Half An Hour At The Road-side Cobbler

Vacations, finally. I would rather sit at home doing absolutely nothing, but then its almost like parents hate having their children home during vacations.

While I was thinking about errands to run just to avoid talking or having to spend any significant time with my mother, I realised 3 pairs of shoes needed to be re-stitched. So, to the roadside cobbler’s I went.

I knew my shoes would take time, so I went to this little shanty on the side of a busy market road fully equipped with 4 cigarettes and a diet-coke. Earlier, my phone’s battery spazzed out, so I didn’t have that to give me company.

So what do you do at a side of a busy market road waiting for your shoes to be worked on? 

Well, nothing, just stand there and look around. It’s funny ‘cuz standing and looking around at the random people scurrying around with varying expressions, thoughtful expressions with oversized shopping bags can be quite entertaining.

It’s a complete package, with groups of teenagers, the studious ones only half alive returning home from classes, the ones who think they’re cool with their creepy dressing sense, with the “chhappars” whose only aim in life seems to be standing suspiciously in small groups on the street looking at women, with morbidly obese housewives dragging somethings I can only assume walked right out of them, with couples, holding hands, madly in love and other such earthlings.

It’s a good and bad feeling, putting yourself in a spectator’s position. Good, because, well, lets be honest, its good entertainment. Bad, because you might see people doing things which would make you want chop you arm and shove it down your own throat and choke on it and die, just to be from the same species.

I often do this when I’m bored, grab something to eat/smoke/drink, sit in a public place and observe. It is that moment, when everything, is clear. The proverbial “masks” on each face passing you by becomes more obvious than ever.

Each time, each time a woman raping her husband’s credit card snubs a beggar, each time that beggar’s little boy gets chased down for pick-pocketing, each time a girl with her boyfriend, leaves his hand and distances herself ever so slightly from him as she checks you out, each time the guy does the same to check out some chick, each time a dude in formals carrying a briefcase abuses somebody, each time another one with the same attire walks the other way dejected because his sales deal didn’t happen, each time you see these things happen around you, amidst all the chaos, things get beautifully clear.

No, I haven’t figured out the meaning of life, yet. I ain’t on a quest to, either. But then, I 

learn as I go.

I’m convinced that ‘life’, for one, is a woman. You can’t live with or without her. You can’t live with her, because, well, she’s a super-menopausal bitch, at times. You can’t live without her, ‘cuz, well, you’d be dead.

It’s a cycle, a chain, a spherical cage of events. Heard of the Chaos Theory? If you haven’t, look it up, the world has Wikipedia for the lesser read.

In short, shit evens itself out.

This happens a lot. I sit to write something “commercially entertaining” and it ends up being a philosophical rant. Sigh.

Cheers.