The streets are quiet, unusually bereft of the chatter of people.
It is a Sunday morning and nothing stirs inside the rows of apartments. Save
the giant banyan tree whose leaves sway gently in the sea breeze, even as its
rope-like aerial roots swing to and fro invitingly. And the fine grains of sand
that rise in the billowing clouds of dust. Something seems to be moving inside
the cloud - some living, breathing being in this still, sleeping morning. It is
the sweeper of the streets, engulfed in a halo of dust, emerging from the sand
clouds like an ancient deity emerging from the mists. Daylight has begun to
filter through the canopy of the banyan tree, lending a soft glow to the pink
bougainvilleas, and rousing the hibiscuses from their slumber. A swaying prop
root of the banyan brushes past my face in its pendulum-like motion. I catch it
in my palm, and trace it with my eyes back to its high branch, the branch to
immense trunk and the trunk to its base where it was growing around, and
through the walls of the compound.
Incongrous in this street of high-rise apartments in the middle of
a metropolis. As strange as me and the street-sweeper, awake in this
sleepy morning.
A survivor in this busy, ruthless city.
An unfinished building, covered in an unseemly green drape stands
next to the banyan. It used to be an old, old house with a swing in the balcony
and yellow windows with wooden bars. Now it's a monstrosity of concrete and
green draping and a hoarding promising views of the sea. An erased relic of the
past.
I avert my eyes and walk down the street, now warm with the late April sun. I am playing make-believe hopscotch on
the mottled patterns of light and shade on the road.
I look up as one of patterns resolves itself into the shape of a
sitting person. Somebody's grandfather. He is sitting on a chair in front of
his house staring into the distance, his expression expectant- as if waiting
for something.
Another being from the past- the house. With a swing and
wooden bars on the windows. The thought was strangely startling. The house is
empty- the diaspora children scattered across the world, leaving grandpa alone
to his ruminations. Waiting. For what?
The windows are all open, the bars like teeth on a grinning face.
A crack on the wall of the upper floor like a frown on its brow. Anticipation
mingled with uncertainty. The mood of the house seems to mirror that
of the old man. Waiting. To join the future? A future, perhaps as a
highrise with unkept promises of views of the Arabian sea.
