My two minutes at Traffic Signal

 There are two ways which stretches out, leading to my office, almost an equal distance, but one road has a traffic signal.  Everyday on my way to office, I take the road with the traffic signal because it gives me my precious few minutes in these humdrum of city life. There are days when the signal is green and I zoom past that point (without any regret when I am awfully late)  but on most days, it is red and I get to perk my bike, sit and breath a bit and look around the life at the traffic signal for a couple of minutes.

A child selling Indian flags on a traffic signal.

Of course, there is a film by Madhur Bhandarkar named 'Traffic Signal' released in 2007, which dealt with the lives of the people who live and earn their livelihood staying around similar signals but that depiction was more inclined towards the underworld and the underbelly of Mumbai slum. 


In contrast, when I stop around this signal and see the lives around me, I see stories all painted with so many emotions and feelings. I see struggle, pain, hopelessness and also human endurance and the zeal to strife for a better tomorrow.

Sometimes there are kids trying to sell pens, pencils and balloons, sometimes there are women trying to cook something in their makeshift kitchen-cum-bed room, because this was nothing more than a piece of cloth tied to the grills of the wall which made their roof near the Indira Gandhi National center for Arts at the Rajendra Prasad Marg in New Delhi, the capital of India. Sometimes, there are some old men, sitting hunched forward in a circle, talking about somethings which I probably would never know. 


Sometimes I have this urge to skip my office and sit with them, spend an evening with them, listening to their stories, stories of struggle, loss, defeat, pain and hopefully hope. I mean there ought to be some hope or else how can they spend their days, day in and day out, on these streets. Sometimes, I wonder, probably they would have a lot of anger for the better off or the have-nots, who perk their cars and bikes (like me) for that two minutes, often not even bothering to give them a look, as if they don't even exist. I too probably do it everyday, sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional but always without any malice or perhaps that the way I would like to justify my actions.

Even though I think so much about their lives, I never stop by, never get down from my bike, never talk to them, never offer any help, never try to make any attempt to bring any chance. Perhaps, I think I am not capable enough. But then they say change may start from anywhere, from anyone. Then why not? I don'y know. Something binds me inside, stops me, tells me if I can't make a change by talking to them should not give them any false hope or perhaps they might interpret my action as an attempt to take some sadistic pleasure knowing their lives lived in squalor and penury.


I am still looking for answers to these questions, probably I will not get them because for that I would have to take that one step someday. Knowing everything, still the hunt for the answers continue and continues my two minutes of solace at the traffic signal amidst the humdrum of the city.