it is a routine routing the day out. The
customers for their part take the buy in their hands, look it up and down to make
sure they have picked up the right one, and carry the packed one as though they
had fulfilled the time they had visited the shop for. One comes, the other
goes, a few flock, the others leave the business outlet vacant for the time
another one of their kindred fluster in.
The push-carts and the vendors
are up to their haggling buyers, none less than the other, though on everyday
use each one is as much an amiability to the other, except when it comes to a snitch,
where they get into a rut and it is pretty hard for them to come out, except by
one of them relenting to the other, then too in a silence that bespeaks their
inability to come to terms. Trade continues till the commodities are sold out
or kept behind for the evening, when one is meant to believe, none of the
traders allow their stock to remain unsold. Such is the market reflecting the
growing improvement of life where none of the people are to any dearth not to
any poor pockets. What isn’t disposable here is forthwith shifted to a market
elsewhere, where sooner they are gone they find buyers as if they are waiting
for them. It is a market, if not flourishing, in the least one coping up with
itself.
Like the shops doing a business
that doesn’t look it on the surface but is shifted home where round the cloak
the man at the helm works and works till he returns with all the finished products
dispensing with them on time, for, he has to make his money and the money you
make is your value in the market or with the market authorities. Exceptions are
not ruled out. There could an outlet or two where the one in the manager’s seat
takes the rap either for a delay he doesn’t mean or an update he forgets
immersed in that the technical work is passion. The others, sooner seem to
close down their outlets for want for business. This is, perhaps, the picture
of the business-line on the milk-booth and Dondapathi lane – summer or rains
day, though, it was meant to be conjured up what it could be like on a rainy
day.
There is nothing like make hay while
the sun shines to a daiy trader, rainy day or no, the shops seem to make their
hay so long as their doors are open and customer keep ling in.
20 June 2016