Sunday walk

A morning breeze, breeze rain-bathed leaves and trees in LIC Colony; warblers, magpie robins and koyals tune the air, couldnt spot any; am not even an average birder; a Sunday quiet, making me way from Link Road to LIC Colony; with unsure legs and knees, more than two months made the walk. Rama hesitated as me tied up old walking shoes, which know the area better than me and stepped out at 6; Rama eased into bhajans on her ipad. Most, if not all the trees, are there; the silk cottons, banyans, peepals, rain trees and good friends - fruit bats - opposite Karuna Hospital and the Missioniaries of Ajmer; nothing is amiss as me pray at the Lord Shiva temple and on to IC Church to meet up dear Mother Mary with an Abide with me, written by Scottish Anglican, Henry Francis Lyte in 1847. Leg past the wooden kiosk near LIC offices with the old man put to sleep by a rain crooned air in an arm chair; there were no Amul packets today as the van and driver are into a Sunday; plastic jars hold no chocolates; rarely any business; a time pass for the old man with specs resting on chest. Like the idea, smile, walk on. Muthu is there at the turning with vadas and smabhar and less clients as a lady vendor in a mobile van, ten steps away, is into nibbling customers with pohe and medu vada. In earlier times, snails crawled on to tarred roads, lost their way, struggled like snails in TV ads between football and tennis matches; an old couple, not to be seen, picked them up, put them on grass; they did more snail picking than walking; the lady held the snail in her palm and her old man admired it; the show could go on for minutes; today snails are not. Poet Mangalesh Dabral will understand as he lost his Tehri village to Tehri dam. He writes:

On Mother's face I see a picture of a jungle
A picture of wood grass and water a picture
Of something that's been misplaced.

And then the poet comes to the city. To verse,

I looked at the city
and smiled
and walked in
who would ever want to live here
I wondered
and never went back.

Me does not have a village to go back; for me it is IC Colony, walks, Sunday mornings,
rains and Dabral verse.